State-level DOGE work gathers speed
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By
Chris Teale
Oklahoma’s new government efficiency unit issued a report on what it has found to cut, while Iowa’s first-in-the-nation effort held its inaugural meeting. But experts say efficiency isn’t just about cutting spending.
State efforts to establish their own Departments of Government Efficiency modeled after the federal DOGE are beginning to make more significant strides to slash spending, workers and real estate.
Oklahoma’s DOGE issued a report early this month that said it had identified over $157 million in federal health grants that are “duplicative, underutilized, or exceed actual need.” It also outlined several strategies to reduce the state’s government workforce from 31,664, and emphasized the work underway in reducing waste and fraud in the state’s procurement process.
DOGE-OK, as the task force is known, also reviewed property the state owns and leases to find underutilized and vacant spaces. It will next analyze whether the state owning or renting real estate is more cost effective, explore shared facilities for some agencies, consolidate some properties and enhance the process for selling or leasing surplus real estate.
"Oklahomans work hard for their money — DOGE-OK is making sure the government does the same,” Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, who launched the effort, said in a statement. “We all want Oklahoma to lead with common sense and make responsible choices that prioritize citizens over bureaucracy.
Meanwhile, Iowa’s first-in-the-nation DOGE task force held its first meeting early this month as part of the state’s efforts to find further efficiencies in its government. “This task force is yet another opportunity to apply Iowa's proven formula of asking tough questions and making bold, transformative changes,” Gov. Kim Reynolds said in a statement.
Those state-level efforts come as the federal version continues to find what it describes as examples of waste, fraud and abuse, and cancels various contracts that it argues are unnecessary or duplicative, although its true impact is up for debate.
Outside groups have argued that governments at all levels cannot simply cut their way to efficiency or outsource that work to the private sector. Instead, efficiency represents work that is not necessarily headline-grabbing, as argued in a recent issue brief from the nonprofit research organization In the Public Interest, which said contracting can be a way of finding efficiency if done properly.
“‘Efficiency,’ reduced to cost savings alone without consideration of effectiveness, doesn’t lead to ‘more and better’ service — whether within public agencies or outsourced private contractors,” the brief says.
ITPI also recommended that governments understand the efficiency that contractors promise and make sure to hold them accountable for their performance. And efficiency can mean many things. The group notes that a previous Illinois requirement that school districts choose the lowest bid from cafeteria service providers led to contractors competing solely on cost and not on the quality of their products.
State lawmakers removed that requirement with legislation in June 2022 and so allowed school districts to choose contractors not based purely on cost, but also on the quality of their food.
“In public, when we're talking about public programs that are just to serve people, the goal of efficiency being saving money may be at odds with the public goals and purposes of the program,” Shahrzad Habibi, ITPI’s research and policy director, said in a recent interview. “If we're talking about child welfare services, and we're taking money out of the program, and we're calling that efficiency, it may save money, it may look good on the budget, but what are we losing? And is that really in line with the goals and mission of the program?”
ITPI also said that governments must make sure that any contractors with a poor track record of delivering on projects are barred from seeking future work. San Antonio, for example, changed its procurement process to allow procurement staff to refuse bids from contractors that did not meet expectations, missed deadlines or owed the city money.
“If you want to do something, efficiency needs to be partnered with effectiveness,” said Donald Cohen, ITPI’s executive director. “If you are doing both because you have a program, there's a purpose, it could cost more, and that's okay, because you've got to look at your outcomes. You’ve got to look at the whole set of things. You’ve got to look at both sides of the equation.”
Government officials tasked with making their agencies work better have similar feelings about efficiency. Many are leaning harder on technology, especially artificial intelligence, to more quickly approve residents’ applications for benefits or licenses. Efficiency can be difficult to measure, but it is not just about speed, said Dan Hereth, Wisconsin’s Secretary of Safety and Professional Services.
“Faster for faster’s sake isn't always better, and I'm not even talking about quality,” he said in a previous interview. “If I'm a business and I can do something 25% faster, but it costs me 50% more, that doesn't necessarily generate a return. In government, I think there is a big push because faster is always viewed as efficient.”
Indeed, Cohen said the DOGE push in the federal government and states is not about efficiency, but about something else.
“This is politics, and power politics,” he said. “This has absolutely nothing to do with efficiency. You don't fire people in the public, in the national parks, and think you're going to get things more efficient. They want to downsize the government; slash and burn.”