Many po­lit­i­cal lead­ers of vary­ing per­sua­sions and na­tion­al­i­ties com­plain of the lim­i­ta­tions placed on their pow­er or ef­fec­tive­ness by the pub­lic ser­vice. There have been many at­tempts in dif­fer­ent ju­ris­dic­tions to im­prove the ef­fec­tive­ness of pub­lic sec­tor in­sti­tu­tions and make them more rel­e­vant to lo­cal cir­cum­stances. It should be not­ed that re­forms bor­rowed from oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions of­ten fail in im­ple­men­ta­tion.

Crit­ics of the mod­i­fied West­min­ster mod­el as prac­tised in T&T of­ten point to the gru­elling ex­am­i­na­tion of Cab­i­net ap­point­ments in the USA as an ex­am­ple of trans­paren­cy to be em­u­lat­ed. Crit­ics have al­so called for a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment to abol­ish the Ser­vice Com­mis­sions and to give politi­cians the pow­er to ap­point per­ma­nent sec­re­taries and se­nior pub­lic ser­vants.

The process to ap­point the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er and deputies was legal­ly amend­ed in 2006 to in­clude Par­lia­ment. This “new” process may be mar­gin­al­ly more trans­par­ent but has been dogged by con­tro­ver­sy since its in­tro­duc­tion. The 2006 change has not im­proved the per­for­mance of any com­mis­sion­er or the TTPS.

We are learn­ing that the TTPS’s op­er­at­ing per­for­mance can­not be im­proved with­out root and branch in­sti­tu­tion­al changes. For change to be mean­ing­ful, it must in­clude all the peo­ple, process­es and sys­tems that com­prise the in­sti­tu­tion. Process changes must be struc­tured to in­cor­po­rate every lev­el with­in the in­sti­tu­tion to be mean­ing­ful.

There are no quick fix­es to solv­ing the crime sit­u­a­tion in T&T or im­prov­ing po­lice per­for­mance. It will take time and needs a me­thod­i­cal ap­proach. The world is for­tu­nate to have Don­ald Trump and bil­lion­aire Elon Musk, two very suc­cess­ful and sea­soned busi­ness­men in the largest and most pros­per­ous coun­try, as ex­em­plars of how in­sti­tu­tion­al re­form should not be con­duct­ed.

Pres­i­dent Trump and Elon Musk have ar­gued that the US fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment is bloat­ed and prone to wast­ing tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey. To ad­dress this weak­ness, one of Trump’s ex­ec­u­tive or­ders on Jan­u­ary 20 es­tab­lished the De­part­ment of Gov­ern­ment Ef­fi­cien­cy (DOGE) by re­nam­ing the US Dig­i­tal Ser­vice to the US De­part­ment of Gov­ern­ment Ef­fi­cien­cy and cre­at­ed the US DOGE Ser­vice Tem­po­rary Or­gan­i­sa­tion (US­D­STO). The stat­ed ob­jec­tive of this de­part­ment is to mod­ernise “fed­er­al tech­nol­o­gy and soft­ware to max­imise gov­ern­men­tal ef­fi­cien­cy and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.”

Dur­ing Trump’s speech to joint Hous­es on March 4, he iden­ti­fied Elon Musk as the “pa­tri­ot” in charge of the de­part­ment. Since its for­ma­tion, the de­part­ment has or­gan­ised mass lay­offs of fed­er­al (pub­lic sec­tor) work­ers, ac­cessed con­fi­den­tial da­ta from fed­er­al agen­cies, cut fund­ing to con­sumer, en­vi­ron­men­tal, health and safe­ty pro­tec­tion agen­cies, in­ter­na­tion­al aid, sci­ence re­search, DEI ini­tia­tives and gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­to­ry bod­ies.

