Last week Trump’s new right hand man billionaire Elon Musk wrote to as many as three million Federal employees asking them to reply within 48 hours listing five things they did on the job in the previous week. It was part of an effort to dramatically scale down the size of the governmental staff. Having dispatched his email it was suggested, by Musk on X, that for those who didn’t reply, their lack of response would be taken as a resignation.
Musk, described by Caitlin Moran in The Times (London) as the man with the most important made-up job in the world, is Head of the Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE. Ironically DOGE is also the term for ‘the highest official of the republic of Venice for more than 1000 years’ according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. The last Doge abdicated when Napolean took over. Should Musk be keeping a beady eye on Macron?
According to American political digital newspaper Politico, over one million of the people who received Musk’s message responded within his timeframe. This begs the question, who on earth is going to read all those replies? Presumably one of those one million as the others will now be out of work? Simple maths tells us that one employee, dealing with the influx at a rate of one minute per reply, would need between eight and ten years to get through them all. I’m really not convinced about the efficiency of Musk’s sweeping strategy.
Now, many Federal employees will be characters such as the likeable Ron Swanson (Nic Offerman) in NBC Universal’s hit series Parks and Recreation. His work ethic, defined by avoiding as much work as possible, is perhaps best summarised by his legendary comment, “I’d work all night if it meant nothing got done.”
However, ‘federal employees’ also include politicians, judges and roles surely subject to US state and trade secrets acts such as the maintenance of national security and the covert investigation of federal crimes: think vigilant FBI agent Peter Sutherland (Gabriel Basso) in The Night Agent (Netflix 2023) who is working to uncover a deadly conspiracy by a traitor at the highest level of the United States government. Is it really appropriate for people like this to be popping a weekly overview in an email?
What might their ‘five activities for the week’ look like? High speed car chase. Hacked mainframe of suspicious biopharma company. Busted organised crime ring. Engaged in shoot-out with drug barons. Fixed printer.” And who is going to fact-check any of these claims?
Perhaps they’ll need the wisdom and experience of the staff in the “Office for the Simplification & Reduction of Bureaucracy” as advertised in the Ministry of Gozo offices in Victoria, on a small seemingly-unpopulated office piled high with cardboard boxes. I’m never sure if this means it is the height of efficiency, inefficiency or wry humour. Perhaps the staff wrapped up quickly and went home early. Or maybe it’s a nerve centre for the phantom government jobs rumoured to be handed out by ministers who don’t take too much notice whether you actually turn up for work and the long-term Gozo-office consultants who haven’t yet worked out where the ferry port is.
Whether or not this is true, it’s interesting that in many workplaces, there’s one person – joking Giuseppe, moaning Marthese or lazy Elisa – whose absence would make little difference even though they show up religiously. Or noone notices when one particular employee spends three weeks on a yacht over Easter. Maybe the office even functions a little better without them. Yet whilst some people’s contribution is arguably less than vital to an organisation’s smooth operations, the counter argument is that jobs for all is a laudable aim for any nation.
Either way, perhaps we should all compile a mental checklist of what we’ve done in the week just gone, either to give ourselves a big pat on the back and an extra guilt-free glass of wine over the weekend or to realise our efforts aren’t changing the world any time soon. And if you’re in the latter boat, perhaps Elon Musk is right about it being time for a rethink, even if his method on a macro-scale seems like madness.