"Now I hear stories of teams who would previously have crossed every t and dotted every i pushing to JFDI, so to speak, in ways that balance the need to adhere to our nation’s laws with the need to deliver for the American people."
I assume this is true and that especially the risk averse have been given other risks to counter the risk of making a mistake, but to give a different anecdote, my team was, I believe, quite high functioning and risk-accepting beforehand, and in the end suffered almost not at all from DOGE, as we had plenty of office space, no one had gone remote and we were fully staffed, my boss was extremely confident that the telework shift/remote work push was going to swing back and so preserved our capacity and limited our use. The level of demoralization and disfunction which has been externally imposed has made work both more unpleasant and less efficient in a way that is extremely hard to fix and people who used to say JFDI now say 'why bother?'
Frankly, I fear the biggest legacy of DOGE is going to be tainting the entire idea of government efficiency/reform for democrats and civil servants for the foreseeable future. Which is a shame, because even in my organization, there's stuff which drives me nuts.
ETA: And frankly, I think folks are being extremely credulous about that Jake Sullivan quote. Administrations are not shy about letting folks know what they care about and what they want done, when, nor on issuing clear directives. This is usually entirely fine, most executive branch agencies are in no way independent and are supposed to follow direction from the administration within the law. Now, the current administration genuinely is unique in a bunch of ways, but the notion that prior administrations just accepted some random civil servant saying 'nah' reads as an excuse to me, on anything actually high priority. The place stuff gets stuck is when no political is looking at it, or cares, and a civil servant does.
I agree that DOGE has tainted and polarized the very concept of government efficiency in a way that will hurt future efforts. I hope we are both wrong.
Obviously, your experience is valid, but Jen's book has several good examples of "random civil servants" gumming up the works. I don't think it's "saying nah" as much as layers of conservative readings of regulations, assumptions about statutory intent, and wariness at the middle management level to call upstairs for a restatement of what is a "high priority."
Right, that absolutely happens...but not on the projects politicals care about, because then the upstairs is calling down. Anything the National Security Adviser is calling about isn't getting stalled like that. Because the way this works on the cases I've been involved in, is they tell some SES what they want done and then that SES is having weekly meetings with the line staff until it is done.
That's for individual projects. Where stuff can get jammed up is where you're trying to write new regulations, or change policies, as there the 'get to an end state' is simply a lot harder than 'issue the easement/permit/approval/EIS' or where various politicals disagree--or where they're trying to exceed/violate congressional authority...
Like, do I think they wanted the Broadband stuff to get jammed up? No, of course not, but there are so many moving parts that simply finding them all is hard, for the stuff most folks think about, high level attention is usually enough to get the desired result.
I continue to think that Jennifer is being more charitable than Musk and his cadre of more than a few college kid Nazis deserve. This was first and foremost a mission of vandalism. They accomplished what they intended, smashing up USAID and several other organizations and likely leading to hundreds of thousands of people dead in the developing world. Mission accomplished.
Unless the top management is invested in change, it won't happen. Back in 1992, the Food and Drug Administration was in crisis. They could not review new drug applications within the statutory time frame and resources were lacking. Then FDA Commissioner David Kessler approached the biopharma industry with a proposal for industry user fees. In return, FDA would agree to a series of performance goals that were aspirational and not mandatory. I was part of the industry negotiating team and the four subsequent reauthorizations of the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA). FDA recognized that if they did not make a good faith effort to meet the goals, it would be difficult for industry to support reauthorization.
Each of the negotiations was lengthy and there were countless information requests from our side to better understand the actual costs within the Agency. I remember countless Excel spreadsheets that outlined all the processes that go into the review of a new drug application, and the efforts to try to get a cost number. I was stunned at the time that FDA could not tell us the actual cost of a review. If you do not know what the input costs are, how can you rationally design a fee program to support the Agency.
With each negotiation we got closer to getting a baseline number but it was hard work.
I share Jennifer's view at the difficulty but also the necessity of the DOGE activity. There are lots of things that need to be done but very few people have the courage to invest the 'real time' that is needed for this to happen.
Please don’t downplay the extent to which DOGE was just grift and grievance. Elon walked away with God knows what data on his competitors, the American people, and so much more. He literally deleted those who oversee and regulate his businesses. DOGE was never a good faith effort to improve government or save money, and acting as if it was- even 1% - serves to normalize a coup on our government by a billionaire drug addict
Sadly I do not think the "patriotism" tests are pointless: they are part of the Russ Vought led project to traumatize and expel liberal minded government employees and replace them with MAGA sycophants, ultimately in the service of imposing on this country some combination of Mobutu style kleptocracy and Christianist theocracy. Neither Musk nor most of the young techies who signed up for DOGE share those goals, but they were all used to help enable them.
