Editor's note: This story is posted with permission from the anonymous federal employee who shared it with us. Some edits were made for length and clarity.
As a federal civil servant who has attended graduate school, I recall a term that my professor mentioned in one of our many lectures, routinization. U.S. Citizens expect routinization, which means that they expect the mail to be delivered on time, they expect clean water, they expect the weather to be provided by scientists at National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) to their various weather apps, they expect the HHS to follow diseases as they evolve throughout the world and to come up with vaccines to protect them, they expect planes to fly and depart with little to no mishaps, they expect their social security and veterans disability checks to hit their bank accounts, they expect the poor and underserved, mentally disabled, physically disabled population to be provided with services since they cannot fend for themselves, etc. But what has hurt many countries and has led to insurgencies and civil war is the party in power lacking understanding why routinization is necessary, and now it is apparent the U.S. is joining those countries.
Without routinization in the U.S. government, there will be a vacuum that will either result in less services or those services being contracted out to a private entity at a much higher cost than keeping it run by the federal government. What we are seeing now is a lack of understanding of routinization in government. When routinization fails, they will hire contractors to fill that gap at higher costs than before the federal employee cuts.
If the U.S. government and this administration had come to us, the professionals who know and understand our organizations, they could find efficiencies and root out fraud, waste, and abuse as we always have done. If they have innovative ideas then we would listen, provide constructive criticism, and brainstorm how it might work or be modified to work better. With fewer staff over the years, we’re always looking for ways to do more with less. As federal workers, we just want to support the U.S. citizen with better services, we are all for working with other people from this administration to do it. After all, most of us federal workers are usually excited on Sunday to get to work and make a difference on Monday when our jobs are not threatened.
But that is not what happened, Musk and DOGE workers were hired in the darkness outside of Congressional requirements, given or not given security clearances (no one can confirm or deny this currently). They were then let loose on each agency, without understanding of the agencies, without any oversight, and given full authorities expected of a cabinet-level appointee without the appointment process involving the U.S. Senate to do what they please.
The current way of doing business that the Trump administration and Musk have implemented is going to disrupt routinization. Without routinization, there will be protests and unhappy people on all sides of the political spectrum. We have already seen evidence of that happening in state houses and town halls all around the country. There will be a reckoning for the party in power if they don't learn to work with the federal workforce for efficiencies.
Routinization is the basic expectation of all U.S. citizens and with DOGE we will soon no longer have it unless DOGE is restrained, put under oversight, and works with the federal government workers as an ally and not an adversary.