Canadian DOGE? How Canada Succeeded Where DOGE is Failing

Summary

Bulwark Takes: Canadian DOGE? How Canada Succeeded Where DOGE is Failing

Host: Sam Stein
Guest: Tony Altomore, Strategy Consultant
Release Date: February 26, 2025

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Introduction

In this episode of Bulwark Takes, host Sam Stein engages in a deep discussion with Tony Altomore, a strategy consultant with a rich background in both the private sector and government consulting. The conversation centers around Tony's pivotal role in leading a government cost-reduction initiative in Canada and contrasts it with the current efforts of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) in the United States.

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Tony Altomore's Background (01:25 - 03:00)

Tony Altomore shares his diverse career trajectory, starting from his undergraduate studies to his tenure as an investment banker with the USC Trojans. He transitioned to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), where he worked both domestically and internationally on the business side. After earning an MBA from Wharton, Tony worked with major consulting firms like Booz Allen and Deloitte before establishing his own consultancy.

Tony Altomore (03:03): “The best people anywhere were at CIA.”

Tony humorously compares his time at the CIA to the television show Alias, highlighting the complexity and often mundane reality of intelligence work.

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Canadian Government Cost Reduction Initiative (03:00 - 06:54)

Tony delves into his involvement with a cost-reduction project spearheaded by Deloitte for the Conservative Prime Minister of Canada between 2011-2012. The initiative aimed to trim the government budget while minimizing the impact on citizens. The project structure included a central team of seven consultants working alongside 120 project members from various government agencies.

Tony Altomore (05:55): “The two pieces were 5% and 10%.”

Tony explains that each agency was tasked with identifying areas to reduce costs by 5% and 10%. Importantly, decisions were not made unilaterally by consultants but involved elected leaders and a bipartisan committee, ensuring buy-in from both political parties.

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Process and Implementation (06:54 - 13:25)

The success of the Canadian initiative hinged on collaborative efforts and empowering internal task forces within each agency. Tony emphasizes the importance of working with experienced government personnel rather than imposing external decisions.

Tony Altomore (08:31): “With governments, it's not about cash flow, it's about, about spend.”

An illustrative example Tony provides involves streamlining database access within a security agency, where his team identified inefficiencies without overstepping into sensitive areas. This contrasted sharply with DOGE's approach, which Tony criticizes for lacking expertise and making misguided decisions.

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Critique of DOGE's Approach (13:25 - 25:36)

Tony is critical of DOGE's methodology, arguing that it mirrors ineffective past attempts by administrations like Obama's, which ultimately failed to achieve meaningful cost reductions. He points out several issues:

1. Lack of Expertise: DOGE’s team, according to Tony, comprises individuals not equipped with the necessary skills for effective government cost-reduction. He contrasts this with the highly skilled professionals at consulting giants like McKinsey and Deloitte.

2. Inadequate Access and Security: DOGE’s demands for extensive access to sensitive databases, including write permissions, are seen as both unnecessary and potentially nefarious. Tony suggests that such requests indicate ulterior motives beyond genuine cost savings.

   Tony Altomore (24:44): “One of the things that you have to have when you do projects like this, you have to have enough dialogue to figure out can you get 95% of what you need.”

3. Ideological Motives: Tony posits that DOGE's actions are driven more by ideology than by actual cost-saving goals. He cites instances where DOGE made superficial cuts without addressing underlying inefficiencies, leading to more significant long-term costs.

4. Lack of Transparency and Bipartisan Support: Unlike the Canadian model, DOGE lacks transparency and authentic bipartisan support, making its initiatives vulnerable to reversal and fostering distrust among stakeholders.

   Tony Altomore (33:34): “You need those people to be there to have some kind of authenticity, to be like, okay, this is not, you know, we're actually doing this thing.”

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Comparison with US Government Initiatives (25:36 - 34:24)

Tony contrasts DOGE's approach with previous US government efforts, emphasizing that successful cost-reduction requires:

• Bipartisan Buy-In: Ensuring that both political parties support and commit to the initiatives.

• Expertise and Collaboration: Involving consultants and government officials who understand the intricacies of federal operations.

• Long-Term Commitment: Avoiding quick fixes that lead to more significant problems down the line.

