“There is nothing new under the sun” goes the old saying, and the “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) is no exception. While I love the idea, and applaud the effort, a warning is in order. The bureaucracy will do everything they can to destroy the effort, and they are a formidable opponent.
Governor Schwarzenegger, in 2004, had the same idea. He called it the “California Performance Review” and his idea was to “streamline government,” and it generated a 2500 page document with suggested California government reforms. He promised to make full use of the report in overhauling California government. The California Performance Review died a quiet death less than a year after its drafting, and we never heard of it again.
I have one story to tell about how the project was co-opted by the bureaucrats and killed. I helped a friend who worked for state government get on one of the panels formed to study ways to reform government to make it more efficient. That person’s job was to cut down the costs of maintaining state buildings, and they were a big proponent of privatizing janitorial services. Private cleaning services, during Pete Wilson’s time as Governor, reduced state costs by nearly forty percent. So my friend, a state employee, went into these meetings with a plan. In the first meeting, when privatization was proposed, the other bureaucrats said it couldn’t be done, it was against state law. My friend said “wait a minute, yes it can,” and showed how it could be done legally. The other bureaucrats in the meeting called my friend’s boss in state government and said my friend was undercutting them. The boss told my friend to shut up. When my friend disagreed, the boss basically cut my friend out of that person’s civil service job. My friend had to leave that department, because thee office in which my friend worked was completely redesigned and the desk at which my friend sat eliminated. My friend was then dubbed a troublemaker (after 30 years of near perfect performance) and ostracized in the department. My friend lost the civil service job, got no support from the Schwarzenegger administration, and then the California Performance Review disappeared. Every other bureaucrat in the state got the message. “Buck the real bosses, the bureaucrats, and you will pay the ultimate price.”
That is the reality of the challenge of DOGE. Bureaucrats know that political appointees are temporary, the bureacrats are permanent. Stonewall the efforts of the political appointees for a few years, and the political brass will be gone, replaced by someone else who may not agree with the effort. In the scholarship of public administration, it is called “surfing the director.” They just ride the wave until its done.
DOGE may also find that there are political appointees who have been co-opted by the bureaucrats, basically becoming the mouthpiece of the permanent bureaucracy, justifying its existence. The political appointee goes “native.” That appointee will become active opponents of change, and active defenders of the status quo to the administration. Since they are political appointees, they will take their case directly to other political appointees, Congress, or the President, and ask that their bureaucracy be spared, no matter how much the change is needed.
So, beware DOGE. There is always a good excuse for big government, and as you try to take away the bureaucrats power, they will use every tool in their tool box, from “defending their important mission” to the press or Congress, using every “native” apologist they can find, and punishing the allies of DOGE in the bureaucracy that may believe in the DOGE goals for government reform. It is important this effort not fall apart like the California Performance Review did. I think it can be done, but it won’t be easy.