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.

3/ *The most important thing* to realize here is that technology is just a tool and it's used at the direction of people to accomplish their goals. The second most important thing is that *things change when they are deemed important enough*. COVID and unemployment insurance is a good example.

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.

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*.

7/ What's happening is the combination of: i) People at the highest level of leadership with clear priorities ii) People who _don't care about the consequences_ iii) A bureaucratic model of deference And I think at the lowest level, some of the actual tech.

8/ In normal times, it is very very very hard to make a change to government technology. This is mainly because there are rules to stop you and people who will enforce those rules. It is much less so because of the underlying technology.