Tony expresses concern that DOGE's flawed approach could tarnish the broader goal of government efficiency, making future cost-reduction efforts more challenging.

Tony Altomore (30:08): “My best case scenario and if you look at the people working on Doge, there are a couple, you know, we sort of, we hear about these clown hackers they have.”

He also highlights the potential financial fallout from DOGE’s missteps, noting that poor initial cuts can lead to expensive fixes involving contractors down the line.

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Conclusion and Future Outlook (34:24 - End)

As the conversation wraps up, Tony remains hopeful that with the right expertise and collaborative approach, government cost-reduction efforts can succeed. However, he warns that without addressing the foundational issues in DOGE's strategy, the initiative is likely to fall short of its objectives.

Tony Altomore (34:15): “So you just, you need those people to be there to have some kind of authenticity, to be like, okay, this is not, you know, we're actually doing this thing.”

Sam Stein thanks Tony for his insightful analysis, emphasizing the importance of learning from Canada's experience to inform and potentially rectify DOGE's current shortcomings.

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Notable Quotes:

• Tony Altomore (03:03): “The best people anywhere were at CIA.”
• Tony Altomore (08:31): “With governments, it's not about cash flow, it's about, about spend.”
• Tony Altomore (24:44): “You need those people to be there to have some kind of authenticity, to be like, okay, this is not...”
• Tony Altomore (34:15): “So you just, you need those people to be there to have some kind of authenticity...”

---

Key Takeaways

• Collaborative Approach: Successful government cost-reduction requires collaboration between consultants and experienced government officials, ensuring that initiatives are both effective and sustainable.

• Expertise Matters: Engaging professionals with the right expertise is crucial. Lack of proper knowledge can lead to misguided decisions that may exacerbate existing problems.

• Bipartisan Support: Ensuring support from multiple political parties fosters longevity and reduces the risk of initiatives being overturned with changing administrations.

• Transparency and Authenticity: Building trust through transparent processes and authentic commitment to objectives is essential for the success of large-scale government projects.

Tony Altomore's insights provide a valuable perspective on how Canada managed to implement effective cost-reduction measures by prioritizing expertise, collaboration, and bipartisan support—lessons that could prove instrumental in addressing the challenges faced by DOGE in the United States.

Transcript

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[Sam Stein]

Hey guys. Me. Sam Stein, Managing editor at the Bulwark. I am back. I am joined by Tony Altomore. He is a strategy consultant at his own firm. He talks a lot about college football too. But for today's purposes, Tony graciously has joined us because he ran a doge like enterprise or spearheaded it in Canada.

[Tony Altomore]

I was, I was part of it.

[Sam Stein]

Part of it. Part of it.

[Tony Altomore]

Oh yeah, we were part of the lead team. I don't, I don't take. I don't want my money.

[Sam Stein]

You don't want to take too much credit. Fair enough. But if we, if we do take them over, over as the 51st state, it all started with you. So thank you Tony. Tony's going to talk to us a bit about how that worked and then I guess the, the most important thing is sort of using that experience to sort of understand what the current doge is doing right. But also mainly what they're doing wrong and what they could do differently to actually achieve the end result which they want. And which I think a lot of people want is actually more efficient, cost effective governance. So Tony, before we get into your experience up north, tell us a bit about yourself. How did you even get to this place where you were consulting? Canada.

[Tony Altomore]

Yeah. So I had kind of an interesting background. I first started out out of undergrad, went to USC fight on Trojans as an investment banker and then actually went and spent a number of years working domestically and abroad on the business side of the Central Intelligence Agency. And from there went into consulting, did my mba, Wharton, was at, at Booze at Deloitte and then tia, now my own firm. But the. Where, where the.

[Sam Stein]

Which one was your favorite? Which one is your favorite?

[Tony Altomore]

I'll tell you. The best people anywhere were at CIA.

[Sam Stein]

Okay, coolest answer you could have given if you had said Deloitte or Ban.

[Tony Altomore]

I would have been like, here's so here. I mean, of course the funny thing about CIA, right, is like half the day you think you're in the show Alias and half the day you think you work at the dmv. You know.

[Sam Stein]

Exactly.

