Editor's note: This article was originally published in the Chattanooga Times Free Press and is reposted here with permission from the author.
I have spent most of the last three decades working to make government smarter, more honest and more efficient.
In the 1990s, I helped block more than $270 million in wasteful emergency contracts in New York and led the investigation of the "school lease fleece" where questionable landlords were paid hundreds of millions of dollars through overpriced leases under a program corrupted by conflicts of interest.
In the 2000s, when then-Mayor Bob Corker brought me to Chattanooga to lead a citywide Office of Performance Review, we held departments accountable for results and reduced city spending.
Then, for a dozen years, I worked with local government leaders across the nation to balance budgets by making government more efficient. And, here in Hamilton County, I worked with other business leaders to identify proposals to improve efficiency in the Hamilton County school system.
In just a month, Elon Musk has given the work that I have devoted my professional life to a bad name.
That's because the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)'s work appears to have nothing to do with improving government efficiency. Worse, now state governors and local leaders—including County Mayor Weston Wamp—are saying that they want to emulate DOGE's efforts.
I agree with most Americans that the federal government can be more efficient. A January 2025 poll by AP-NORC found that 65% of respondents said that inefficiency in the federal government is a major problem.
But DOGE's tactics violate most best practices that I have used to successfully cut waste and increase government efficiency:
Use a scalpel, not an axe: DOGE is indiscriminately terminating employees without regard as to whether it is cutting fat or bone. The "across-the-board" cut is a tried-and-true government trick, and it almost never works. That's because many government workers perform necessary work and when their positions are cut without regard to their duties, those vital services are either eliminated or are performed far more slowly and less efficiently.
When cuts are made indiscriminately, you wind up making big mistakes. With its "fire, aim, ready" approach, that's exactly what happened when the Trump administration terminated hundreds of National Nuclear Security Administration employees, the agency charged with ensuring that "the United States maintains a safe, secure, and reliable nuclear stockpile."
Beware of unexpected consequences: The DOGE mindset of "disruption" in the name of efficiency is fine, until and unless lives are at stake.
The Flint water crisis is a good example of what happens when no one thinks of the consequences of cost-cutting. A state-appointed emergency manager for the city switched the city's water supply for a projected savings of $5 million over two years. The result was contaminated water that contributed to a doubling—and, in some cases, tripling—of the incidence of elevated blood lead levels in the city's children.
Adding capacity can increase efficiency: DOGE's approach ignores the fact that, in some cases, spending more and adding positions can increase efficiency.
In one county government that I worked with, more than 20 individual department heads reported independently to five elected officials. It was like an orchestra without a conductor, and efficiency demanded the appointment of a chief operating officer.
Sometimes capital investment—in technology or new facilities—can reduce operating costs. A county government with a jail dating back to the 1800s was paying through the nose for staffing and overtime costs, when construction of a new facility would pay for itself in a few years.
What's the real DOGE agenda?
DOGE is demanding staff cuts at many departments that have been investigating, contracting with, or regulating businesses owned by Musk. In considering DOGE's efforts to access highly confidential IRS data about taxpayers, it is worth recalling ProPublica's report from less than a year ago that the president was subject to an IRS audit with more than $100 million at stake.
DOGE's ability to access confidential data threatens all our rights to privacy. But DOGE's ability to threaten the existence of government agencies and the jobs of people who work there also give the president and Musk enormous leverage to protect their personal financial interests.
If DOGE and the administration were really interested in government efficiency, their first step would have been to work with the federal inspectors general charged with rooting out fraud, waste and abuse in the federal government. Collectively, the IGs identified more than $90 billion in potential savings in one year alone. Instead, in an unprecedented move, President Trump fired 17 of those IGs at the end of his first week in office.
In the end, DOGE's biggest problem may be that it is missing one more "E." Efficiency without effectiveness does nothing to ensure quality schools, access to health care, safer streets or more secure borders, and any of the other things that we want the federal government to do well.