Elon Musk’s DOGE can learn from Iowa’s bold government overhaul | Opinion

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Iowa has started some regulatory reforms that set a good precedent for President-elect Donald Trump’s newly announced Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to be headed by businessmen Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk.

Ramaswamy has vowed to “delete” certain agencies outright and enact “mass reductions” in the federal work force. His partner in this mission will be Elon Musk, the man who shrunk Twitter’s workforce by 80% after his purchase.

The Iowa experience could aid them further. Gov. Kim Reynolds in 2023 signed into law a groundbreaking government reorganization. The 1,500-page bill aimed to streamline government operations by merging state agencies, thereby reducing the number of cabinet-level agencies from 37 to 16. Reynolds’ office projected it would save taxpayers $215 million over four years and eliminate 500 unfilled positions. The bill was signed into law on April 4, 2023, and agencies were given three months in which to implement changes by the July 1 effective date.

In her 2024 Condition of the State address in January, Reynolds affirmed that that state indeed cut 21 agencies from her cabinet and exceeded the estimate of job reduction by removing 620 open positions. Through the alignment, a total of 2,600 state employees were also shifted to new departments. In her address, the Governor highlighted the need for further alignment in Iowa’s boards and commissions. She proposed implementing recommendations from a committee review to eliminate 111 redundant or obsolete boards, reducing the total by 43%, as well as mandating an evaluation every five years to ensure remaining boards meet Iowans’ needs.

Reynolds followed through with her proposal. In May, she signed a bill into law that eliminates or merges 83 state boards and commissions.

The lessons for DOGE are clear. Consolidation isn’t just about cutting jobs or slashing budgets; it’s about strategic realignment. As economist Arnold Kling suggested in a recent proposal for DOGE, meaningful reform requires understanding complex bureaucratic ecosystems and identifying systemic inefficiencies.

Potential strategies for federal implementation could include:

  • Comprehensive agency mapping to identify overlapping functions.
  • Creating cross-agency collaboration frameworks.
  • Implementing performance metrics that reward efficiency.
  • Developing technology platforms that reduce administrative redundancy.

While these strategies provide a broad framework for federal implementation, a more focused example can be seen in Iowa’s Department of Natural Resources, which successfully streamlined operations through a narrower inner-agency efficiency initiative inspired by private sector business strategies.

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