Experts urge DOGE to prioritize tech over agency cuts
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy want to 'delete' federal agencies. However, some hope the duo will turn their focus to improving outdated processes to better serve U.S. citizens.
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The Department of Government Efficiency wants to cut federal costs by eliminating federal agencies. Experts, however, would rather DOGE leaders Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy focus on modernizing processes than slash what they see as a necessary workforce.
The government should make better use of technology, said Steve Kelman, professor of public management at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government. Kelman said he would applaud technology leaders such as Musk for putting efforts behind tech acceleration in government as a method of improving efficiency and overall performance to "deliver services better, to serve citizens better." However, based on public comments from Musk and Ramaswamy, Kelman believes the duo will focus more on cutting jobs.
"It would be helpful to have someone try to make the government better at using technology," he said. "My worry is Musk doesn't care about that. My guess is he doesn't really care about improving the way the government uses technology compared to just destroying government agencies."
Federal agencies already reckon with lack of resources
Musk and Ramaswamy plan to make cuts to agencies already operating with minimal budgets, making it difficult to reduce the workforce and modernize outdated processes, according to Erica Groshen, senior economics adviser at the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
For example, statistical federal agencies, which include the Census Bureau, the Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), have experienced significant budget cuts over the last 20 to 30 years, she said.
"They have been continually making do with less this whole time, which is not a recipe for a lot of flab in the budget," Groshen said, referring to the BLS. She served as commissioner of the BLS from 2013 to 2017.
These aren't the only agencies to face resource constraints. In 2022, Congress passed the Merger Filing Fee Modernization Act, which increased merger filing fees to provide additional resources to federal enforcement agencies such as the Federal Trade Commission tasked with assessing business deals like M&A.
Groshen said statistical agencies such as the BLS continually issue reports. If the agency wants to make a change or incorporate new technology, it must have the capacity to test its innovations while still producing statistical reports in the old way. Agencies must maintain capacity for resilience and avoid "single points of failure," she said.
"Innovating in those contexts is going to actually require an infusion of money until you have a new system up in place and it's reliable and underway," she said. "That's pretty hard for a plan like what the DOGE wants to do."
Additionally, should an agency like BLS face cuts, it could result in stakeholders failing to have key federal statistics on inflation and employment, Groshen said. Currently, she said federal data serves as the "gold standard" to which private companies might compare their statistics to prove data reliability.
"There might be some private sector companies that start cobbling something together. But whatever they cobble together would not have the history that the statistical agency provides or the transparency or certainty that they'll keep producing it," she said.
Instead of cutting the BLS workforce, Musk and Ramaswamy could improve processes like the flow of data from the private sector to statistical agencies so agencies could better take advantage of "this burgeoning supply of digitized operations throughout the economy," Groshen said.
DOGE faces workforce challenge
But it will be difficult for Musk and Ramaswamy to fire or dismiss any of the roughly 2 million federal employees outright, Harvard's Kelman said.
It would be helpful to have someone try to make the government better at using technology. My worry is Musk doesn't care about that.
Steve KelmanProfessor of public management, Harvard University John F. Kennedy School of Government
"You can't just arrive at the office tomorrow and say, 'You're fired,' without cause other than they think you're not good," Kelman said. Employees have due process protections and can dispute such actions. Still, on X, formerly Twitter, Ramaswamy claimed DOGE will "delete" agencies.
"The biggest cost of bureaucracy isn't the headcount costs, it's that bureaucrats find legally dubious 'things to do' that stifle freedom and depress our economy," Ramaswamy said in a post on X.
Sarah Kreps, law professor and director of the Tech Policy Institute in the Cornell Brooks School of Public Policy, echoed Kelman's point that it will be difficult to significantly reduce the federal workforce. She said government employees are career civil servants. "You can't just hire and fire the way you can in the private sector."
"That's a huge difference and huge impediment," she said. "The reason why people have gone into civil service is, in part, for that job security. People get paid more in the private sector generally because they are risking that job insecurity that they could come into work at Google the next day and be locked out of their office because they've lost their jobs. You can't do that in the public sector."
DOGE might also run into the challenge of recruiting an adequate workforce or convincing workers to leave the private sector for lower-paying government salaries, Kelman said. DOGE is currently seeking job applicants on X, asking for "super high-IQ small-government revolutionaries willing to work 80+ hours per week on unglamorous cost-cutting."
"I think they're going to have real trouble recruiting people who are motivated by wanting to destroy government agencies," Kelman said.
Makenzie Holland is a senior news writer covering big tech and federal regulation. Prior to joining TechTarget Editorial, she was a general assignment reporter for the Wilmington StarNews and a crime and education reporter at the Wabash Plain Dealer.
