Former Civil Servants Speak: How to Achieve Real Government Reform in a Post-DOGE World  

We identified the following root causes for this phenomenon:

• The pre-2025 recruitment and selection process for members of the Senior Executive Service (SES) was overly reliant on candidates’ essays demonstrating the Executive Core Qualifications (ECQs) – essentially, a self-assessment process that has spurred an army of consultants and even an Office of Personnel Management class to assist candidates in writing – and on formal candidate development programs run by individual agencies, which tend to select civil servants who have “paid their dues” over a long tenure and avoided rocking the boat too much. We do want to acknowledge that the process has very recently changed, and it is too soon to determine the effect of the quality of SES hires. This new process replaces the ECQ essays with a 2-page resume that must demonstrate the five new ECQs which include “driving efficiency” (which we welcome) and “Commitment to the Rule of Law and the Principles of the American Founding” (which we are concerned could be an attempt to politicize the SES). It also prioritizes “validated executive assessments such as work simulations, reasoning assessments, accomplishment records, and/or situational judgment tests” and requires the majority of selection panel members to be political appointees.
• Some SES become entrenched in their positions and too powerful in internal organizational politics to challenge, even when that official is making decisions that – in the opinion of his or her subordinates or peers – are detrimental to the agency mission or cost-effectiveness.
• In some agencies the only requirement for becoming the leader of a program area is general management expertise. It is not necessary for the Chief Technology Officer to have written a line of code. It is not necessary for a Chief Customer Experience Officer to have worked on the front lines with customers. The list goes on. If leaders don’t know how to do the frontline-level work, they naturally defer down the chain for decision-making and effectively abdicate the responsibility of their roles.
• In other agencies, those employees with deep subject matter expertise but little track record of successfully managing projects and teams are elevated into the SES, with suboptimal results.
• SES performance plans are often filled with boilerplate compliance requirements and adherence to executive orders, not moving the needle on the types of meaningful metrics we describe above. For example, one workshop participant described how her 2024 performance plan held her accountable for the number of contracts to small and disadvantaged businesses, but not whether the contracts produced cost savings or whether the contracted-out projects were delivered on time and on budget. 
• An excessive number of political appointees can act as a drag on operational performance.  We have certainly worked with many talented and hard-working political appointees. However, we have worked with some whose primary qualifications seem to be that they were an excellent campaign fundraiser or successfully ran a private-sector business, which does not mean they are capable of effectively running a large and complex federal agency. In addition, the nature of an appointment with a political mandate requires most appointees to come into an agency with a specific agenda. As a result, many political appointees focus almost exclusively on enacting one of the administration’s policy priorities, to the detriment of turbocharging efficiency or performance. Few, if any, have the time, inclination, or institutional knowledge to effectively tackle the constraints we list in this report.

Technology Is Dramatically Misunderstood

For decades, the federal government has been funding projects aimed at technology “modernization.” This concept is inherently flawed. There is no such thing as a modernization effort, because as soon as the technology project to bring a given product or system up to a contemporary standard is complete, the goalpost shifts and the state of the industry evolves. Technology products are never “done,” and “modernized” is a claim that is false the moment it is uttered.

Technology is also not a standalone part of an agency’s work. Technology is the foundation on which all government services are built. The vast majority of agency interactions with the public are through digital products. The large-scale systems used to meet physical public needs (e.g. transportation infrastructure, emergency aid distribution, etc.) require robust technical and data platforms to function. Even the way the government communicates both within itself and to the public requires significant technical infrastructure. Therefore, the design, construction, management, ownership and evolution of technology systems cannot be left to a siloed group of “IT experts.” 

Government leaders no longer have the luxury of choosing not to engage with “technical details,” data dictionaries, product roadmaps, or other foundational artifacts of technical product management. These are the artifacts of a functional government in 2026.  

Technology Products are Built the Wrong Way

Government technology products are almost never intentionally designed. 