It is es­ti­mat­ed that 100,000 of the 1.9 mil­lion fed­er­al work­ers have been af­fect­ed so far. This num­ber will in­crease as Trump signed an or­der on Feb­ru­ary 11 di­rect­ing all agen­cies to “prompt­ly un­der­take prepa­ra­tions to ini­ti­ate large-scale re­duc­tions in force.”

The ac­tions of DOGE have been con­tro­ver­sial and have led to op­po­si­tion and wide­spread law­suits by those af­fect­ed. It has al­so gen­er­at­ed di­vi­sive­ness in the US Cab­i­net, as re­port­ed by the New York Times (NYT). The NYT not­ed that while the Cab­i­net sec­re­taries agreed in prin­ci­ple to re­duc­ing waste, fraud and abuse in gov­ern­ment, some mem­bers ob­ject­ed to the unchecked pow­er of Elon Musk and the lack of con­sul­ta­tion with Cab­i­net sec­re­taries when mak­ing changes to de­part­ments with­in their ar­eas of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. The re­port not­ed that Trump sided with his Cab­i­net and agreed that the sec­re­taries should de­cide the staffing arrange­ments in fu­ture.

Or­di­nary Amer­i­cans seem to sup­port the idea of re­duc­ing the US fed­er­al Gov­ern­ment’s size and re­duc­ing waste. A Reuters/Ip­sos poll not­ed that 59 per cent of re­spon­dents sup­port­ed that goal. How­ev­er, a sim­i­lar num­ber of re­spon­dents (59 per cent) were con­cerned about the process and op­posed the move to fire thou­sands of fed­er­al work­ers.

There are at least 41 court cas­es con­test­ing DOGE’s ac­tions. Some le­gal chal­lenges con­tend that rules for fir­ing cer­tain em­ploy­ees were not fol­lowed, that agen­cies es­tab­lished by law can­not be closed with­out con­gres­sion­al ap­proval, and that DOGE has gone be­yond what laws al­low it to do.

Le­gal ex­perts have warned that there may be a con­sti­tu­tion­al cri­sis loom­ing as on­ly Con­gress, not DOGE or Trump, has the pow­er to cut spend­ing. An­oth­er aris­es from the mean­ing of Ar­ti­cle 2, Sec­tion 2 of the Con­sti­tu­tion, which man­dates that “prin­ci­pal of­fi­cers must be nom­i­nat­ed by the pres­i­dent and con­firmed by the Sen­ate.”

Musk has op­er­a­tional con­trol of DOGE but is nei­ther nom­i­nat­ed nor con­firmed. Fur­ther, Musk is in sev­er­al con­flict-of-in­ter­est sit­u­a­tions as his com­pa­nies ben­e­fit from sev­er­al bil­lion-dol­lar fed­er­al con­tracts. Oth­er is­sues in­volve the hir­ing of Musk staff mem­bers with­out any ev­i­dence of se­cu­ri­ty clear­ance.

DOGE’s slash-and-burn ap­proach is un­like­ly to be suc­cess­ful. Whole­sale re­duc­tions in staff num­bers or ex­pen­di­tures with­out ad­e­quate analy­sis have led to the can­cel­la­tion of many nec­es­sary pro­grammes. Sim­i­lar­ly, Musk’s staff cuts will de­liv­er no per­ma­nent spend­ing re­duc­tions.

Long-term sav­ings are on­ly achieved by im­prov­ing process ef­fi­cien­cies. With­out process ef­fi­cien­cies, the lay­offs will soon be re­hired. Fur­ther­more, in­de­pen­dent analy­sis has found that tens of bil­lions of dol­lars in DOGE’s “sav­ings” were mis­rep­re­sent­ed, mak­ing the tar­get of a tril­lion dol­lars in sav­ings very doubt­ful.

Few coun­tries could sur­vive this sledge­ham­mer ap­proach to chang­ing the pub­lic sec­tor and the re­sult­ing chaos. How will this end?

Mar­i­ano Browne is the Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the UWI Lok Jack Glob­al School Of Busi­ness.