A liberal well-wisher’s advice to Elon Musk

As Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” prepares for its mission of slashing federal government to the bone, it’s collecting some unlikely supporters. One is Jennifer Pahlka, a senior fellow at the Niskanen Center and former President Barack Obama’s deputy chief technology officer who says that despite Musk and DOGE co-leader Vivek Ramaswamy’s right-wing lens on increasing efficiency, it could present a welcome and rare opportunity to do so. Palkha spoke about the possible impact of the current digital divide in government, saying "We’ve made a ton of progress in getting great digital talent into agencies. Some of those people will end up being among the last to be let go. So there’s certainly a case that you’ll have some great digital talent that isn’t at risk .But the people who do what I’ll call for lack of a better term “digital transformation”—not just “we’re putting this thing into the cloud,” but as Elon has tweeted about, taking steps out of the process by optimizing and automating, true digital transformation … those teams generally feel pretty outgunned by compliance folks who are the “stop” energy to their “go” energy."