Long-term visions and roadmaps for both citizen-facing and internal products are exceedingly rare, because – largely due to the bottom line and budget issues described earlier in this document – technology has historically been “purchased” as if it were a commodity that one can buy and put in place and then ignore. The accumulation of commodity-style purchases has produced technical systems that are patchwork quilts of quick fixes and political priorities. These patchworks are often layered on top of brittle, basic frameworks quietly built by small groups of frontline engineers totally disconnected from the agency’s vision or mission, with no context for the goals of the product they are building or how it might need to scale.

Even in the largest federal agencies, like the Internal Revenue Service with more than 8,000 employees in IT positions, almost nothing is built by in-house teams. Instead, the government outsources its mission-critical tax administration systems to third parties with a vested interest in making the government dependent on them – and in making the system as complex and expensive as possible. We outsource core, mission-critical functions like taxpayer record-keeping and authentication of end users by funding contractor-defined projects that are comprised of arbitrary feature lists developed years in advance. We intentionally remove any opportunities to build iteratively and responsively, because vendors are required to deliver the specific features defined in their contract regardless of changes in customer expectations, user research results that suggest adjustments, or sea changes in the state of the industry.

Occasionally, the government has built game-changing, high-quality technical products using normal private sector methodologies and federal staff. For example, one of our workshop participants has successfully launched three customer-facing IT systems on time and on budget – sometimes in as little as four months – by working with procurement staff to leverage existing blanket purchase agreements (BPAs) with pre-vetted contractors on a standard off-the-shelf platform (Salesforce), leading program staff in developing very detailed business requirements, developing her own test scripts and detailed in-house software testing of real data inputs (rather than outsourcing this to the vendor), and working with the vendor to implement a true agile process with a new release every three weeks. This flexible, iterative approach allowed her tiny team to be the first federal program to add a feature to allow for electronic submission and processing of Build America, Buy America waivers.

Other government tech success stories – such as the relaunch of healthcare.gov after its initial disastrous launch – have mostly been achieved by standalone government technology organizations⁹ that operate as consultancies to other government agencies. These groups have been able to hire qualified technologists and practice modern technology development processes because they are insulated from most of the bureaucratic red tape that prevents agencies from building and operating in-house technology teams. This model has been necessary in the past, when federal IT bureaucracy seemed untouchable – but it was never scalable. Now that there is a renewed focus on improving the quality of engineering in government technology, there is an opportunity to apply the learnings from previous (and near future¹⁰) government digital consultancies to the development of dedicated technical teams in every federal agency.

Solution: Build a Culture That Focuses as Much or More on Delivery Than Compliance

The toxic circumstances that allow the current federal government culture to fester can largely be resolved by addressing the first three root causes of overall government dysfunction described in the preceding pages. But an enormous amount of change management will also be required to realize the opportunity for a healthy, delivery-oriented government culture that emerges. 

Managing the change will require us to touch every aspect of hiring, developing, managing, and firing federal employees. It may also require a dramatic re-imagining of agency organizational structures, and even further changes to the statutory and regulatory landscape.

Empower Managers to Hire the Right People

One workshop was not sufficient to delve into all the intricacies of federal hiring policies, but it pointed the way to possible solutions that we hope to refine in future discussions:

