Don Moynihan interviews Jen Pahlka.
Don: What is the alternative vision to DOGE that people might find compelling? Have you thought about whether we [reminder: this means civic tech/CX/delivery community] should be defining ourselves in relation to DOGE or is that just a waste of time?
Jen: I think we could define ourselves in relation to what DOGE could have and should have been. DOGE as it exists today is not dismantling unnecessary and unhelpful process and procedure. It’s simply ignoring them. It ignores process. It ignores law. DOGE is cutting the workforce and leaving all the unproductive work in place.
We still need to have a very difficult and hard conversation about whether these policies and processes in government that we have taken as Gospel are actually serving the purposes that we say they are. My fear is that we will believe that line that DOGE has dismantled government and decide to just go build back when in fact, the work of dismantling still needs to happen. Actually, I would change that verb to rethinking, rightsizing, and thoughtfully creating a government that is more focused on getting to the outcomes than getting through the process.
The thing that we should take from Doge is the boldness. We can be much more bold, and I think that we can be responsibly bold. We could take all of that ambition and in some sense, slightly less respect for the status quo and wield that with far greater responsibility and empathy for people.
What I don’t want is to say that we should be the opposite of DOGE. We should not say that because they were overly ambitious and reckless, we will be very cautious and move slowly. It is not the time to move slowly.
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