[Tony Altomore]

Amazing, amazing people who don't get credit for what they do. But when, and this is kind of a really interesting situation was Deloitte. And by the way, just to clarify, I do not speak for the firm. I am no longer there. I'm not talking about anything confidential. Project is a matter of public record and you know, just sharing my, my experiences in related to the public record element before anyone. Don't want to make any. Yeah, yeah. But the Deloitte had been awarded a project for the, for the conservative Prime Minister of Canada at the time to help 2011-2011-2011-2012. To help do very much a doge like project. Because they had a huge. And they were doing it for all the right reasons, you know, none of the political nonsense. They were like, we have to trim the budget. So Deloitte put together a phenomenal program and way of running it. And I was part of the central team. So we were sort of running it. We had seven of us, I think on the central team. And there were 120 people on the project. And our goal was to help them reduce their cost of government while minimizing impact to citizens.

[Sam Stein]

Why did they. So I guess let's back up for a second. Why? How did. Because normally you would say, okay, well you have a legislative body, the body's responsible for passing budgets and expenditures and appropriations. Why didn't the Canadian government just handle it themselves? Why did they feel like they had to Turn to an onsite consultancy to do this.

[Tony Altomore]

Well, for the same reason that in theory, the DOGE stuff would work if it wasn't. If it was competent people and not hackers trying to break the government. It helps to have people that are from outside that are experienced in doing this, and we've done that. And you have people inside that are also experienced. So one of the first things that we did as part of the overall structure, by the way, we didn't come in like the DOGE people and just like assume that we knew everything. Instead, we first started every. Every agency created a small task force within their agency and we trained those task forces about, you know, how do you find areas to reduce costs. And we had some themes, right? Like we knew they needed to manage property better. We knew it stuff. I mean, those were all, you know, kind of special things. But in general, we worked with each agency and then each agency came up with their own list of 5% reductions and 10% reductions.

[Sam Stein]

What was your goal going in? How much did you want to cut across the board?

[Tony Altomore]

Well, we. Again, it was. The two pieces were 5% and 10%.

[Sam Stein]

And then across every agency, or was every.

[Tony Altomore]

Yeah, but what happened then is that because one of the big. And one of the big elements that's very different between this thing and what we did is that we don't make. We don't make decisions. We shouldn't make decisions. Right? Those people shouldn't make decisions. Decisions need to be made by elected leaders, by, you know, so they actually created a committee. It was sort of like a central committee that sort of run by their equivalent of like the head of like OMB and CBO kind of combined the Treasury Board and then it had members of parliament from both parties. It had like the senior people of the civil service for the. Depending on which. Which agencies they were doing, the ministers were always in their own meeting and they made the decisions.

[Sam Stein]

What was your time frame? What was your time when you started out? Let's just start out from the beginning. You get tasks, you say, okay, six months. The goal is 5 to 10% agency cuts across the board. You're going to have basically little teams in each agency. You'll have buy in from each party. The cabinet minister will be part of the process so that they will buy in and then you get to work. And what do you do to actually. Because it's one thing to say, oh, we got to, you know, spruce up the it. We got to sell off the properties that aren't being used. Things like that. But when do you start getting to sort of the tougher decision makings and how do you go about. What's the process? You go about saying, okay, no, actually this program can be eliminated?

[Tony Altomore]

Well, so, so there were a couple things. First of all was what we called policy decisions. So for example, one of the things that I had that you know, came across for me was they had proposed the idea of eliminating the gun registry and saving the like, it actually was not very. It's like 250 grand. I don't remember what it was, but. No, it's more than that, I'm sure. But you know, just like, like, you know, the two IT people or something that run the gun range. Okay, that's not it. That's a political decision, not a savings decision. So we did not evaluate those, but we helped look at, you know, could they actually accomplish the things they were talking about. So, you know, one of the agencies I worked with was trying to defer maintenance. Well, you can't defer maintenance because you're gonna have to do it anyway.

[Sam Stein]

Right. So that's not, that's just kicking the can down their head.

[Tony Altomore]

Next year I'm sure it'll be fine in Canadian winter, you know. So, you know, with things like that.

[Sam Stein]

That'S like me with my, my water heater. I know it needs to be that way, but I'm going to spend it this year.

