The UK already has a DOGE

We don't need another one

Lots of people fluttering about a UK DOGE - the Tories, Scottish Labour, Guido Fawkes, the BrewDog punk beer guy. It’s all a bit Taxpayers Alliance out there folks.

But the UK already has a DOGE. To understand what that means you first need to understand what Musk is doing.

What is Musk up to?

Musk has no lawful authority for much of what he’s doing - like closing USAID. Trump’s legal team have said so in legal pleadings.

His genius was to exploit new constitutional weaknesses in his coup.

In the Foundations of the Digital State I looked at the differences between functional and non-functional (or infrastructural) specification. The former is in law, and the latter in much more opaque and diffuse processes.

Digital infra is not under proper constitutional or organisational control

Musk’s innovation was to exploit that and get control of the money flow in government. With control of central government payment systems he had his hand on the jugular of government.

That’s how he fed USAID into the woodchipper.

The point of DOGE is to run around Congress - to trash the constitution, and to destroy the rule of law. Remember, the TikTok ban is still on the statute book. The law is what Trump says it is.

Musk first took over the US Digital Services - no Senate confirmation for its Director, unlike the Federal Reserve. His first target was the Treasury payment systems - unlike it, the Fed has its own police force.

The UK has the British Transport Police and the British Nuclear Policy but no British Digital Police. 6 coppers would have stopped the coup.

We have a UK DOGE, rly?

Pat McFadden runs digital and like Musk has no legal authority over the wider civil service. He’s the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster - a button man for the PM. Cross him and you sleep at the Min of Ag & Fish.

Whitehall civil servants get their lawful authority from their named Minister or collectively via Secretary of States. They do what McFadden wants if their Minister tells them to. The PM and Cabinet alike are conventional not statutory creatures.

(Different in Scotland, the FM and government are statutory and the Minsters get all powers collectively.)

And how does McFadden control the Minister? He works with the Treasury to turn the money pipes on or off - like Musk.

But Musk is a drug-fuelled putchist and McFadden is a democrat.

Note: one of my commentators points out that McFadden shares this stuff with Peter Kyle as DSIT who has formal responsibility.

Does the DOGE model work?

Up to a point. The GDS did great work showing us what can be done - under the duumvirate of Francis Maude and Danny Alexander.

It used standards for co-ordination without communication. Its word was law because Danny Alexander couldn’t be nobbled by Ministers for departmental interest - he was one of 2 LibDem Ministers.

The English ‘personal’ model needs to be institutionalised (read my damn report already).

The wrong road

The default mode of UK government is central-planning-by-the-Treasury. Autonomy for digital work, backed off with co-ordination without communication via standards, is just one of the many autonomies that English politics needs to get back - local government being another.

The UK government is a mish-mash of unsystematised powers granted in obscure and bizarre ways. There is a taboo on institutional and systems thinking.

Failure to institutionalise will mean a return to the norm. If the only two powers the PM has is sack the Minister and ask the Chancellor to turn the money off, you get central planning and a PM-Chancellor joint administration. Its not that they want to cosplay the Soviet Union.

The situation is very different in Scotland 25 years after institutional modernisation. Median wages here are higher than England now. Better government works.