On Friday’s broadcast of WBUR’s “Here and Now,” Jennifer Pahlka, who served as Deputy Chief Tech Officer in the Obama White House, said that some of the spending cuts coming about to DOGE will force “a lot” of innovation and “Sometimes it does take a shock to the system to get you to design something that really works in the 21st century, that meets needs, and then, often, is more efficient, but also, more effective.” But firings have been too indiscriminate and “some of the people who have the best approaches and skills are being fired.”

Pahlka stated [relevant remarks begin around 2:15] that she hopes DOGE’s work will “pivot from the work of cutting people and cutting functions, to the work of cleaning up the regulatory and policy and process accumulation from over the years, such that the things actually just work better for people.”

Co-host Scott Tong then asked, “Is there a good-case scenario coming out of what we’re seeing in this moment? For instance, biomedical research, if, indeed, NIH grants are going to have far less money for what are called indirect costs, if a lot less money is available, could that be the nudge for people in that space to say, you know what, we have to find our own ways to do things differently, because we just have less money to do it?”

Pahlka answered, “I do think there will be a lot of that. Sometimes it does take a shock to the system to get you to design something that really works in the 21st century, that meets needs, and then, often, is more efficient, but also, more effective. The right way to do that, though, I think is more discriminate changes. So, we’re seeing this indiscriminate firing, where some of the people who have the best approaches and skills are being fired.”

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