Transformation > Effectiveness > Efficiency
We need DOGT, not DOGE
Whither Efficiency?
What started as a meme and grew into an ironic cryptocurrency has now morphed into a Rorschach test of political ideology. The contours of the planned “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) executive branch commission are still emerging, but one of its co-leads, Vivek Ramaswamy, has made evident his desire to slash and burn government—“the most important part of DOGE is shaving down […] the bureaucracy.”
From Ramaswamy’s vantage, “efficiency” is a means to reducing overall government size and purview. He and other small-government zealots aim to force the need for efficiency by cutting government mandates or hamstringing agencies. But efficiency is the lowest bar for organizations—it’s about managing scarcity, stretching limited resources, and avoiding collapse. The “Do More With Less” mantra is useful in emergencies, but it’s ill-suited for the never-ending endeavor of governance. Long-term, efficiency means doing less, as the UK’s continued stasis post 2008 financial crisis demonstrates.
The other DOGE co-lead is, of course, Elon Musk. Musk’s takeover of Twitter has been adopted as a strategic blueprint for a MAGA-led federal government restructuring—highlighting an 80% reduction in staff, diminished moderation capabilities (ahem, “free speech”), and the platform’s demise as a public forum.
Government Needs Effectiveness, Not Efficiency
This narrative is not one Musk would fully endorse. Instead, he emphasizes (per his biography) how his select team of hardcore devotees became more effective, shipping and iterating on products and features faster than ever before: long-form tweets, Community Notes, and state-of-the-art AI tools.
The popular conception of government could do with a heavy dose of effectiveness, for both sides of the political aisle. Basic interactions with government can border on infuriating—home renovation permits taking months to get approved, official websites only online during working hours, and fenced-off public construction sites languishing for years. These pervasive delays erode trust and reinforce a sense of institutionalized incompetence.
Effectiveness is the cure for lost faith in the state. Proving capability, follow-through, and competence by delivering results as promised—on time, at scale, and without excuses—enables legitimacy. As one former and future presidential candidate puts it: to rebuild trust in institutions, effectiveness is not optional; it’s foundational.
Nowhere is this dynamic more evident than in infrastructure, which so tangibly affects daily life and visibly displays the consequences of dysfunction. The Transit Costs Project out of NYU Marron offers a striking thought experiment: if New York City’s MTA could bring subway construction costs merely in line with international best practices, the city could build ten times the mileage for the same budget. Imagine an MTA so effective that the Second Avenue Subway became not a singular century-long endeavor but only the first segment in a pipeline of projects expanding across the city. Be still my heart!
This cost-effectiveness, while essential, represents only one part of a broader virtuous cycle that emerges when government delivers results. Agencies demonstrating sustained improvements—whether through expanded transit networks or increasingly streamlined digital services like e-Estonia—build public expectations of what’s feasible. This catalyzes further investment in state capacity, which in turn enables even more ambitious undertakings. The cycle extends beyond individual jurisdictions: other governments then seek out the expertise of elite agencies and teams, spreading effective practices more broadly.
The call to action for delivering effective government services has deep roots in historic political movements. From the Progressive Era and Sewer Socialists, Bloomberg-style technocrats and the nascent Abundance movement, the drive to make government work better has inspired reforms for over a century. Yet effectiveness alone struggles to “stir men’s blood” as surely as reformers might hope. Without some spark of audacity to sustain it within a larger transformative vision, the work of reform fades—only to be replaced by the next movement.
Reclaiming Musk the Visionary
It is crushingly bleak that Elon Musk—literally the inspiration for Iron Man’s modern-day alter ego, Tony Stark—is being cast in the role of Jack Welch or Mitt Romney. Musk, of all people, knows that efficiency is not a rallying cry!
Tesla didn’t make a more efficient hybrid; it created EV inevitability, building electric vehicles more beautiful and powerful than their gas-powered alternatives. SpaceX didn’t make a new Shuttle; it redefined rocketry, building the largest rocket ever, pinpoint landing its boosters on autonomous barges, or catching them midair. SpaceX’s progress toward the planets beyond forces us to extend our conceptual model of humanity.
Common to both the Tesla and SpaceX narratives, and most of his other endeavors, Musk overrode untold numbers of “experts,” short-sellers, and even his own employees whose expertise assured them his aggressive targets were impossible.
