Post

1/ Here's my take on what's happening with DOGE. I've got fed experience through contracting with Health & Human Safety, Head Start, The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and DOD. I get brought in when people need to get shit done. Other people here have way more experience than me.

2/ (Meanwhile, check out the reporting at wired.com and 404media.co, it's good and you can tell they've got good sources.) It's really bad! Here's the thing about tech in general, and tech in gov specifically. It's always about people, not the technology.

4/ When COVID hit, a whole bunch of government technology became critical and politically sensitive. Just the same way the launch of the Affordable Care Act website was botched. In both cases, "we" *knew* what to do, how to figure it out, and and how to do it.

5/ Unemployment Insurance (UI) systems needed to be modernized for lots of reasons before COVID hit. But the lesson of COVID-19 is that modernizing, upgrading, and making government services simpler, clearer, faster *could have happened at any time* if it was deemed important enough.

6/ I give you all this setup because like I said, the most important thing to realize is that the combination of Musk and the President and the administration's core have made what they want to achieve *very, very, very important*.