Part 1 introduced the need for DOGE to complete organizing the team in terms of subject matter expertise and to identify areas of focus-complete terms of reference-to move out on their task.
Clear objectives, lean organization with clear chains of command and a mission focus will be key to success.
Oh, and a focus on the deliverable of efficiency.
Make no mistake what a massive undertaking this is in a government dominated by leaders who exhibit the worst behavioral traits that are the byproduct of advancement by nepotism, sycophantism and political loyalty.
The Pentagon is perhaps the worst example and one of the first and best places to start. Saving a mere 10% is enough to fund any other agency or activity of the government.
A cadre of appointees’ lords over the Pentagon Staff. With a president appointing some >4000 in total across the government, ~1200 requiring congressional confirmation, it is easy to see how an approach that focuses on all the wrong attributes in potential candidates can result in the dismal performance we’ve had across the board in many organizations and agencies these last four years.
Should DOGE focus on personnel, policy, hiring practices, etc.? This might seem inconsistent with advising DOGE to stay out of the swamp and focus on programs, dollars and policy issues.
Let’s work through this nuanced idea a bit. The Pentagon recently failed their 7th financial audit in a row. Importantly they also reported that it is unlikely they will pass an audit by 2028, the year congressional language requires them to pass muster.
The leaders of this organization are just about all political appointees with very few exceptions. In case you are unfamiliar with that meaning, you might have Vern appointed to be the executive for manufacturing liaison in the Defense Department Research and Engineering outreach division, and Vern’s claim to fame is he always gives the maximum political contribution each year and is being rewarded: that’s it! Government experience, DOD knowledge, weapons or equipment procurement familiarity, phffft.
There are checks and balances available representing oversight from congress on the Pentagon. It is frequent, consistent and some would say burdensome. And yet with close to a trillion dollars or more spent each year, failing an audit translates to we-congress-lacking accountability on it year, after year, after year.
Is it a people, process, accountability, leadership, or “what” problem? The answer is yes-probably-er, maybe-but apparently, we don’t know, we haven’t fixed it, and no adults have withheld funds to force Pentagon leadership to fix it.
I’m not trying to be clever here, but this is how problem-solving works. Taxpayers want accountability for government spending, congress has oversight responsibility, the House and Senate Armed Services Committees are charged-among others-with providing oversight and they can craft remedies in budget language to address the inability of the Pentagon to be accountable.
How? Very simply by withholding funds until the Pentagon complies. To wit, “the Secretary of Defense program line: Discretionary Funds, has a hold of $1,000,000,000 pending satisfactory coordination with congress on completing audit reports outlined below by XXXX (and humma, humma.”)
Given what one can envision as literally millions of details DOGE is going to wrestle with, this may seem very small “B” ball thoughts, given the magnitude of the task. But the key to getting the task(s) done include the mechanisms, controls and Ju Jitsu-like actions that drive the swamp and bureaucrat’s actions.
An essential element is using the mechanisms of the swamp against itself, a la the infamous “rope-a-dope” technique. By co-opting elements of government that already have the charter to perform necessary and intersecting functions with DOGE’s mission, a fairly small and lean team can punch well above it’s weight and engage the bureaucracy in-well-efficient sizing itself!
A key is to force people-put them on notice-to do their jobs as a priority, which has a secondary value of keeping them focused and not looking for things like social issues to distract them.
Politicians love the limelight-like moths to a flame. Feeding these big egos with tasks that are already in their in-box, milestones, goals, outcomes-can’t help but engage them in what is sure to be a crescendo of support to identify efficiency opportunities and to claim them as achievements.
My counter to this simplistic viewpoint based on current practice that you just hold people accountable is that you have to hold the requisite power in government to make this work. We’ve seen how the people in power can simply pass on going after criminals while indicting ham sandwiches.
Government accountability is an absolute must for our government to work properly. And yet it is the rarest of actions…
All the biggest of the government agencies are ripe for efficientizing. What are the largest agencies? That makes for an interesting trivia question from the standpoint that the ones that I would recommend as top of the cut list-DOJ at 115K, NSA at 35K, FBI at 35K, all elements of the Intelligence Community and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence itself, are veritable pikers compared to the truly bloated elements.
Dept of Veterans Affairs: 337.6K federal employees
Dept of the Army: 261K federal employees
Dept of the Navy: 194.3K federal employees
Dept of Homeland Security: 193.9 federal employees
Dept of the Air Force: 167.4 federal employees
That is a lot of civilian payroll payolla just off the top of the list: an obscene amount.
