Sean Speer: Pierre Poilievre should follow Elon Musk’s lead and bring his own Department of Government Efficiency to Ottawa 

While I get the attraction of the Citizen Musk approach, the lack of rigour in assessing its practicality in both the US and Canadian contexts is disappointing. The most effective exercise I have seen was the Chretien-Martin program review in the 1990s that addressed some structural issues and had a major impact, more so arguably than the Harper government exercise.

The risk of course of the Citizen Musk approach is that his cuts will be so ideologically driven and so drastic that worthwhile programs and capacity will be cut, with significant impact on the more vulnerable and core expertise (e.g., CDC, FDA and other necessary regulatory bodies).

The other question is what has Canada learned in the IT space, having a number of high level private sector interchanges (e.g., Alex Benay: the public service’s disruptor-in-chief). To what extent have they succeeded, and how effective were they in removing barriers etc. Some case studies here would be helpful in terms of what worked, what didn’t, and why:

…The D.O.G.E. exercise may therefore represent something of an inspiration. Its mandate to go beyond immediate-term savings and ask more structural questions about the operations and role of government is precisely the type of exercise that Ottawa needs. It should be understood as an effort to get out of counterproductive activities and boost federal state capacity where necessary. The Trudeau government has been a renewed education of the old conservative adage: limited government is better government.

As for who ought to lead such an exercise, my former colleague Rachel Curran has rightly argued that you probably don’t want to fully outsource it. Information asymmetries and the need for bureaucratic and political buy-in require that ministers and their departments be actively involved.

But there is something to the idea that entrepreneurs and technologists can bring a different perspective to the ones represented within the government or the management firms that are typically tapped to advise it. They bring a creativity and energy that’s often undersupplied in government. They’re unconstrained by bureaucratic assumptions and thinking. And they tend to have better track records of successfully overseeing structural reform.

Put simply: Outsiders like Musk and Ramaswamy may come with risks but they may also be more likely to overcome the public choice barriers (including confirmation bias and sunk-cost fallacy) to serious public administration reform.

Who then should lead the Canadian version of D.O.G.E.? How about Shopify’s co-founder and CEO Tobi Lutke?

Not only is he arguably the country’s most successful technologist and is increasingly commenting on Canadian public policy, including its state capacity and poor productivity performance, but Lutke’s background and experience make him an ideal candidate to deliver on a D.O.G.E.-like mandate in time for the 160th birthday of Canadian Confederation.

Source: Sean Speer: Pierre Poilievre should follow Elon Musk’s lead and bring his own Department of Government Efficiency to Ottawa