• Make HR professionals better at HR. Re-think the way the federal government hires and develops federal HR staff, bringing in top talent from the private and nonprofit sector as needed, and ensuring HR staff are just as focused on human capital excellence as on compliance and risk avoidance. Revise the hiring, performance management, training, and promotion policies and incentives of HR staff so that these staff are more innovative, less risk-averse, and more customer-centric as they assist managers in the hiring process. Consider making it mandatory for HR professionals to pass an exam demonstrating understanding of all the flexibilities currently offered and how to best leverage these in different hiring scenarios. Track what matters in federal hiring: time to hire, the percentage of hiring actions that result in a successful hire, customer satisfaction ratings from hiring managers, and – most importantly – hiring managers’ assessment, three months after hire, of whether the new employee possesses the necessary skills and abilities. Then hold HR staff accountable for moving the needle on these metrics.
• Hire based on actual skills, not self-assessments. Eliminate self-assessment questionnaires¹¹. Make skills-based hiring the default and require HR managers to get a waiver if it is not used. Allow hiring managers (or expert review panels) to review every application for posted positions, and to make decisions about interviews based on actual relevant experience and skills demonstrated.
• Recognize the value of relevant work experience. Eliminate positive education requirements for every job that does not require a practitioner license (e.g. medical doctors, lawyers, etc.)
• Simplify the rules. Drastically reduce the number and complexity of hiring authorities. Expand Direct Hire Authority and provide a centralized point of escalation for hiring managers to get immediate clarity and correction when agency HR staff block appropriate usage of the streamlined process.
• Proactively share every applicant pool across agencies. Invite candidates to apply to the whole of government when they submit their application. (For example, a data scientist applying to a particular position at HHS could indicate that he or she is open to being considered for data science positions at other agencies.) Require all agencies to make candidate applications from other agencies available to hiring managers with relevant open positions, and to make interviewing and hiring these candidates an option.
• Prefer veterans, but only if they are qualified. Revamp veterans’ preference to require agencies to interview at least three veterans who meet minimum job requirements (as determined through a skills-based hiring process), but to remove the requirement that (a) prevents agencies from simultaneously interviewing other candidates and (b) requires OPM approval to not select veterans. 

Empower Managers to Correct or Remove Underperformers

We believe it is vital to enact lasting performance management reforms that strike the appropriate balance between due process and accountability, creating a streamlined but fair process that allows for removal within a reasonable time frame, closes loopholes currently exploited by underperforming employees, and reduces the paperwork burden and personal litigation risk to hiring managers. Most importantly, it should incentivize HR staff, lawyers, and OPM to focus more on swiftly but fairly removing underperformers than on reducing litigation.

Specific ideas that we plan to further refine in future discussions include the following:

• Make HR staff allies in performance management. Revise promotion policies and incentives of HR staff so that these staff are more innovative, less risk-averse, and more customer-centric as they assist managers in holding employees responsible for results. Track HR performance by what actually matters in performance management: time to achieve a removal, the percentage of proposed removals that result in a successful removal through the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB), customer satisfaction ratings from managers, and reductions in the number of respondents to the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) that say that underperformers are not held accountable. Then hold HR staff accountable for moving the needle on these metrics.
• Make government lawyers better at defending the government. Revise the hiring, performance management, training, and promotion policies and incentives of HR lawyers to ensure they remain focused on successfully defending the government against spurious lawsuits by underperforming employees, not just avoiding such lawsuits in the first place.
• Give each employee a real grade. Require all agencies to adopt a 5-tier performance rating structure (5=outstanding, 1=poor) and to make meaningful distinctions in performance.
• Standardize on what “good” looks like. Create a central library, curated by OPM, of detailed performance standards for different types of positions – with associated quantitative performance metrics for results, cost savings, efficiency, and customer service that can be easily adopted by agencies for use. These should be directly aligned with the government-wide results dashboard we outlined earlier in this document, so that if any agency’s employees are performing well against their performance plans, the agency is making progress toward its citizen-focused metrics. Deliver just-in-time joint training for HR and managers about how to use these resources to craft appropriate performance standards that hold staff accountable and facilitate removal if necessary. This process could be facilitated quickly through focused use of GenAI to evaluate all existing performance plans and review data for similar positions across and within all federal agencies. 
• Standardize disciplinary actions. To prevent every hiring manager from having to reinvent the disciplinary process as they learn it for the first time during a management challenge, create a detailed library, curated by OPM, of re-usable core documentation for disciplinary actions, accompanied by online training videos of how to adapt these for any circumstance.
• Streamline internal agency removal procedures as well as MSPB appeals. Reduce the number of rules to make processes more manageable. Appropriately staff and resource agency HR to ensure the removal of an employee with demonstrated unsatisfactory performance can be typically accomplished in just six months, while still ensuring appropriate due process, and that MSPB can expeditiously but fairly handle appeals of such actions.

