When News first broke about Elon Musk’s technical takeover of the US government, a number of people who have been trying for years to transform federal IT practices were surprisingly hopeful. Perhaps they dreamed, Elon Musk and his team at the Department of Government Efficiency (Doge) would provide a long necessary jerk to an unshakable and Antediluvian bureaucracy.
“It is out of the debate that a more aggressive approach was needed if we ever made a progress in our lifetime,” says Mikey Dickerson, who was the founding administrator of the United States Digital Service, who is now turning into Musk’s US Doge is service. (He left in 2017 before Trump was first inaugurated.) Dickerson says the executive order that Trump issued on the first day of his second term, which Doge established as a temporary organization in government, was actually something that He would have wanted to look at Obama’s founding charter for the agency. He especially likes the paragraph that forced agencies to give USDS teams access to systems and records. “It wouldn’t 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 it, so it was quite optional or someone wanted to work with us.”
Some of the outgoing leaders of the government technical team, who were both proud of their achievements and frustrated with their inability to really transform the opaque mess of the federal IT, shared similar hope. Outgoing USDs director Mina Hsiang calls Doge’s power “a tremendous opportunity”. Former federal chief information officer Clare Martorana has excitedly expressed that the order agencies will force budget data with Doge, as it would be an opportunity to withdraw the rug and eventually find out where these agencies hide waste. This information can inform wise decisions about what should cut, with the North Star value for the American population. “I try very hard to be optimistic about it,” she told me.
Before the inauguration, Jennifer Pahlka, former deputy chief technology officer under Obama and one of the founders of the USDs, wrote an essay called “Bringing Elon to a knife fight”, which summarized the feeling: ‘Much of the government’s Technical community … Don … “See Doge as their Savior, but they feel confirmed after years of screaming in the void.”
If one of the former officials really believed that Musk was going to run with the opportunity to constructively reform the government, these fantasies are now crushed. Musk and Doge brought in a team of young technicians and experienced managers who could have seized the moment to focus on the operation of the government. But to date, they have used their access and power to indulently drain the federal workforce and exempt programs for ideological reasons, apparently without giving the consequences of the consequences. Yes, Musk claims to be a champion of the people against the bureaucratic state: “If the bureaucracy is in control, what meaning does democracy have?” He asked during a bizarre Oval Office appearance this week while Trump looked over and Musk’s 4-year-old son X Fidgeted. But the actions taken by Doge do not synchronize with this sentiment, especially if the movements appear to be in conflict with the law and signed. It is not terribly democratic. “I think the government is a good thing, and it needed big transformation, much faster than anyone in political leadership had any appetite,” Pahlka says. “Since we didn’t, it seems to be what we get.”
Ann Lewis, who was the head of the technology transformation services until late last year, an agency dedicated to the use of modern technology to make the government accessible to its citizens, also initially tried to take the Doge takeover in to see a positive light. It didn’t take long for the light to fade. “The model of bringing people into the private sector who has a fresh perspective and skills and who wants to help is a good 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.”