By Gavin St Pier
It has only been six weeks since Elon Musk entered the US government. His trademark baseball cap romping around the Oval Office and bulldozing through the rest of government as the head of the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has become a familiar sight.
Anyone who has had any experience in or with government, whether as an elected or unelected official or as a service user will, no doubt, have some tale to tell of frustration in dealing with officialdom. At times – perhaps all too often – it can be frustrating interacting with a Goliath that feels unresponsive at worst, or impossibly slow at best.
With the benefit of those experiences, many may be silently wishing Musk well in his endeavours, even if they baulk at his bombastic statements and aggressive execution.
Given there are many businesses – including, of course, many of Musk’s own business interests in Tesla, Starlink, X and SpaceX – that are bigger than many governments, an obvious question is, ‘why is government, it seems, so much less efficient than business?’
When cash is king and the fear of bankruptcy is real, it cannot be denied that the profit motive behind most business models is a powerful driver of organisational efficiency. The fact that most governments cannot go bust most of the time, may make them fatter and happier than perhaps they should be. But the fact is, government is required to provide services, such as defence, law and order or social services, with no profit driver, that nobody else will provide if government does not.
Governments also operate under a 24/7 floodlight of public scrutiny, 365 days a year, which no business experiences, even the largest publicly quoted company. This comes not only in the form of a 24-hour rolling news media that is constantly hungry for stories and clickbait but also, more recently, under the brutal and raw stream of public commentary on social media platforms. That induces a sense within government of being under constant assault, which often makes the responses reactive and defensive. The product of that is caution and risk aversion. While it is often said that governments need to be more like business and less afraid to take risk, the lived experience of those associated with government is somewhat different. The idea that governments can make a quick decision, planning like a risk-taking business to simply change it if it proves to be the wrong one, is for the birds. As guardians of the public purse, everyone associated with any decision knows that if it is the wrong one, accountability will be sought with the expectation that heads ought to roll.
Given, more often than not, it is the politicians as the decision-makers, rather than officials as the advisers, whose heads will roll, they too inevitably defer to a more ponderous decision-making process in the hope of getting to the perfect – or at least the right – decision.
Add to this the reality that those who self-select to dedicate their careers as public service advisers, will by definition not be entrepreneurial risk takers and you have all the elements in place for safe, small ‘c’ conservative institutions that vastly prefer taking decisions slowly to taking decisions quickly. This is, of course, the absolute antithesis of a personality type like Musk or, indeed, his nominal boss, President Trump.
Public services are also the most unionised part of the workforce. Trade unions, doing what they are there to do in order to protect the interests of their members, produce an environment that is resistant to reform. The unions, like any organisation, can become self-serving as their own staff’s jobs are dependent on the union remaining relevant to their membership.
Politicians everywhere, faced with this environment, do so with frustration. Tony Blair attempted, with some success, to introduce innovation and delivery units in an effort to speed up reform and outcomes. Nearly 30 years later, Guernsey’s government resolved in its Budget last year to follow a similar path although, with little irony, nothing tangible has yet come from the initiative. All Blair’s successors have tried (and failed) reforming the machinery of the civil service and the Cabinet Office at the heart of government, in an attempt to improve efficiency and effectiveness. Now it’s Starmer’s turn to have a go.
The squeeze on governments that are simultaneously coming from ageing populations, a decade of slow growth and low productivity, the financial pressure from a bout of high inflation and now, the requirement to fund vastly increased defence budgets, will conspire to drive a fresh demand for improved government efficiency and effectiveness.
Governments can often surprise their sceptical publics by their light-footed, fast, and highly responsive actions in a crisis, such as Covid, or a natural disaster. But most recognise that to remain affordable and to ensure their communities can compete in the modern era, the pace at which government normally works to consider, reach, and implement decisions needs to significantly increase. The enabler for that change in pace cannot always be an unaffordable demand for more resources. Certainly, there is room for improvement. It is surprising that in an age of instant communication, government continues to communicate within itself largely by formal letter. And that communication is rarely short. Executive summaries will run to several pages. Briefing documents will run to tens of pages. And board packs will run to hundreds of pages. The tens of thousands of collective hours in their preparation can only be estimated as they are never captured.
At the heart of Musk’s firestorm, there is a kernel of truth that change is needed. As ever in Trump’s world, the methodology is highly disruptive but the bow wave of DOGE’s raging through the US federal administration, will undoubtedly ripple across the Pond to fuel a political narrative and rhetoric for similar action. “If they can do it, why can’t we?” will be the clarion call. Our own politicians and governments will be searching for how to answer that question.
Gavin St Pier is a Guernsey politician. He previously served as the President of the island’s Policy and Resources Committee.
