Israel Needs a DOGE, But Not Like America’s
Many in Israel have watched Elon Musk's DOGE department and advocated for implementing the same approach in Israel. However, the model should be attuned to Israeli needs, including reducing the inflated number of government ministries and curbing wasteful budget allocations, such as the coalitionary funds.
Photo: Reuters
Following President Trump’s inauguration and the appointment of Elon Musk as director of the new “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE), the world has been following the dramatic cuts and rapid reforms made to the American system of government. Within a matter of days, Musk announced the administration would be cutting thousands of government jobs, thereby adding billions of dollars in the federal budget as a result of the cuts, claiming they constituted unnecessary spending. Many in Israel – where our cumbersome public sector is often much maligned – have watched these developments with excitement, calling for the same approach to be followed here.
On the face of it, the idea of importing the DOGE model to Israel might make sense. Who wouldn’t want to cut excess public spending, and divert funds to where they are truly needed? And who doesn’t want a lean government that works effectively on behalf of the public? But when we take a closer look at the characteristics of Israeli government, we find that directly copying the American model would not only be insufficient at solving the fundamental problems afflicting the public sector, but might actually make it even more difficult to address them.
In the US, DOGE is focusing mainly on improving economic efficiency by mapping “pockets of waste,” that is, locating budgetary allocations deemed as unnecessary and wasteful expenditures, or those that (according to Musk) the state should not be funding. The temptation to locate such items in Israel’s state budget is, as stated, very great. However, a closer look at our budget reveals that Israel’s pockets of waste are highly visible and easily found—in the very structure of our executive branch, and in the political, coalitionary, and sectoral funds handed out by the government. These are funds, identified as part of the agreement to build a coalition (or thereafter), which are allocated to projects and initiatives that serve narrow interests of sectorial parties and their voters - in the US, such funds would be known as pork barrel.
Anyone waving the banner of efficiency and calling for an Israeli DOGE should look for common-sense solutions to the problems lurking in plain sight.
First, it is impossible to ignore one of the clearest illustrations of political waste in Israel: the extreme proliferation of government ministries, which has been carried out entirely for political reasons. There are currently 31 government ministries operating in Israel—a highly inflated number compared to other countries, which make do with between 15 and 20 ministries. This proliferation leads to a direct waste of public funds in the form of inflated staffing and operating budgets, and no less importantly, to the indirect waste of resources and inefficiency resulting from problems of synchronization, overlap, and coordination among the various ministries that are repeatedly established, dismantled, and reassembled. In total, this waste is estimated at hundreds of millions of shekels a year.
The wastefulness in our budgets – and the common-sense solutions to these problems – are also plain to see. Just over the past couple of weeks, the government approved NIS 5 billion, in coalitionary funds, on top of countless previous transfers, the vast majority of which serve narrow political interests and use up major resources that could have been directed to the important and significant needs of the entire Israeli public
Thus, while in the American DOGE, the focus is on the elimination of government jobs and agencies, a key challenge in Israel is to reduce the huge budgets that are funneled to specific sectors for political and coalitionary reasons. These funds can be easily located by tracking their transfer to countless nonprofits, yeshivot, and organizations that operate mainly in the national religious, Haredi, and settler communities.
Moreover, it would be a mistake to limit discussion of an Israeli DOGE to the narrow lens of “waste” and unnecessary budget allocations. The main problem in the public sector in Israel is not necessarily that it is extravagant or particularly “bloated,” but rather its low level of performance. In other words, our core systemic problems are not only related to efficiency, but to effectiveness; that is, the low performance level of government systems, such that existing resources are not properly utilized and implemented.
Thus, those seeking to improve the work of the government should look not only at budgetary allocations, but also at the basic components that make our public service cumbersome and ineffective. Such improvements should include improving the quality of human capital in the public sector, including recruitment and retention practices; improving budgeting, procurement, and government contracting processes; radically upgrading public digitization and information management systems; and improving work environments. Without a multi-pronged approach of this kind, which would essentially constitute a broad and multidimensional reform of the public service, locating budgetary “pockets of waste” will remain a purely cosmetic move. Eliminating wasteful government spending must come alongside improvements to government systems.
The need for public service reform has been discussed for many years, and its various components have been presented to successive governments over the years. Many politicians have championed this cause during their campaigns, only to abandon it once in office when facing pressure from narrow political interests. Unfortunately, we have not seen the emergence of political leadership willing and able to move such an important national undertaking forward.
Perhaps the winds of change blowing in from America will motivate our politicians to launch a historic project of improving and streamlining our public service. But for such a project to succeed, the model will have to be adapted to the Israeli case, and its implementation focused on our unique problems: updating the structure of the government and the number of ministries, significantly reducing political and coalitionary funds, and instituting a courageous reform to increase the effectiveness of the public service. This is the DOGE model we need in Israel.
This article was published in the Jerusalem Post.