Some local people have questioned the value of protests against DOGE activities and the perceived overreach of presidential executive power. Of course, it’s a worthy goal to eliminate “waste, fraud, and abuse” in any system, and there are effective ways to achieve this goal while respecting both the workers and the customers of service systems. In our federal government, this means valuing and utilizing the employees who were doing their jobs to provide services that the American people need, want and pay for through our taxes, rather than abruptly firing them and treating them as if their employment was stealing from the public.

Cutting costs doesn’t achieve true productivity and value if it merely eliminates necessary services. For example, a business could just stop paying its utility bills and eliminate most of its employees, and that would reduce its expenses, but render the business unable to serve its customers, much like what’s happening now with employees being let go without regard to their job contributions or performance, and whole federal departments being closed down and shuttered. As displayed on the many signs held by the thousands of people participating in the recent Hands Off protests against presidential executive actions and the methods of the “Department of Government Efficiency,” Americans value physical and mental health, financial security, education, clean air and water, life-saving scientific research, accountability and judicial fairness, and many other things that are being ripped apart by hasty DOGE actions.

Most workers want to engage in meaningful work and do a good job. There are much more effective and humane ways to improve government efficiency than to haphazardly hack away at workers and perceived enemies, including Inspectors General whose job is to monitor, detect, and eliminate waste, fraud, and true abuse, especially abuse of power committed by highest-level elected government officials, who by constitutional design should not be above the law. Rather, effective process improvement includes careful benefit/cost analysis and is driven by productivity improvement that increases quality and service to the customer: the American people.

Imagine instead an approach that could expand focus from cost alone to increasing service and value to customers with higher quality and productivity.

Where I worked in two large mental health care centers, we applied proven process improvement techniques that accomplished this by carefully analyzing work processes to eliminate waste by utilizing resources effectively, rearranging workflows, and eliminating unnecessary steps and redundancies. With the right focus on value and improvement we developed innovative approaches that included direct clinical care staff and customers (patients/clients), whose engagement in redesigning work processes leveraged their first-hand knowledge of workflows and service experiences, and inspired novel ideas that produced breakthrough improvement in expanding service capacity and reducing wait time for consumers. We found new ways to utilize staff more effectively to deliver more services without hiring more staff or building additional facilities. Using these methods, we accepted 27% more new clients in the first year of operation, with no additional staffing or facility cost. We boosted staff productivity by reducing client no-shows through improving communication and shortening lead time to initial appointments, which also increased client satisfaction and health outcomes.

Influential leader in quality management and improvement, the late W. Edwards Deming helped post-World War II Japan rebuild its devastated economy by implementing participatory quality improvement. He described workers there as “magnificent,” as he helped to instill pride in their work and advocated for training and involving them in continuously improving quality. What could happen if we focused on improving rather than destroying our systems and workforce, by respecting and utilizing the knowledge and experience of our workers and customers in our federal systems? Could this rejuvenate our demoralized workforce and result in a happier and healthier nation? Despite the current destruction of our democratic systems, with the right approach America, like post-war Japan, might recover and reemerge as a truly great global leader again.

Linda LaGanga, Ph.D. in Operations Research (CU-Boulder Leeds School of Business, 2006), is retired VP of Quality in two large Colorado mental health care centers, past instructor of courses in quality and service operations management, author of published studies on health care process improvement and management books, and part-time mental health therapist.