[Tony Altomore]

That's not going to say, you know, of course with governments it's not about cash flow, it's about, about spend. So we help them evaluate their savings, but then we also looked for other areas. So. And I'll give you one really interesting example so you're looking at right now with the dose stuff, for example, there's a huge mess that people talk about with their access to these databases. And it is outrageous that they would want to have write access to the databases that they would have live Explain what.

[Sam Stein]

Right access means you can go in.

[Tony Altomore]

And actually do things in the database. So for example, we're finding out, we found out today's in the news these hacker kids were going in and like interrupting like the payments for people like to get medevacked out in helicopters. Like that is wild. I don't know how like in any other administration people would probably be in like the FBI would be taking you out in cuffs. Not joking if you did something like that. But you know, that's why, that's why.

[Sam Stein]

You put, that's why you put Cash Patel at the FBI.

[Tony Altomore]

But, but I'll give you an example of There was a database, very sensitive database that was. And also, just for anybody who's wondering, we had. We were Americans. And one of the things they loved about us Americans is that we didn't know their internal political drama. We were just there to help them save money.

[Sam Stein]

That's very American of you, by the way. Just having what is the funniest system of governance. Yeah.

[Tony Altomore]

One, one of their security agencies I was working with had somebody trained in interrogation who apparently spent the afternoon like trying all these subliminal things to like, tease out what I thought about these controversial issues. And they were loved that. I didn't even know what the words were. I didn't even know what they were talking about. They were like. They told. When a guy told, he's like, I'm so glad you're here. So what do you mean? He said they told us they were sending the CIA guy from Wharton who had no idea about our dramas. I was like, I really don't. He's like, I know, it was really funny. It was great, you know, but that was one thing that we. And of course we had clearances, so everything we did was in secret clearance. You know, it was on secret computer. The reports were. But we, we followed like complete protocol for NATO secret documents and secret integration, which is not happening here.

[Sam Stein]

You don't, you didn't, you didn't have right. Access to these things. You had.

[Tony Altomore]

We were, we didn't touch those data. We didn't touch those databases. They. They would give us a copy of a thing and they didn't even want to do that. But in this one agency, very, very prominent, big time agency, I wanted the database of, of all of their case files of everything they had done for like the past two years. And they did not want to give it to me. They did not. This was like, I mean, it was like almost tears in the face of the people. They didn't want to give it to me. But here's the secret. And this is one of the things that if dosh was being done right, that it would do is anytime you have a database that people aren't looking at, there's gold in it, right? And if you have, if you have smart people looking at it, of course smart people are figuring stuff out. But if you have a database people aren't looking at, there's gold in it. And in about a day and a half, I was able to figure out really the core problem of cost of this entire agency to the point where I showed them efficiencies that if they could bring some of their inefficiencies that they didn't realize were there to like.

[Sam Stein]

Give me an example of some things that you did that created more efficiency and that's more save some.

[Tony Altomore]

For example, they had all these different, this particular agency had their own teams that were in every other government agency, and then they build those agencies for the time. And so that was these, these, these case files. So I, I helped them look at it and we found, okay, well, you know, these people do the same thing in two hours that these people do in 35. Right now they're a little bit different, right? Because it's, you know, it's a little bit different. But, but if they can do it in two and they need 35. 35 can get down to 20, right?

[Sam Stein]

You can cut. You can cut.

[Tony Altomore]

Yeah, 35, you can. If they can do it in two, you can do it in 20, even if it's a little bit different. And all of a sudden they, they, and they just, again, these people that were in near tears, they did not want to give it to me. All. It was like a community theater production. Like, they also started leaning in and looking at the charts, like in excitement because actually they didn't even need to cut a lot of stuff. They just needed to be. Figure out where they were being inefficient and make it more efficient.

[Sam Stein]

So as, as you look at your experience in light of what's happening now, I mean, obviously you see missteps. Let's start with what you see that Doge is doing.

[Tony Altomore]

Right? Well, first of all, our process, this was never admitted to me, but I am 99% sure it was made for the Obama administration to do with the US and they didn't do it because the US doesn't like to do things like that. We absolutely need an exercise to fix stuff in our federal government. Homeland Security, who I've done a lot of work with, they're awesome. They have way too many middle managers. At least they always have. Every time when I was there, the idea of streamlining our government, making our government more efficient is awesome. The idea of randomly, you know, coming in, in a rampage ends up costing you more than it does to, to do it. Right. So, for example, when we did these workshops with, with their government people, we were teaching them how to look for things that can actually stay savings, you know, that you can actually have effective, you know, cost process. And by the way, Canada does a lot of stuff way more efficiently than we do a lot of their stuff. In fact, we would laugh we'd be like, can we just bring this to us? Because there's a lot of things that they do great with. And so there's the idea of this Doge project is great. It shouldn't be the people who broke the Twitter search function. It should be cost people who understand.

