We need a DOGE

Feb 24, 2025 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Peeping Tom…

Kaieteur News- You know, it’s funny how people in government are always talking about efficiency.  And yet, the inefficiency remains so impressive that if bureaucracy were an Olympic sport, Guyana would have more gold medals than Usain Bolt.

This is why I propose that Guyana should establish a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Yes, DOGE—because nothing cries out for fiscal responsibility like a bloated and inefficient government.

Right now, the public service in Guyana costs taxpayers over one billion dollars per day. That’s right—every morning, as you sip your coffee and contemplate the meaning of life, more than a billion dollars disappears into the vast labyrinth of government operations. And this is just for recurrent expenditure. You’d think we were financing the construction of a massive skyscraper to match Manhattan’s skyline. Instead of this we get traffic congestion, unexplained delays and substandard and overpriced services, including education.

Even the Vice President—who, let’s be honest, knows everything about anything; he even knows what he does not know—admitted that it costs far more to educate a child in a public school than in a private school. You’d assume that this extra cost would translate into students leaving the public system quoting Shakespeare and solving calculus in their sleep. Instead, we’re producing graduates who struggle to find their own country on a map. The education system, in its current state, seems to specialize in preparing young minds for a lifetime of waiting in line at government offices.

We’re spending G$143.2 billion this year on health care, and somehow, the government still needs to funnel another G$5 billion into the private healthcare sector for tests that should be free in public hospitals. It’s almost as if the goal is to make public healthcare so inefficient that you’d willingly sell a kidney (on the private market, of course) just to afford decent medical attention. If efficiency was a disease, the healthcare system in Guyana would be completely immune.

And what about infrastructure? Let’s talk about road projects. The government agencies responsible for monitoring these projects are too busy drafting reports on why the projects are delayed.

So, what do we do? We must start pruning. And not from the bottom. No, no, no. The lower-grade staff will riot, and the unions will make so much noise that even people in the afterlife will file grievances.

So, we begin at the top. With the political and sinecure appointees. Why do we need all these advisors?  Does the President really require an International Affairs Advisor? Shouldn’t that be handled by, I don’t know, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs? Do we need a Foreign Secretary?

Then, we must embrace hybrid work. Fewer offices, lower overheads, and government employees finally realizing they don’t need an hour-long meeting to determine the font size of a memo. And in so doing we will out half the traffic on our roads – because let us face it, half of those using our roadways are going to work at government jobs where production and productivity is far from impressive.

And, like Elon Musk, we should start abolishing agencies left and right. If an agency’s primary function is to discuss the possibility of forming another agency, it’s got to go.  Does Guyana really need the Office of Freedom of Information?  Do we really need that concession factory that is called GOINVEST?

Let’s take it a step further. Every year, departments submit budget proposals requesting more money than the previous year, often with little to no justification. The logic seems to be: “If we don’t spend all our budget this year, they might reduce it next year.” So instead of focusing on efficiency, departments scramble, as year-end approaches, to exhaust their funding. This leads to unnecessary spending. Imagine the savings if we simply required ministries, agencies and departments to justify their spending based on actual results instead of projections designed to secure future allocations. How about actually reducing their Budgets and forcing them to do more with less?

Another source of inefficiency? Meetings and ceremonies Government officials seem to love meetings the way children love candy. Everything requires a meeting, followed by a report about the meeting, and then another meeting to review the report. Want to change the colour of office curtains? That’s at least three meetings, a procurement process, and an independent consultant’s analysis of curtain efficiency. In a truly efficient system, a call to the nearest fabric store should suffice.

In the end, making government efficient isn’t about trimming the red tape—it’s about shredding it. So let’s start with the bloat, the waste, the committees and the almost daily ceremonial openings that achieve nothing but cost an arm and a leg. Think about how many homes that can save to provide housing for the homeless or wheelchairs for those who need them; or for food for the hungry.

At the end of the day, wouldn’t it be nice if the money we spend on running the government actually improved the lives of the people who pay for it? It’s a radical thought, I know, but maybe—just maybe—we should give it a try.

(We need a DOGE)

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)    

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• billion dollars per day, Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, Olympic sport

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