This is a man crafting his own reality with raw, world-changing ambition. This is the man inspiring people to promise to quit their jobs and work without pay for a government agency that doesn’t yet exist! How can Musk’s style of declaring and delivering futures translate to public institutions designed—or accustomed—to avoiding risk?
The Components of Government Transformation
Space exploration captivates on multiple reinforcing levels. The destination—the moon, Mars, the cosmos—is the stuff of dreams. The rockets are the awe-inspiring means, the pinnacle of explosive human ingenuity. The propulsive, driving force is focused, unrelenting leaders: individuals commanding our attention. These elements work together to create an extraordinary feedback loop of ambition and belief that we might loftily call Transformation.
Transformation in governance will require a similar alignment of destination, means, and drive. Without a clear and compelling destination, efforts feel aimless and are likely to be uprooted over time. Without innovative means, outcomes drift toward the same old results. Without inspiring leadership driving teams, ambitious visions get cut down, compromised by bureaucracy and the safety of incrementalism. To create awe-inspiring, transformative government, these three elements must work in concert.
Declaring a destination or future vision can be achieved through Missions—articulated as bold, society-wide goals that demand our collective imagination and action. Like the original Moonshot, these missions aren’t just policy goals; they are declarations of futures so audacious they demand transformation, rethinking every step of the way. Missions should inspire. Estonia declared internet access a human right. Japan promised to connect its metropolises with a train far faster than any in the world. I would pledge: all travel in the country to be autonomous and electric within a decade, where energy is so cheaply and abundantly produced it becomes an afterthought, like air. And the air, in addition to being pollution-free, is pandemic-proof. Missions remind people of government’s essential role as a force for progress and help organize and shape society to meet those challenges.
The means of marshalling public and private sector resources to meet those missions involves rethinking the mechanisms, tools, and structures of governance itself. Just as new rocketry is revolutionizing space exploration, new governance models are necessary to make bold missions achievable. The green-shoot concepts are out there: “Minimum Viable Bureaucracies,” DAOs enabling mission-limited government structures, ultra-participatory democracies, or charter cities. This is an opportunity to unleash the blockchain bros! But adherence (and adherents) to any single “transformative” means should be viewed skeptically. Instead, each of these concepts should be piloted; then—and here the tech sector’s innovation culture can be instructive—rigorously tested, refined through iteration, and scaled and spread based on their success.
The driving force lies in leaders who are simultaneously visionaries and pragmatists. They articulate bold missions, refuse to accept constraints, and guide their organizations around obstacles with unrelenting determination—cajoling, bridging divides, and smoothing over gaps to transform lofty ideas into concrete progress. Just as Musk commands attention and rallies action, truly transformational leaders in government inspire collective ambition, ensuring that missions and means align to drive forward progress—and deliver results that reawaken our sense of possibility.
The Formula for Muskian Transformation
Too many dismiss Musk as an oligarch man-child living out teenage fantasies, a thin-skinned oligarch inflating his ego through social media acquisitions, a chronic over-promiser with more flameouts than successes (see solar roof tiles, cheap tunnels, autonomous driving), or a mass polluter, negating any EV carbon savings with rocket launches.
But as Tom Friedman (of all people!) notes, for much of the world, Musk still inspires as the über-engineer—applying his technical prowess and rallying a devoted workforce to realize audacious dreams of exploration, electrification, and shaping humanity’s future. Musk’s own ability to pause and reassess either the ultimate ends of his work or how reactionary Republicans and fascists are appropriating his story may be too far gone, as he instead continues bending international politics to his will and outcompeting rival tech titans angling for Lady Trieu status.
For all these contradictions, there’s an alchemical method to Musk’s madness—a distinct Muskian transformation fusing relentless delivery with a sense of wonder. Recognizing that efficiency is at best a distraction, while effectiveness struggles to sustain, Musk’s example frames a deeper challenge: How can government persistently fulfill its mandates in an undeniable—even delightful—fashion while leading and inspiring citizens and institutions to aim higher? True transformation in government will require audacious public missions sufficient to captivate our collective imagination, agile structures to enable them at scale, and daring leaders willing to override the safe and familiar. That is a vision of government worth pursuing.