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thereseceleste.bsky.social
thereseceleste.bsky.social
@thereseceleste.bsky.social
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donmoyn.bsky.social
Wrote this piece after one DOGEr gave an interview where he admitted his preconceptions about government were wrong. Public servants really care about public service! There is not that much waste in government! There are too many meetings and decisionmaking is too slow! Indeed, sir! All true!
Lavignia left his start-up, Gumroad, to join Veteran’s Affairs. Here is the key passage: Now that he’s there, he says he finds himself surrounded by people who “love their jobs,” who came to the government with a sense of mission driving their work. “In a sense, that makes the DOGE agenda a little bit more complicated, because if half the government took [a buyout offer], then we wouldn’t have to do much more,” he says, implying software can replace departing employees. “We’d just basically use software to plug holes. But that’s not what’s happening.”…when it comes down to it, what he’s found is a machine that largely functions, though it doesn’t make decisions as fast as a startup might. “I would say the culture shock is mostly a lot of meetings, not a lot of decisions,” he says. “But honestly, it’s kind of fine—because the government works. It’s not as inefficient as I was expecting, to be honest. I was hoping for more easy wins.”
May 17, 2025 at 2:24 PM
Reposted by thereseceleste.bsky.social
donmoyn.bsky.social
Now, most DOGEr's are not admitting they were wrong about government, but some of their bad assumptions about tech in govt are not new, and were held by civic tech folks (who had very different motivations). One of these assumptions is an emphasis on transparency as a cure-all.
For tech folks new to government, the concept of transparency is very attractive. If I wanted to be mean, I would say that they sometimes assume a lack of transparency to excuse their own lack of knowledge. In reality, there is more information about government programs than any human being can ever read. Again, lets go back to Lavingia: In contrast to DOGE’s shadowy reputation, Lavingia has made a case for transparency. Based on a pledge he received from Musk during a meeting, Lavingia has been open sourcing his VA work, creating tools that can generate org charts and detect compliance with the president’s executive orders.
May 17, 2025 at 3:39 PM
Reposted by thereseceleste.bsky.social
donmoyn.bsky.social
The idea that transparency, via open source and code, would solve tech problems misunderstands how tech in govt works. People working in civic tech learned this lesson a decade ago. DOGE is not interested in learning it.
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/what-doge-...
Here are quotes from two leaders of the civic tech movement I interviewed before DOGE was on the scene: Open-source and open data had a lot of resonance. There was this idea, especially in early Code for America to say, you build something in a fellowship in one city, and then you’d open-source it, and that everybody would just be able to use it…And that reuse theory really didn’t work as well as people hoped. Maybe 10 years ago, 15 years ago, in the kind of open-data movement days were very much like…sunlight will be the best disinfectant. And I think some of the things that the civic tech movement has actually learned is that it is not…There’s actually work to be done internally.
May 17, 2025 at 3:57 PM
Reposted by thereseceleste.bsky.social
altusfs.altgov.info
Let us provide.

#AltCitizen
altssa.altgov.info AltSSA @altssa.altgov.info · May 12
My first #AltCitizen should be easily recognizable. The 32nd President of the United States, Franklin Delano Roosevelt is most well known for two things: The New Deal that guided the country out of the Great Depression, and the creation of what would become the Social Security Administration. 1/?
A black and white image of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt is next to a header that reads All of us #AltCitizen and is followed by a quote by FDR that says “The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.” The logo for the #AltGov members is at the bottom.
May 13, 2025 at 1:00 AM