2025 LAW AND POLICY
Blueprint 2025
2550 M Street NW, Washington, DC 20037; T: 202-775-2025; Text: 303-656-3838
“Reinventing Government” — Blueprint 2025 Perspectives on the Trump/Musk Kickoff
“Reinventing Government” is not a new idea. The Clinton-Gore Administration announced an initiative solabelled some years ago. Despite considerable fanfare, however, inertia prevailed at that time and the
government went on pretty much as usual. The Trump/Musk effort to enhance efficiency and reduce
expenditures has not characterized itself as a “reinvention,” but the early actions that have been announced
lead to a conclusion that this Administration’s initiative to make government more efficient has real
prospects for success. The actions announced to date demonstrate that this Administration:
• Will freeze programs while deciding whether/how to fix or eliminate them;
• Has clear perspectives on the issues and programs that need attention; and
• Recognizes that digital technology and A/I can be an important factor enhancing the ability to
accomplish change.
For example:
Freezing Foreign Assistance and Grant Programs creates irresistible impetus for clarification of objectives,
assessment of need, establishment of controls, coordination, control and oversight and advancement of
policies such as the Trump I suggestion that grants be used as a means of leveraging private sector
investments that advance national objectives.
Laying off the Inspectors General bespeaks recognition that there must be a better way of assuring agency
integrity than redundant IGs embedded in the agencies themselves. We note, for example, that IGs in
multiple agencies have spent some millions in multiple audits of Ukraine assistance programs without either
identifying substantial specific instances of corruption or devising a system for preventing fraud, waste and
abuse in the future. A coordinated digital system, such as that envisaged for the DOGE would surely yield
a more complete and cost-effective result.
Combining the DOGE with the U.S. Digital Service and establishing the combined entity within the
Executive Office of the President bespeaks recognition of both the critical importance of this mission and
the key role of digitization and AI in its achievement. It also enhances the prospects for acceptance and
implementation of BP2025’s longstanding recommendations regarding use of digitization and AI to
expedite and improve the NEPA process.
As the Administration has recognized, continuing clarification, adjustment and calibration will be required.
The start, however, seems extremely promising. The DOGE initiative will have our continued advice,
assistance and support.
***
* By 2016, the year of Donald Trump’s first election, our founder Norman Anderson had been a thought leader in the
infrastructure community for over thirty years. Frustrated with the inability of that era’s policy makers to understand
and deal with the demands of 21st century infrastructure, he reached out to the incoming Trump Administration in
the hope that a businessman President, without preconceived attitudes, would be able to reformulate infrastructure
policy to focus it toward the future, make it more nimble and efficient, effectively engage the private sector and
otherwise do what is necessary to return the U.S. to its proper position as the country with the worlds’ most efficient,
most productive and most sustainable infrastructure. He started the Blueprint 2025 Initiative to give voice to his
extensive network of infrastructure professionals regarding the pressing policy issues of that time. His infrastructure
policy thoughts—enhanced by engagement with Trump I infrastructure advisors—are embodied in his book Vision:
Our Strategic Infrastructure Roadmap Forward Since Norman’s untimely passing in December of 2021, his companies,
friends and colleagues have been working together to perfect the Vision and carry it forward. We welcome the
opportunity to pick up in Trump II where “Blueprint” left off at the end of Trump I.
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