President Donald Trump missed an opportunity to make a change he should have been seeking in the federal government. And Elon Musk squandered a chance to use his business acumen to render a public service to the American people. Instead, by pursuing the wrong goal, and doing so in a ham-handed fashion, we have chaos and confusion, with many of the predictable consequences.
DOGE missed the mark. Instead of efficiency, the target should have been effectiveness, which ultimately determines an organization’s value, as well as better ensuring that agencies remain focused on the mission for which they were established, thus safeguarding against mission creep.
Examining an organization through the lens of effectiveness is especially important in situations where the stakes are high. In fighting a war, while an eye should be kept on getting the most from tax dollars, the goal of prevailing in battle supersedes the efficiency with which the battle is waged. D-Day, June 6, 1944, was among the most successful military campaigns in history. But few would define it as an efficient operation.
As we saw with COVID and its aftermath, the imperative was to develop a vaccine that would offer significant protection against the virus and ensure there were resources available to achieve that end — not to focus on the efficiency of that task.
In several of the agencies and programs that DOGE targeted, the apparent goal was simply to slash the payroll, which doesn’t necessarily render an agency more efficient. That would depend on who and what is eliminated, as well as when and how it’s done. If personnel cuts decimate a knowledge base that is mission-critical, it may well reduce efficiency as well as imperil effectiveness. Cutting those on probationary status may mean that people further up the food chain must perform entry-level tasks, which pulls them out of working in their normal zone of responsibility. Also, work in many organizations has a cyclical element, whether it’s the IRS processing tax forms, the Department of Education preparing for a new academic year or FEMA gearing up for hurricane or wildfire season. Cutting IRS employees during the busiest time of the year makes little sense — especially if the organization did not have time to reorganize and to better achieve its mission. Absent such reorganization, the risks of not only becoming less effective but less efficient only become greater.
Had Musk and his subordinates focused more on effectiveness, and had they taken the time to better understand the mission, structure and operational model of each agency they had their sights on, they wouldn’t have stumbled into firing people, only to rehire them when someone pointed out that there are significant risks in, for example, reducing the nuclear oversight staff, or sacking HHS staff involved in combating outbreaks of measles and other infectious diseases, or in terminating Department of Agriculture employees trying to bring the bird flu epidemic under control. Those are unforced errors that would not likely have been made had the focus been on mission effectiveness rather than a simplistic notion of efficiency based on the number of employees in an agency.
It is entirely possible that by the time Musk lays down his chainsaw, the agencies he targeted will be no more efficient than before he began his work. It is almost certain that he will have degraded many agencies’ ability to effectively carry out their congressionally mandated charge. A more thoughtful approach would have the public applauding rather than protesting his actions. While one can justifiably point a finger at the president and Musk, blame must also be placed on an American public that too easily accepted the simplistic notion that a slash-and-burn approach to dealing with fraud, waste and abuse would actually work. When the premise of a program like DOGE is that government is the problem, it leads to an effort to diminish it, not render it more effective.
The best antidote to an ill-conceived and poorly executed effort like DOGE is an informed public that holds the parties responsible for such folly accountable, including those in Congress who have failed to provide oversight on behalf of the people whose interests they purport to represent.
James Cramer is president of The School for Field Studies and was executive director for corporate affairs at the University of Maryland Global Campus.