When I attended the University of Houston there were certain core classes that everyone had to take regardless of what they had chosen as a major. One of the required studies was Political Science, a tough course that delved deeply into the inner workings of our federal, state and local governments. To say it was enlightening would be an understatement. 

The deep dive into the origins and evolution of our government was not just exciting, but so informative that I found myself thinking it should be a requirement for every single American citizen. I realized that my studies helped me to understand what kind of legislators and leaders our nation needs. I began to do extensive research into candidates for office with an eye to looking beyond their platitudes and political propaganda and instead attempted to choose those who seemed the most capable of guiding our democratic republic with an eye for representing all of us, not single issues. 

A word that still sticks in my mind from the six hours of coursework in Political Science is “incrementalism.” It was a new concept to me and at the age of eighteen I had to be convinced that it was wise to slowly make changes to our laws and ways of operating rather that taking an axe to whatever seemed to need an overhaul. I soon learned that the concept of incrementalism was important in assuring that politicians would not have the power to be constantly redesigning our government according to their personal whims. It was actually a bulwark against authoritarians and dictators. The idea was a brilliant check and balance feature created by our founders who had experienced the whims of kings that kept life unbalanced and chaotic. They purposely wanted the process of change to be a bit sluggish so that no one person would ever be able to break our Constitution apart. 

Then along came Donald Trump with his assurance from the Supreme Court that seemed to find that he could not be held accountable for wrongdoings done in the name of leading our nation as president. The immunity ruling gave him the green light that he needed to upend the many agencies that he believed were infected by “woke” thinking and disloyal employees wasting our nation’s treasures. With the help of Elon Musk and the magical Department of Government Efficiency a new mantra has pushed aside the belief in the good of incrementalism. Instead the plan is to “move fast and break things,” the motto of Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of META. The idea is to disrupt the normal administration of the government by changing it as quickly as possible without any real merit for the decisions being made. 

The methodology catches the public off guard so that the changes are complete before anyone has sufficient time to analyze what has happened. It does not take into account unintended consequences or safeguards against potential harms. Acting fast is revolutionary. The aspects that don’t quite work well can always be fixed later according to the theory. The important thing is to take a torch to the old ways to make room for the new.

Sadly there is a great deal of difference between introducing new technologies and taking down human systems. For example redesigning schools should be done with care because simply throwing everything out all at once is likely to hurt people in multiple ways. The attempts to improve should be well thought out and must include input from all of the stakeholders. 

I once landed a position in a school that was low performing on the state tests. Rather than taking an axe to what we were already doing a wise group of leaders took a much more humane and elegant approach to improving our school. They sat us down with statistics showing us exactly where each of our students were falling behind. With that data analysis we were able to change how we taught specific concepts. The district provided us with intensive training and gave us time away from the classroom to work with experts to redesign the sequencing of how and when we taught the skills and knowledge for each of our subject areas. Then they gave us the time to find what worked and what still had glitches. By the end of two years our test scores were on the rise and by the end of three years we had become exemplars of how to educate underserved students. People came from all over the state to confer with us and we in turn visited schools who had problems similar to the ones that had once seemed to define us. 

The point I am making is that randomly firing people or shutting down entire agencies the way DOGE is doing is haphazard and does not address the actual problems that may exist. It is not just an economic problem. Simply saving money will not result in better performance. What will help is to send experts to retrain the employees using actual data that points to problem areas. Young lions with computing power do not even know what they are breaking or why they should do so. It will not result in a more efficient government. 

I think that every American can agree that there is some waste in government and that some agencies are not as efficient as they should be. We can find the problems but they can’t be solved in a matter of days. Right now the morale among government workers is so low that it is doubtful that good results with come. Instead it is wiser to take a deep breath, admit that Rome was not built in a day, and take a strategic and analytical approach to improvement. Any changes that have to come so quickly that nobody has time to realize what is happening are certain to be a mess. Slow down. Change incrementally. Find the best of each agency and keep that while letting go of the worst habits that have impeded success. That has always been the best way of doing things and it actually works. 

DOGE is the epitome of inefficiency. The people destroying agencies have no idea what they are doing. Get rid of this approach and try something like the example of improving the school where I worked. It may take more time but it’s results will be exactly what is needed.