The analysis or future analysis would be more complete with a discussion of the profound and often tragic impact of the cutbacks of staff and programs on the lives of people served by those programs for example, internationally with U.S. A.I.D. or nationally with Social Security Administration.
Your article is a generous assessment of an enterprise that was problematic in its conception and went sideways from the start. DOGE existed in obvious tension with the right's goal of whacking a range of government agencies they've long loathed on ideological grounds.
It seemed clear well before Trump took office that a good-faith effort to bring more efficiency to government was incompatible with a messianic mission to destroy the administrative state. It also seemed clear which impulse would win out, given the center of gravity in MAGA world and Trump's own lack of interest in governance.
As soon as Musk fed USAID to the woodchipper, he branded himself and his team as hatchet men for the messianic mission. The attack on CFPB underscored that. Whatever good-faith intention might have animated DOGE or may still, has been swamped by its association with the Mongol-like destruction of government capacity by the most ideological administration in memory.
I'm not sure why you've chosen to sidestep this larger story when many people will look to you for a final verdict on DOGE.
It should be painfully obvious to any observer, even a casual one, that despite the public statements about fraud waste and abuse, the animus behind DOGE was simply vandalism - with a frisson of personal vengeance on Musk’s part. As a committed public servant who hopes to be part of the team that eventually picks up the pieces, I’ll absolutely be looking to partner with folks who recognize this. Anyone minimizing the damage DOGE has done or excusing the behavior we’ve all seen is not a ‘pragmatic operator’ they’re likely divorced from reality and would be immediately suspect in my book. Personnel is policy and repairing this will require public servants with INTEGRITY.
Exactly, he had a chance to make things work better, to introduce more pragmatism, to reduce nonsense, and to advance the cause of Abundance which would benefit so many people. He did none of that.
Thank you for this insightful post. That said, “…the impression that DOGE leadership just gave up somewhere along the way” embodies an underlying presumption of good faith on the part of that leadership that may not be warranted.
Indeed I would have held that kind of presumption anytime before the past couple years in which Musk has proved himself to be acting and speaking in screamingly bad faith day after day, about issue after issue, in virtually every context imaginable.
I think you are underselling the damage. Many people that have opportunities are leaving government. And part of the appeal was job security. There are a ton of people that went to great schools but want to do good while having a solid upper to middle class life. They join government making the trade off that they will not get rich. Now that you have no job security the calculus will change and you will get worse people.
No matter what Musk didn't accomplish, he started a review of departments that neither of our political parties ever did, although we assumed they were making sure our hard earned tax dollars were well spent. Little did we know that they were using our taxes in a money laundering skeem!
Great post as always. I am not a coder but a NYC agency I worked for spent a ton of public money to develop an online portal that worked for both the public and the agency (in terms of, among other things, satisfying onerous and outdated regulations). It was an utter and complete failure and our internal team had to totally rebuild a new system. I worked in a non-technical capacity, identifying needed sources to pull from etc, with the project lead and was firmly convinced of his view that government entities should design their own tech to meet their specific requirements and avoid throwing away money on third party contracts with companies that don’t understand how the systems are supposed to work.
Informative piece! I really liked your ending, "The work of right-sizing those burdens is undone. The good news is that someone else could still do it. Republicans and Democrats should both be jumping at the chance."
Cutting staff without changing the rules just causes confusion. The same broken systems stay in place, but now fewer people are left to deal with them.
I’ve worked in tech, and even there things can slow down when compliance gets involved. But if you realize how hard it is and then just give up, what was the point of joining in the first place?
Firing contractors might look dramatic, but if no one fixes the outdated hiring rules or shortens the time it takes to launch a simple website, nothing improves. We end up with fewer workers and the same problems.
That said, I agree that one thing might stick. If DOGE made some people in government a little less afraid of taking smart risks, that’s not nothing. The system badly needed that push. Maybe someone else will come along who’s willing to dig into the hard parts and actually rewrite the rules instead of pretending they don’t matter.
"Now I hear stories of teams who would previously have crossed every t and dotted every i pushing to JFDI, so to speak, in ways that balance the need to adhere to our nation’s laws with the need to deliver for the American people."
