DOGE, Efficiency and Effectiveness
What could have been a travel nightmare was not. Our return flight from a recent vacation in Florida was threatened by a forecast of 4-8 inches of snow at home. So, logging on to the Internet we looked for options and called Delta customer service. Rebooked on an earlier flight to get ahead of the storm, we stayed at a hotel near the Jacksonville airport, had a nice dinner and watched the Super Bowl. I set my phone alarm to make sure we made our early morning flight. I got up, took my morning meds and we took the hotel shuttle to the check-in terminal. TSA pre-check was fast. Our flight left on schedule, giving us enough time for breakfast at the Atlanta airport before boarding our connecting flight home. We arrived safely and ordered an Uber which took the interstate to get us home. We snuggled in a good 12 hours before the snow started.
So why should you care about my little tale? Here’s why. None of it would have been possible without an effective federal government. The accurate forecast (NOAA), the Internet (created by DOD), the phone system and TV (regulated by the FCC), safe drugs and meals (FDA), passenger security (TSA), flight management and safety (DOT), the interstate highway system (NHTSA) and the GPS system for Uber (DOD, NASA) all played their parts flawlessly. Sure, private sector firms were mostly directly serving us, but they relied on federal government systems. Nor should we forget that private firms exist as money-making entities because federal laws protect private property, guarantee the sanctity of contracts and financial institutions and operate a tax system that encourages innovation and profit making.
Government effectiveness matters, but you could miss its importance from the attention lavished on DOGE, the “Department of Government Efficiency.” With the goal to slash government spending and its workforce in the name of efficiency, DOGE largely ignores the question of effectiveness.
As for efficiency, DOGE may look like a winner. Efficiency is measured by the ratio of outputs over inputs; if outputs stay the same when you cut inputs the ratio improves. In agency programs where staff is cut and outputs continue (e.g. weather forecasts still get made), efficiency may well improve. Yet there’s no guarantee effectiveness will be unaffected. Forecasts may be worse. Food inspections with fewer staff may not spot products that should be recalled. The IRS may still do the same number of audits but with fewer staff may skip the labor intensive audits of complex returns that produce more recovered revenue.
Considering domains like national defense, foreign affairs and mandatory domestic programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, fewer staff and smaller budgets can also produce problems. It’s true that efficiency may improve but the goal of government, its promise to citizens, is that these programs will be effective. That’s where the distinction between the private and public sectors matters. Private sector firms can lower costs to increase efficiency, but effectiveness may be compromised. Longer wait times for service and more defective products, for example, may result. Such failures rarely meet the exposure of press and politics. Public sector organizations must serve a Congressionally-mandated public purpose. Social Security checks must be on time, medical care for indigent Americans must be there, and maintaining the support of international governments and institutions is essential. Failures on public purposes draw attention and political anger. So public sector effectiveness is a must even if efficiency in achieving it suffers.
Sadly, DOGE mostly dodges a discussion of effectiveness. It also ignores a lot about human psychology and the fragility of human institutions.
The DOGE buyout offer, accepted by some 75,000 federal workers, seems deaf to what we know from studies of private sector downsizing. They show that the first workers to leave are usually those whose skills are more marketable in the private sector, leaving those with perhaps weaker skills and less experience behind. The research also finds that those who remain feel disrespected, are angry at the organization and fearful about what may happen to them next – hardly conducive to fostering high performance.
Intent on cuts to improve efficiency with warp speed, DOGE has not had time to ask what the impact will be on the effectiveness of programs that are cut. It risks dangerous losses in effectiveness, as when it recently terminated employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration, responsible for our nuclear stockpile, only to find how dangerous losing their skills was and then had trouble trying to rescind the terminations. The rapid dismissal of agency Inspector Generals, no doubt to be replaced by those with less audit and investigative independence, also threatens getting objective data on what works, where fraud and waste reside and what can safely be cut without danger to agency public purposes.
DOGE, in its overarching focus on efficiency, assumes the programs, staff and budgets it cuts will not harm the effectiveness expected by the laws that created them. It behaves as if the prior deliberations of Congress on programs and budgets can be ignored and risks violating the Constitutional duty of the President to faithfully execute the laws Congress has passed.
Photo Credit: DOGE.gov
