States Take a Page from the DOGE Playbook

Throughout last year’s presidential campaign, then-candidate Donald Trump made clear his intentions to drastically overhaul the federal workforce.

The newly formed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is integral to this effort, with Tesla CEO Elon Musk and tech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy (who has since been removed from his post with DOGE) charged with leading the unit and working “to slash federal government spending, waste and regulations.”

At the state level, a handful of governors are taking a page from the DOGE playbook.

During a recent Condition of the State speech, for example, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds announced that she has established a new taskforce, modeled after the new Musk-led unit, designed to “find even greater savings and efficiencies in both state and local government” throughout Iowa. “Because to pass meaningful property tax reform, we also need to be lean at the local level.”

“I like to say that we were doing DOGE before DOGE was a thing,” Reynolds said. “And to build on our success, I’m launching our own state DOGE to find even greater savings and efficiencies in both state and local government.”

The new Iowa department will be led by Emily Schmitt, general counsel of Sukup Manufacturing, Reynolds added.

Just days before Reynolds’ announcement, New Hampshire Gov. Kelly Ayotte devoted part of her inaugural gubernatorial address to introducing a similar commission in her state.

“We need to make sure that the government is operating more like the lean process in manufacturing,” Ayotte said, “where waste is eliminated each step in the process for a better result,” she said.

Other states, including Kansas, Missouri, North Carolina and Oklahoma, are among those to have recently announced plans for their own task forces modeled after DOGE.

That list also includes Wisconsin, where the State Assembly has also created its own DOGE-inspired collective, albeit with a slightly different acronym.

In December, Wisconsin State Assembly Speaker Robin Vos introduced the Governmental, Oversight, Accountability and Transparency Committee (GOAT).

At the time, Vos told media outlets that the committee’s goal was to take on Wisconsin state government inefficiencies, focusing on how to use artificial intelligence and other technologies to streamline government processes.

“How do we drive efficiency so that the people who live in Wisconsin can afford to stay here,” he said, “but also expect the services they have come to want in a way that’s much more meaningful and much more efficient?”