I assume this is true and that especially the risk averse have been given other risks to counter the risk of making a mistake, but to give a different anecdote, my team was, I believe, quite high functioning and risk-accepting beforehand, and in the end suffered almost not at all from DOGE, as we had plenty of office space, no one had gone remote and we were fully staffed, my boss was extremely confident that the telework shift/remote work push was going to swing back and so preserved our capacity and limited our use. The level of demoralization and disfunction which has been externally imposed has made work both more unpleasant and less efficient in a way that is extremely hard to fix and people who used to say JFDI now say 'why bother?'
Frankly, I fear the biggest legacy of DOGE is going to be tainting the entire idea of government efficiency/reform for democrats and civil servants for the foreseeable future. Which is a shame, because even in my organization, there's stuff which drives me nuts.
ETA: And frankly, I think folks are being extremely credulous about that Jake Sullivan quote. Administrations are not shy about letting folks know what they care about and what they want done, when, nor on issuing clear directives. This is usually entirely fine, most executive branch agencies are in no way independent and are supposed to follow direction from the administration within the law. Now, the current administration genuinely is unique in a bunch of ways, but the notion that prior administrations just accepted some random civil servant saying 'nah' reads as an excuse to me, on anything actually high priority. The place stuff gets stuck is when no political is looking at it, or cares, and a civil servant does.
I agree that DOGE has tainted and polarized the very concept of government efficiency in a way that will hurt future efforts. I hope we are both wrong.
Thanks for the perspective on the demoralization. I hear that too, and should have included that. It's really such a shame.
Obviously, your experience is valid, but Jen's book has several good examples of "random civil servants" gumming up the works. I don't think it's "saying nah" as much as layers of conservative readings of regulations, assumptions about statutory intent, and wariness at the middle management level to call upstairs for a restatement of what is a "high priority."
Right, that absolutely happens...but not on the projects politicals care about, because then the upstairs is calling down. Anything the National Security Adviser is calling about isn't getting stalled like that. Because the way this works on the cases I've been involved in, is they tell some SES what they want done and then that SES is having weekly meetings with the line staff until it is done.
That's for individual projects. Where stuff can get jammed up is where you're trying to write new regulations, or change policies, as there the 'get to an end state' is simply a lot harder than 'issue the easement/permit/approval/EIS' or where various politicals disagree--or where they're trying to exceed/violate congressional authority...
Like, do I think they wanted the Broadband stuff to get jammed up? No, of course not, but there are so many moving parts that simply finding them all is hard, for the stuff most folks think about, high level attention is usually enough to get the desired result.
I continue to think that Jennifer is being more charitable than Musk and his cadre of more than a few college kid Nazis deserve. This was first and foremost a mission of vandalism. They accomplished what they intended, smashing up USAID and several other organizations and likely leading to hundreds of thousands of people dead in the developing world. Mission accomplished.
Unless the top management is invested in change, it won't happen. Back in 1992, the Food and Drug Administration was in crisis. They could not review new drug applications within the statutory time frame and resources were lacking. Then FDA Commissioner David Kessler approached the biopharma industry with a proposal for industry user fees. In return, FDA would agree to a series of performance goals that were aspirational and not mandatory. I was part of the industry negotiating team and the four subsequent reauthorizations of the Prescription Drug User Fee Act (PDUFA). FDA recognized that if they did not make a good faith effort to meet the goals, it would be difficult for industry to support reauthorization.
Each of the negotiations was lengthy and there were countless information requests from our side to better understand the actual costs within the Agency. I remember countless Excel spreadsheets that outlined all the processes that go into the review of a new drug application, and the efforts to try to get a cost number. I was stunned at the time that FDA could not tell us the actual cost of a review. If you do not know what the input costs are, how can you rationally design a fee program to support the Agency.
With each negotiation we got closer to getting a baseline number but it was hard work.
I share Jennifer's view at the difficulty but also the necessity of the DOGE activity. There are lots of things that need to be done but very few people have the courage to invest the 'real time' that is needed for this to happen.
Please don’t downplay the extent to which DOGE was just grift and grievance. Elon walked away with God knows what data on his competitors, the American people, and so much more. He literally deleted those who oversee and regulate his businesses. DOGE was never a good faith effort to improve government or save money, and acting as if it was- even 1% - serves to normalize a coup on our government by a billionaire drug addict
Sadly I do not think the "patriotism" tests are pointless: they are part of the Russ Vought led project to traumatize and expel liberal minded government employees and replace them with MAGA sycophants, ultimately in the service of imposing on this country some combination of Mobutu style kleptocracy and Christianist theocracy. Neither Musk nor most of the young techies who signed up for DOGE share those goals, but they were all used to help enable them.