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[Sam Stein]

So the devil's advocate, let's just take their argument here, which is there have been, and Obama did try this, right? Obama put together a commission to try to, you know, make government more efficient. Bill Clinton, of course, reduced the size of government, was very public about his desire to get whittled down the federal workforce. The Doge people would say, people have tried this again and again. The bureaucracy always stays entrenched. If anything, it grows. If you're going to actually be effective at reducing the size of government, you have to move fast. You have to be indiscriminate. You have to cut first, then add back later if you need to. But otherwise, if you're going to wait it out and do these studies and have a lengthy process where you're bringing in all these different various stakeholders, it's a recipe for incremental change at best.

[Tony Altomore]

Well, and I would say that that's wrong in a lot of ways because actually the cost of adding back is tremendously expensive. Contractors are tremendously expensive. Now, there's some things that are better off being done as contractors, but contractors are incredibly expensive when you have to bring that in. I mean, if you look and I did a lot of stuff to help Homeland Security in there, I don't know, they're like year five, year six, year four, year seven, that kind of area. And you could see the cracks of how they had hodgepodges together. And we're going to be hodgepodging stuff back together to fix the mess that these people have made. And that is going to be so much more expensive to fix. Than if we just been doing it right in the first place. You know, I think that a lot of, again, looking at this from a cost reduction standpoint, a lot of the stuff they're doing is not about reducing costs. The other thing is that when you have people that are not qualified to be doing what they're doing and you're not involving the actual agencies, you end up doing stupid stuff. Like for example, they published, oh, we're going to cancel Westlaw for lawyers. Okay, well, no, not going to work. That's.

[Sam Stein]

No more Bloomberg. No more Bloomberg terminals at Treasury. Yeah, it doesn't really.

[Tony Altomore]

Yeah, I mean that's kind of done.

[Sam Stein]

Doesn't really save you much money. Yeah.

[Tony Altomore]

And you're not. But you're also not really looking at A lot of this stuff is about like caddy. It's sort of like, like, like what if you got the caddiest twerps together and let them just like pick line items as opposed to. Actually let's look at the cost structure, you know, shared services. I'll give you an example. Here's like Canada does. It's so much better than what we do. Think about this from a service end too, because again, one of our issues with efficiency wasn't just how do we spend less money, it's how we more efficient in serving the people. So they have, they have an agency, a federal agency called Service Canada. It's like, like the DMV for the entire government. Like there's one place, it's, there's a phone number or, you know, in the shopping mall, there's like a, a little like a storefront.

[Sam Stein]

Yeah.

[Tony Altomore]

And if you need something from the government, that's where you go. Do you need a, a hunting license? You need to renew your passport, you know, whatever there' and you just go there. Instead of not, you know, Social Security office and the, you know, this office. It's great.

[Sam Stein]

That's the irony of this thing is that, you know, to a degree, if Elon and his Doge Bros have technical talent, it would be in creating that type of system. Right. They can use their expertise, they can use AI, they can try to make those various government functions more efficient and then even creating like a sort of digital help center or 3, 1, 1 for, for the government would make sense. Right. And you take different functions from different agencies and put them all together, but that's not exactly what they're doing.

[Tony Altomore]

Yeah, but except one of the other things. And this is one of the things that, you know, consultants sort of know and people that have worked with government, know is there's a big difference between. And this is. I don't want to sound like, you know, get off my lawn here, but there's a big difference between the, the tech people who can break Twitter and it doesn't matter, and the people who have to make sure that Social Security never misses.

[Sam Stein]

Opinion. Talk about, talk about that. Because everyone's always like, well, Elon, you know, he did the same thing at Tesla. He did the same thing at Twitter.

[Tony Altomore]

Totally.

[Sam Stein]

Twitter's fine. And yeah, obviously it's different because we need FAA personnel to make sure our planes are flying.

