When the news broke for the first time about the technical acquisition of the US government of Elon Musk, a number of people who had tried for years were surprisingly hopeful to transform the federal IT practices. Perhaps they dreamed, Elon Musk and his team from the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) would offer a long-neded shock for an unyielding and Antediluvian bureaucracy.
“It is outside the discussion that an more aggressive approach was needed if we ever made progress in our lives”. (He left in 2017, before Trump was inaugurated for the first time.) Dickerson says that the executive order that Trump issued on day one of his second term, who established Doge as a temporary organization within the government, was actually something he liked Wanted see in Obama's founding charter in front of the desk. He mainly loved the section that forced agencies to give USDS teams access to systems and records. “That would not have been a magical bullet, but it would have created a strong suspicion that they had to work together,” he says. “We didn't really have that, so it was almost optional whether someone wanted to work with us.”
Some of the departing leaders of the technical team of the government, both of which were proud of their performance and were frustrated by their inability to really transform the opaque mess of Federal IT, shared similar hope. Outgoing USDS director Mina Hshanang called Doge's power 'a great opportunity'. Former federal chief information officer Clare Martorana expressed excitement that the command of agencies would force budget data with doge, see it as an opportunity to withdraw the shroud and eventually find out where these agencies hide waste. This information can inform sensible decisions about what should be cut, where the North Star is value for the American people. “I try very hard to be optimistic about it,” she told me.
Before inauguration, Jennifer Pahlka, former deputy Chief Technology Officer and one of the founders of the USDS, wrote an essay with the name “Elon to a mess”, which summarized the feeling: “Much of the technical community of the government. .. Don do not see their savior, but they feel justified after years of shouting in the void. “
If one of those former officials really believed that Musk would walk with the possibility of constructively reforming the government, those fantasies have now been crushed. Musk and Doge brought in a team of young technicians and experienced managers who could have seized the moment to concentrate on improving the government. But to date they have used their access and power to give the federal personnel and Defund programs for ideological reasons without distinction, apparently without even giving the consequences. Yes, Musk claims a champion of the people against the bureaucratic state: “If the bureaucracy is in charge, what meaning does democracy actually have?” He asked this week during a bizarre Oval Office performance while Trump watched and Musk's 4-year-old son X fiddled. But the actions that are actually taken by Doge do not synchronize with this sentiment, especially when the movements seem to be contrary to measures adopted by the congress and signed in the law. That is not very democratic. “I think the government is a good thing, and it needed enormous transformation, much faster than anyone else in political leadership,” says Pahlka. “Because we didn't do it, this seems to be what we get.”
Ann Lewis, who led the technological transformation services until the end of last year, an agency that focuses on the use of modern technology to make the government accessible to its citizens, in the beginning also tried to see the acquisition of the Doge in a positive light . It didn't take long before that light dimmed. “The model to bring people into the private sector who have a new perspective and skills and who want to help is a great idea,” she tells me. “But we don't see people from the private sector with a lot of experience who want to understand how everything works.”
