The UK must dodge DOGE

Faced with an ageing population, a rising need for social care, a volatile world and stubbornly slow economic growth, there’s no question that government in the UK must become more efficient. But how?

Javier Milei gave one answer on the campaign trail in Argentina, brandishing a chainsaw as he ran for president in 2023. The cuts he imposed provoked a brutal recession, plunging more than half the country into poverty and unleashing an ongoing wave of protest, but the idea still took hold in the US. As Milei handed a chainsaw over to Elon Musk at a conservative conference earlier this year, the tech bro’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was already hacking at the US government. The plan seems to be to embed AI into the services that remain.

DOGE has already amassed an unprecedented haul of highly sensitive personal information about almost everyone in the country, while court challenges to its work continue. How will DOGE combine these previously separate datasets? Will it share this data with anyone else? And what will it mean for individual citizens?

The idea of radically reducing the size of the state seems to be catching on in the UK too. It’s little surprise that Nigel Farage has promised to use “cutting-edge technology” to “deliver real value for voters” in the 10 councils Reform UK now controls. A team of volunteers has arrived to carry out what Reform is calling an “audit” in Kent and West Northamptonshire. But who are these volunteers and how will they operate? What access will they have to residents’ data and how will it be protected? And what happens if something goes wrong?

Labour is in danger of falling into DOGE thinking too. Keir Starmer calls AI a “golden opportunity”, while his technology minister, Peter Kyle, promises a “£45bn jackpot”. The government accepted every single recommendation of tech entrepreneur Matt Clifford’s AI Opportunities Plan, and closely considered proposals to reshape the state from the think-tank Labour Together dubbed – you guessed it – “project chainsaw”.

After years of austerity that have cut public services to the bone, can technology really unlock £45bn worth of savings? As the US turns towards authoritarianism, what are the dangers of increasing our reliance on Silicon Valley? And with US spy-tech already winning contracts to establish real-time data sharing systems in the UK what does this mean for all of us?

Instead of firing up the chainsaw and slashing away at the state, we need to challenge the narrative that all government does is waste money on projects most people don’t care about. Half of UK government spending goes on health, social security and education, providing vital frameworks so we can live our lives. Technology can certainly help us do more with less. But we need to put people at the centre, and not the machines.