[Tony Altomore]

I'll give you another. An example from a different. From a different client. I've done a lot of work in the payroll space, so I know I have some clients that are payroll companies. And one of them was so frustrated because what they felt was their worst product, they wanted to get rid of this product because it was, like, so old. And they didn't think it was, like, as far as their product because, remember, payrolls, it's an IT service that, you know, it's sort of processing your payroll. But so many massive, mega, mega, mega important companies used this product. And they said, we are absolutely not messing our pay with our payroll. We don't care that it's old. We don't care that you don't like it. We don't care that it is the worst thing you offer. Because you know what? Every two weeks, our payroll goes out, and that's all we want.

[Sam Stein]

It's almost a too big to fail thing. It's like, you can't touch these things because if you do, people will freak. And you. That's a critical service.

[Tony Altomore]

Yeah. You can't. You can't risk it breaking. I mean, that's the thing is NASA. NASA can't just fire rockets up and if they blow up, it's fine like that. Just that's. They can't do that. It has to work.

[Sam Stein]

Whereas Twitter. Twitter, you know, he might go down for an hour and life goes on.

[Tony Altomore]

It's fine. Yeah. The space station goes down for an hour. That's a problem.

[Sam Stein]

Right. Why do you think Elon's people want to get the access to these payment systems and to personal information? I mean, there's a lot of. They don't need it.

[Tony Altomore]

They don't need it.

[Sam Stein]

Yeah. So the speculation is that. The speculation is they're trying to. I mean, their public stances. We're trying to root out fraudulent payments, dead people who are receiving benefits. We can't do that unless we get a total insight into the numbers. The more nefarious interpretation is that they want to fuck around with and have control over government payments. And of course, you referenced the piece in the post about. And this is apparently, yeah, USAID basically shut down usaid. They put it under Marco Rubio. Marco Rubio then was saying, look, let's, let's have these PEPFAR payments, let's have these MED back payments, they're fine. And then the DOGE guys are actually saying, no, we're going to cancel that contract and they're in the back end. But I'm just sort of curious, why do you think they want that type of granular sensitive access?

[Tony Altomore]

So here's actually the bigger issue is that if you really after. And by the way, again, I'm all about, let's cut the cost of government, let's make things more efficient, let's audit things and make sure that they're right. Well, if that's what you want, then you're bringing in forensic auditors from PwC. These, these guys don't know what. Because actually if people that are no government finance see the things they're saying and they know, it's like you don't know what those words mean.

[Sam Stein]

Right. And Social Security stuff, where they were just totally off base and had no clue what they were talking.

[Tony Altomore]

No clue what they're doing. Yeah. So by all means, the first, the first way that you know that it's not good intent is that they, they literally don't know what they're talking about. As they keep showing when they come in the, in the press and just sort of demonstrate like, oh, look what we found. It's like, no, you didn't find that. I mean, again with the Canada Project, for example, we had no leaks ever of our internal documents. No, because there were not. Again, one blend. Because it's. Ken, we don't talk to the press because one of the things that we did is we're working with that agency. And so when we found things, well, they had buy in.

[Sam Stein]

Right? That's why they had buy in.

[Tony Altomore]

They watched. Yeah, exactly. But when we found, when I, there were things that I found, I was like, oh, this looks kind of funny. And the agency would tell me, oh, you know, that's a whole nother thing. That's a whole nother thing. You know, we're not doing that. There were other things. All right, I'm gonna wrap him out. The Mounties have like, they pay triple health insurance. They're insured like three times and they wanted to stop doing that. They were like, this is dumb. Can we stop doing this? Because they're veterans and it's. Again, they're covered by like three different ways. And. And I actually gave it to one of the minutes, one of the Hyatt ministers. I said, oh, you know, I put together these awesome PowerPoint pages. He goes, nope, nope. I said, what do you mean? He goes, they are not going to put in the paper tomorrow morning that I cut health insurance for the Mounties. They already have like three. He goes, no, because then they can have three band aids.

[Sam Stein]

You don't do. Not with. It's like. It's like touching Social Security in America. Yeah.

[Tony Altomore]

Even though it was the mountains that asked me. They're like, we've been begging them to stop, you know, because they want to take that money and spend it on Mounties, you know, doing stuff.

