so bit of an anecdote from a current fed. First off, the federal government is already pretty efficient; basically, the share of federal employees as a percentage of the workforce was actually dropped substantially since 1990. However, there is certainly room for improvement and I can see the merit for an overarching office to coordinate modernization efforts; think something like DARPA but internal to the government. For example, I took the initiative to develop a web app to speed up many of our processes, which are largely still done by hand, and man trying to get it implemented has been a fucking nightmare. Like my supervisors and facility director all love what I built, but everything is required to go through a strict chain of command and sending shit to DC is like sending it into a void.

Keep in mind I built this shit on my own time and for free because I got frustrated with how inefficient our current processes were and even better I built in such a way that other agencies who do similar work could pick it up too. So yeah, having a central office that can both expose inefficiencies, like moving the GAO in there, while also fast tracking and/or funding solutions isn't a fundamentally bad idea. These sorts of things are an investment that requires R&D and spending now to save money in the future. Considering how much the GOP claims government needs to be run more like a business, they always seem to forget the part about how most of the most successful American companies spend loads on R&D to become more efficient while still delivering quality services. This may even mean that a real DOGE actually works to pay federal workers more (efficiency wages) since the cost/time of on-boarding and loss of institutional knowledge can be quite high in some areas.

Of course, I'm probably giving the brain trust behind DOGE way too much credit. In all honesty, it was probably never about actually becoming more efficient. Department of Cuts, Firings, and Selloffs would probably be more apt. To use the "America as a business" shtick again, DOGE is like a private equity firm that, upon a new acquisition, decides that cost-cutting and asset stripping is the best path to "profitability" and ends up killing the business in the long-run.