Move fast and break the civil service: Will Whitehall get its own Elon Musk?
Whether it sees Elon Musk’s DOGE as a success or a failure, Whitehall should see it as a warning. Because institutions which won’t reform themselves can only ever be reformed by outsiders, usually in unpredictable ways, says Joe Hill
In December, the Prime Minister pledged to “rewire the State”, and Cabinet Minister Pat McFadden told assembled journalists that our civil service would start to act “more like a start-up”. Far across the Atlantic, we are already seeing an extreme version of this dynamic playing out, with President Trump appointing Elon Musk to run their promised Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from the White House.
It’s a comparison I doubt our government would appreciate. DOGE has had a rocky start, battered by court orders and personnel issues with many of the new employees it has hired. It’s also slashed USAID funding, frozen federal grants (temporarily) and helped issue a controversial “Fork in the road” memo to all federal staff offering them the chance to leave if they don’t support the new administration’s plans.
But whether it sees DOGE is a success or a failure, Whitehall should see it as a warning. Because institutions which won’t reform themselves can only ever be reformed by outsiders, usually in unpredictable ways.
Like in the US, there’s clearly bloat in our public sector. Last year about 40 per cent of the economy was government spending, and HMRC took one in every three pounds in tax to pay for it. Hundred-million pound bat tunnels and fish discos may seem like a joke, but when the waste is on armoured vehicles which vibrate too much for the Army to be able to use them and drones which can’t fly in the rain, waste becomes deadly serious.
The same ideas again and again
With over 540,000 staff, the civil service is bigger today than it was when the Conservatives took office, despite years of hiring freezes and budget cuts aiming to do the opposite. And that isn’t the only kind of reform that has failed to get purchase on Whitehall – skim through any civil service modernisation plan and you’ll see the same ideas again and again. The plans from the reviews of 1854, 1918 and 1968 are eerily similar to those from 2012, 2015 and 2021.
Unlike the civil service, both in the United Kingdom and the United States, the world is changing fast. The new governments in both countries have ambitious programmes to pursue, massive budgetary trade-offs to consider and plenty of vested interests trying to stop them. Faced with tasks that daunting, it’s easy to see the appeal of throwing out the playbook and doing something radical.
But radical change can go both ways. You don’t have to like Elon Musk to believe that DOGE could do what he has promised and significantly cut spending. He’s clearly a highly capable leader. And you don’t have to loathe him to realise that this could go very badly wrong. There’s no precedent for the richest man in the world getting an office in the West Wing whilst continuing to run multibillion-dollar companies.
You don’t have to like Musk to believe that DOGE could do what he has promised and significantly cut spending. He’s clearly a highly capable leader. And you don’t have to loathe him to realise that this could go very badly wrong
I don’t believe the Labour government will take an approach as chaotic as DOGE. But as the budgets prove impossible to add up in the Chancellor’s Spending Review, the big Missions become challenging to deliver, and the machine doesn’t seem to be working, the pressure for big changes will only continue to grow. Radical reform is inevitable, the only choice is whether it’s driven from within the civil service, or outside of it. And whether that reform happens under this government or a very different one. It’s unrealistic to think that any other options exist. One thing is for certain – if change happens, it could happen more quickly than anyone in Whitehall thinks. Perhaps the most surprising thing about DOGE for Whitehall-watchers is how much effect it’s had in the three weeks since the 47th President took office. In Westminster, we frequently acknowledge that civil service reform will never be a ‘day one’ issue. But from Trump’s team it clearly is, so maybe it’s us who are wrong. After all, the start-up culture that Musk comes from, and Pat McFadden is aiming for, is characterised by speed above anything else. And the clock is ticking.
Joe Hill is policy director at Reform think tank