When Infrastructure professionals saw President Trump’s Executive Order creating the DOGE and appointing Elon Musk to head it, many of us were elated. Finally, they were doing what we have been asking for years—installing digital infrastructure, digitalizing management systems, driving them with data and creating robust data-driven management capacity in essentially all agencies. The text of the order looked very much like this was what the President and his
advisors had in mind in drafting the order and we saw that as a harbinger of great things to come.
• We saw digitalization of the NEPA process—with transparent algorithms and rules and digital twin ability to predict outcomes—as a fast, orderly and accurate way to either complete the process or find it unnecessary. Also providing a complete and accessible way of either completing judicial review or making clear that it isn’t needed.
• We saw digitalization of complex, changing and often unpredictable systems such as tariffs to have much more knowable outcomes as well as monitorable effects and fluid adjustment capability if needed.
• We saw Agencies more able to foresee the consequences of their actions and adjust them as needed to avoid bad impacts and the public more able to see what Agencies might be about to do. For example, if we see that restriction of foreign students or limiting their ability to work here after graduation will adversely affect the U.S. ability to innovate, that
approach could be adjusted. If we need variable overhead rates to foster important discoveries, we could do that. In short, we could continuously adjust policies to fit needs and the rules or algorithms would give us the discipline needed to allow the scalpel rather than the meat axe.
• We saw all agency functions happening faster and more efficiently (Remember the “E” in DOGE is for “EFFICIENCY”, not “elimination.”
• We saw much more public/private collaboration and much more private investment in public infrastructure and the public good.
In short, we saw a new kind of government much more efficiently advancing our long-held national purposes. Many of us were devastated when we found that Elon came not to build but, instead, to slash and burn. So sad! Such prospects! So much lost!
But wait! Wait! Do I hear President Trump (who started the AI initiative in his first Administration and has pursued it actively since then)? Do I hear him saying he stands by his E.O.? Do I hear him saying that he wants his Cabinet members to build robust information, data and digitalization capabilities within each of their departments? Do I hear rumors that these efforts will be supported by Russel Vogt (who may be the architect of it all) and AI Czar David Sacks (both of whom are data and digital guys). And do I hear him saying that DOGE is more important than ever?
I hope I do, and if I do, we may be back on the track and on the way to a Phoenix Rise. We all should hope.
Blueprint 2025
Gordon Arbuckle, Co-Founder
T: 202 775 2025
M: 303 619 5123
gordon@sinfpi.org
sinfpi.org
Gordon Arbuckle, and the late Norman Anderson Co-Founded the Blueprint 2025 Initiative in 2016 at the beginning of the first Trump Administration.
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