Which is the main reason I would prefer to look at case studies or reports that provide factual evidence of worst practices that can be assessed, attacked, and used as the basis for changes and eliminations.
Cause you could get a monkey and a bingo wheel to willy nilly assign cuts to government entities by percentage.
The key to success is to identify true and meaningful cuts, elimination, consolidations and innovations that make a difference: result in efficiencies.
I think my favorite example of what I consider a worst practice that many in the federal bureaucracy likely admire and consider genius, is the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA.)
Somewhere in 2007-2008 our fairly large program got wind that the PDDNI was going to inflict budget cuts on our program. Now we had all the program documents required, were approved by the DNI and funded by congress: the definition of an approved program.
To prepare for what was to come our budget shop undertook a research effort on program restructuring and stumbled across a Japanese program evaluation technique that measures program priorities and budget spending to work through an evaluation of execution: actual spending vice stated priorities.
The firm we were working with had just completed such a review for NASA and provided the report for our leadership to review in order to get an idea of the methodology and the outcome.
It was one of the craziest assessments I had ever seen. Being in government-working on intelligence programs-I had only a passing familiarity with how many “counties” we had in America. Nor had I really paid attention to how many congressional districts there were (435.)
NASA actually broke their program spending down by congressional district, and further by county. Talk about knowing where your bread is buttered. It might just be the most contrived bifurcation of program funding in the US government: but it was genius when it came to getting congress to carry your water-with congress…
There were bureaucrats at NASA who had been doing this type of program emphasis for so long they considered it essential and a necessity for survival.
Some would observe its only ~30B and pales in comparison to large agency budgets. I don’t think it’s a matter of the amount or the potential inefficiency.
It is the philosophy and leadership and manipulation and perversion of the system: everybody gets a ribbon or a car…
NASA recently-just by chance-reportedly reached out to Elon Musk and his DOGE for help combatting woke BS such as DIE in the agency, which is to space technology and priorities what donkey droppings are to exquisite cuisine…
There is a different kind of bureaucrat being hired in NASA who-much like those who came before them-recognized that the “trend was your friend” and began to invest in woke ideology bumper stickers to keep up with the “cool kids.”
Meanwhile NASA’s primary mission suffered somewhat of a black eye when preferred International Space Station (ISS) provisioner Boeing ran into a little-ahem-problem when a helium leak was discovered in their Starliner vehicle and Elon Musk had to be called in to rescue crew from the ISS that will eventually overstay their planned visit by eight months…
Consider what we are dealing with in thinking through the dysfunction of government efficiency. Myriad bad examples come to mind. I’ve covered quite a few in my government focused series such as the Global Folly Back In Fashion In The Swamp.
Where would one start with an exemplar that DOGE could wrap their head and arms around? I think the poster child that touches almost every point of the compass is probably playing out right now in Ukraine.
Between the Afghanistan withdrawal, Ukraine funding and our Middle East policy there is enough material to keep an efficiency team busy for a long time.
If you want to read an absolute horror show of government idjiotcy, fraud, waste abuse and stupidity, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) reports represent some of the absolute worst government practices since the Vietnam war. Where often clueless bureaucrats were throwing money at a problem they simply could not and did not understand.
Or maybe the far worse horror is funding for terrorists in Gaza and Lebanon that can only be seen in either direction-hindsight or foresight-as ill-advised US government funding of terrorism that has destabilized the Middle East and killed a bunch of innocent civilians and Israeli military.
Or maybe it is US funding for the escalation in Ukraine against Russia, where each day continues Russian aggression that was caused by Barack Obama back in 2014 but seems no closer to ending than when the Pentagon under Lloyd Austin and GEN Milley advised the administration over 1000 days ago that “Russia would likely win in ~72 hours.”
Just like in Afghanistan there is no active government interest in knowing where the now tens and hundreds of billions of taxpayer funding is being spent in Ukraine. Repeating the biggest flaws and takeaways documented in the SIGAR reports: “lack of accountability, poor plan, no checks and balances.”
Which may seem rambling but highlights the challenge for Musk and his DOGE: What is the priority, where do you start, when are you done, how do you implement, etc., etc.???
The deep state swamp is not likely to willingly participate in its own demise.
Max Dribbler
21 November 2024
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