Use Oversight Bodies to Celebrate Wins in Addition to Addressing Failures

We recommend that the federal government reaffirm the importance of independent Inspectors General, but expand their mission to also:

• Celebrate wins. Highlight when an agency has done a good job of compliance and fraud prevention and assist other agencies in replicating and scaling these best practices.
• Reinforce outcome expectations. Focus on whether agency has attained desired results (See Start Measuring What Matters section above).

Make Government a Savvy Customer

• Redefine contract “support” functions. Focus on what excellence looks like in the job functions that are responsible for creating and managing government contracts. Emphasize customer service, effective proactive collaboration with program staff (e.g. advising them on flexibilities that exist to accelerate timelines, reduce costs, and increase competition; serving as thought partner in developing requirements and quality assurance standards), leveraging flexibilities that do exist, reducing timelines, and reducing costs.
• Make support staff better at supporting. Align performance plans and hiring announcements with these more relevant skills and abilities. Apply skills-based hiring to evaluate how candidates demonstrated proactive support in prior positions, how they might translate that experience to the agency environment, and how they write core documents like Requests for Proposals (RFPs) or Statements of Work (SOWs). Align training and mentoring opportunities with the new skills and align performance awards and recognition accordingly.
• Make support staff accountable for providing excellent customer experience. Make customer service survey results a required part of performance evaluations for staff in support functions, as well as agencies that serve other federal agencies. Earlier, we discussed the importance of measuring and continuously improving the customer experience for Americans interacting with the federal government. It is equally important to track and act on internal customer service satisfaction metrics. Most of the workshop participants noted that it was difficult to receive timely and accurate guidance or decision-making from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), General Services Administration (GSA), or Office of Personnel Management (OPM). Similarly, there were few formal mechanisms to register dissatisfaction with the support functions in one’s own agency. 
• Learn from every experience. Require a formal (but concise) “lessons learned” report after every procurement. Summarize and distribute these learnings quarterly.
• Crosstrain and coach multidisciplinary teams to get results. Establish a contracts training program, including mentoring and coaching. Form cohorts of IT, procurement and program staff to work together on contract management throughout projects, for real-time learning and application.

Attract and Reward Courageous Leadership

Civil servant leaders do, almost universally, truly care about the mission of their agency. But they have often been trained and incentivized to ignore that big picture in order to succeed. Correcting this trend requires resetting incentives, to shift the focus of leaders away from what they can easily control and toward big, ambitious, complicated results.

• Revamp the SES selection process. Require candidates to be vetted by a multi-agency panel of non-political SES’s with a track record of results that will review a portfolio of the candidate’s work (with a particular focus on results), require the candidate to answer detailed questions about their portfolio (similar to a dissertation defense), and require detailed recommendations from superiors, peers, and subordinates to validate their management and leadership skills. Prioritize candidates who have front-line, “in the trenches” experience in the relevant area of subject matter expertise, as well as outstanding people management, project management, and program leadership. Ensure the process allows qualified candidates from the private and nonprofit sector, as well as state and local government, to be competitive.
  
  
• Require frequent rotation of SES to avoid entrenchment and cross-pollinate good ideas. Every three years or so, require an SES to change roles or agencies–while still ensuring a fit with their area of expertise.
  
  
• Require managers (including executives) to understand the work they manage. Update management position descriptions to require demonstrable subject matter expertise, and a history of producing meaningful results.
  
  
• Re-examine SES and manager performance plans to ensure alignment with meaningful metrics. Remove boilerplate language that could conflict with these goals.
  
  
• Exercise greater Congressional due diligence over the confirmation of political appointees and reduce the number of non-Senate confirmed political appointees. Congress should ensure that senior political officials have relevant subject matter expertise, a track record of success in their area of work, and a track record of effectively managing a huge bureaucracy.
  
  
• Give bigger bonuses, but only when they’ve been earned. Money motivates people, and private sector C-suite leaders routinely receive large bonuses as a reward for improving their organization’s bottom line. Government would likely see significant results if employees who could demonstrate causality between their work and the real-world outcomes defined in our recommended solutions to Root Cause #1 were financially motivated to do so. And, if employees who focus on arbitrary work that doesn’t contribute to improving the bottom line stop receiving bonuses, the effect will be stronger.