Blueprint 2025’s comments on (1) President Trump’s Executive Order which established the DOGE and (2) the process by which it has been carried out have gone from positive to negative. This is not because of the Order or its vision, but, rather, because of the blunt, ham-handed and unsophisticated way in which it has been carried out. The Blueprint 2025 initiative has long supported the application of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Technologies to improve the efficiency of governmental services and expedite the permitting processes and related outcomes that are so critical to the U.S.’ ability to compete.
Thus, we were extremely positive in our commentary on the Executive Order itself, which took the entirely appropriate approach of establishing and empowering a high-level, highly qualified service department to assist the traditional agencies in their efforts to digitize processes and improve performance. As the new DOGE has begun its mission, however, we have been increasingly negative. DOGE is not following the President’s directive to assist the Agencies but, instead, seems to be seeking to supplant their existing digital and AI aided analytical capabilities with intuitive judgements from persons who are not familiar with agency dynamics and without grounding in systems based on transparent digital analytics and algorithms. The result is the likelihood of bad outcomes for the Government in cases like [Does v Musk, 25-CV462, US District Court, District of Maryland (Greenbelt)] and, much more seriously, in the departure of essentially all of the digital talent in the Department of Defense and some other critical Departments.
Now, with the Maryland case and others sending increasingly clear messages that DOGE’s current modus operandi will not pass muster, with increasing public dissatisfaction with the DOGE results and with Mr. Musk reportedly stepping back, we may be at an inflection point. To take advantage of it, we need to restore DOGE to the President’s original mission, we need to install management and personnel committed to that mission and we need to bring back the agency personnel whose digital and analytical skills are so critical to the objective of expediting and improving Agency processes. As we said in our initial comments, failure to succeed in this effort will set our country back many years. We hope that will not happen.
Blueprint 2025
Gordon Arbuckle, Co-Founder
T: 202 775 2025
M: 303 619 5123
gordon@sinfpi.org
sinfpi.org
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