The analysis or future analysis would be more complete with a discussion of the profound and often tragic impact of the cutbacks of staff and programs on the lives of people served by those programs for example, internationally with U.S. A.I.D. or nationally with Social Security Administration.
Your article is a generous assessment of an enterprise that was problematic in its conception and went sideways from the start. DOGE existed in obvious tension with the right's goal of whacking a range of government agencies they've long loathed on ideological grounds.
It seemed clear well before Trump took office that a good-faith effort to bring more efficiency to government was incompatible with a messianic mission to destroy the administrative state. It also seemed clear which impulse would win out, given the center of gravity in MAGA world and Trump's own lack of interest in governance.
As soon as Musk fed USAID to the woodchipper, he branded himself and his team as hatchet men for the messianic mission. The attack on CFPB underscored that. Whatever good-faith intention might have animated DOGE or may still, has been swamped by its association with the Mongol-like destruction of government capacity by the most ideological administration in memory.
I'm not sure why you've chosen to sidestep this larger story when many people will look to you for a final verdict on DOGE.
100%
It should be painfully obvious to any observer, even a casual one, that despite the public statements about fraud waste and abuse, the animus behind DOGE was simply vandalism - with a frisson of personal vengeance on Musk’s part. As a committed public servant who hopes to be part of the team that eventually picks up the pieces, I’ll absolutely be looking to partner with folks who recognize this. Anyone minimizing the damage DOGE has done or excusing the behavior we’ve all seen is not a ‘pragmatic operator’ they’re likely divorced from reality and would be immediately suspect in my book. Personnel is policy and repairing this will require public servants with INTEGRITY.
Thanks for all your dedication and hard work on these subjects.
Exactly, he had a chance to make things work better, to introduce more pragmatism, to reduce nonsense, and to advance the cause of Abundance which would benefit so many people. He did none of that.
Thank you for this insightful post. That said, “…the impression that DOGE leadership just gave up somewhere along the way” embodies an underlying presumption of good faith on the part of that leadership that may not be warranted.
Indeed I would have held that kind of presumption anytime before the past couple years in which Musk has proved himself to be acting and speaking in screamingly bad faith day after day, about issue after issue, in virtually every context imaginable.
The bald faced lying by Musk about social security is also bad. I wish Jennifer had included that.
I think you are underselling the damage. Many people that have opportunities are leaving government. And part of the appeal was job security. There are a ton of people that went to great schools but want to do good while having a solid upper to middle class life. They join government making the trade off that they will not get rich. Now that you have no job security the calculus will change and you will get worse people.
No matter what Musk didn't accomplish, he started a review of departments that neither of our political parties ever did, although we assumed they were making sure our hard earned tax dollars were well spent. Little did we know that they were using our taxes in a money laundering skeem!
Great post as always. I am not a coder but a NYC agency I worked for spent a ton of public money to develop an online portal that worked for both the public and the agency (in terms of, among other things, satisfying onerous and outdated regulations). It was an utter and complete failure and our internal team had to totally rebuild a new system. I worked in a non-technical capacity, identifying needed sources to pull from etc, with the project lead and was firmly convinced of his view that government entities should design their own tech to meet their specific requirements and avoid throwing away money on third party contracts with companies that don’t understand how the systems are supposed to work.
Informative piece! I really liked your ending, "The work of right-sizing those burdens is undone. The good news is that someone else could still do it. Republicans and Democrats should both be jumping at the chance."
Kiitos kun jaoit
Cutting staff without changing the rules just causes confusion. The same broken systems stay in place, but now fewer people are left to deal with them.
I’ve worked in tech, and even there things can slow down when compliance gets involved. But if you realize how hard it is and then just give up, what was the point of joining in the first place?
Firing contractors might look dramatic, but if no one fixes the outdated hiring rules or shortens the time it takes to launch a simple website, nothing improves. We end up with fewer workers and the same problems.
That said, I agree that one thing might stick. If DOGE made some people in government a little less afraid of taking smart risks, that’s not nothing. The system badly needed that push. Maybe someone else will come along who’s willing to dig into the hard parts and actually rewrite the rules instead of pretending they don’t matter.