We the Doers began over a cup of coffee in November 2025. Maureen Klovers and I had been among the most prolific contributors to the PopVox Foundation’s “Departure Dialogues” project to capture lessons learned from departing federal officials, and now we wanted to share ideas in person.
That morning, we found we had in common the same thing that many people who’ve spent time in government leadership roles have in common: we’d faced the same pattern of dysfunction. We started with good ideas to improve things in our sphere, built real momentum, and then… got stuck so deep in the bureaucratic morass that it took months of process and paperwork to shovel our way out and get even simple things done. It was a ridiculous way to run the machinery of a strong democracy.
Just like most other American citizens, we want a better, more functional government that delivers real value in ways that we and our families can see and feel.
The more we talked about how much potential for improvement had been squandered this year, the more animated we became. We’d both been cautiously optimistic when DOGE was initially announced to focus on the very real problems of efficiency and transparency that we’d seen up close. And then we’d both been deeply disappointed (if not surprised) that, ten months in, their efforts toward systemic reform had stalled and often been actively counterproductive.
We imagined how much progress could have been made in that same amount of time by focusing on the root causes we’d seen. Not because we’re smarter or more dedicated, but because we have played and won the game DOGE was trying to win. It’s the same game the past several administrations have played more quietly and respectfully, but never fully won either. DOGE treated government like a startup to be disrupted, rather than a complex operating system bound by law, incentives, culture, and accountability structures. You don’t fix that with bravado, by inserting a cadre of engineers, or by chasing “quick wins.” You fix it by understanding how power, process, and delivery actually work, and then changing the rules of the game to make it winnable.
We’ve worked through and around the challenges of bureaucracy long enough to understand what matters at a foundational level, and how to distinguish the proverbial babies from the bathwater. That’s the difference between performative reform headlines and real change, and that’s what it will take to fix the government.
We also wondered why it seemed that conversations in the media, on the Hill, and in think tanks were talking about these issues in a very high-level, theoretical way. These discussions zeroed in on some of the barriers to effective reform, but were relatively light on the nitty gritty details of implementation. As good as some of the ideas in these white papers are, we know most of them will end up collecting dust on the desks of civil servants unable to implement them unless the real barriers to implementation are addressed once and for all.
Plus, many current discussions about government reform are led by former political appointees, whose ideas (regardless of how good or bad they are) are destined to be viewed as partisan and therefore dead on arrival.
So we decided to start gathering some colleagues from other agencies and writing down what we knew about what government should be, why it’s not that way, and how to fix it for real.
We also decided to start asking average Americans for their input because we know the one thing everybody — from every political perspective — can agree on is that government should be capable of accomplishing the goals of whoever we choose to elect.
That’s why We the Doers exists. We are not neutral observers or theorists. We are doers.
Our first publication, detailing how we plan to do this work, will be released on January 20th.