[Sam Stein]

Yeah, of course.

[Tony Altomore]

Yeah. So, again, great, great people. The other big thing that I sort of see here, that's an issue is they appears that they really think government people are stupid and are not, by the way. If government people, to those who aren't familiar with the government, if you. If government people give you the impression they're stupid, is because they think you're a pain in the ass and they really want to get away from what you're doing. Like, they are very smart, really competent people. And so because of that, when you assume people are stupid, you do. You don't necessarily do things the right way. And. But with the databases, back to that. Sorry. The. The big thing is you. If you were doing a forensic audit, for example, and you would need that kind of access to stuff, you don't need write access to it. You don't need access to access.

[Sam Stein]

Why do you think they want Right. Access?

[Tony Altomore]

So there's a nefarious reason, and there is a possible. It's a stretch, but one of the reasons would almost be almost kind of an imposter syndrome. And this is an issue that you see a lot of times when people come into projects like this where they don't know what they're doing and they know they don't know what they're doing. And so they try to compensate by saying, we want everything. You know, give us this, give us this. And all consultants are guilty of that to some extent. You know, you're. You're under pressure. You didn't know anything about this organization when they staffed you on it two nights ago. And so you're trying to, like, seem like you know what you're doing. And so you know, somebody asked if you want this or this, you're like, give me both.

[Sam Stein]

Everything, just give me everything I want to see. Or the other alternative is if they won't give it to me, it means they're hiding something.

[Ryan Seacrest]

Something.

[Tony Altomore]

Exactly. And one of the things that you have to have when you do projects like this, you have to have enough dialogue to figure out can you get 95% of what you need. And it only takes them 20% of the effort. So you have to have a dialogue with the data people about what does it take to get this versus that. Because, for example, the treasury payments system, if you were just thinking about there's a lot of value you could get from that. Like, again, if it also sounds, by the way, like people don't look at that database. So that means there's gold in it as far as insights that can be derived that you could, you could get really valuable stuff from. But you don't need, you definitely don't need write access. And they've shown by tampering with people's medevacs. Again, people, quote, people would go to jail for that.

[Sam Stein]

What's your nefarious explanation then?

[Tony Altomore]

That's the nefarious explanation is it's not about cost reduction at all. All it's just about ideology. Gotcha again. You know, it's not about cost reduction because you don't have people that understand cost. You don't have strategy people, you don't have accountants, you don't have government people. You have like the kids who can't make Twitter work. And so that is a sign that, that this is not about cost and it should be about cost reduction. I mean, like I said, Deloitte, I am very confident designed this whole program for the US government. I know McKinsey has repeatedly tried to get the US government to do all kinds of cost reduction stuff. There are all kind. Booz Allen does cost reduction stuff. All I've done stuff for them. They do stuff all the time to make government more efficient, to cut costs. There is, there is no shortage of really great people who can help you reduce costs in this in DC. And so we have 19 year old, uncleared, wildly egregious security clearance risks with like abuse. I mean, I know a lot about the security clearance process and I can tell you that, like, it is not designed for, you know, big balls who got fired for leaking hacked information to have a temporary top secret security clearance. I mean, the counterintelligence releases of this program alone are astronomical. But you do also see a lot of things with what they're asking where I look at. And I think, well, that kind of makes sense. So for example, the personnel lists, people made a huge deal with the personnel list. I had the personnel list for the government. We actually made a better database of government personnel than they had because we were trying to figure out, I think.

[Sam Stein]

The personnel stuff, I understand, I think the criticisms they've endured is why just do a straight hatch, hatchet to the probationary employees, right? Like you're basically cutting indiscriminately and saying, well they're the easiest to cut, let's just cut them. And then in the process of doing that, you're getting people who were just, you know, recently promoted because now they are probationary. So it's not really any.

[Tony Altomore]

You also get big problems. So for example, when I, when I was at CIA, one of the huge issues is that CIA, the bell curve of employees looked like, like a pair of breasts essentially because of the cuts from the, the 90s. That, and then that creates. And, and that by the way, when you have a messed up proportion of.

[Sam Stein]

Distribution of your people, a generation of workers, and then they're going to be replaced by, you know, you've got the.

[Tony Altomore]

Whole thing is messed up. It's a generation to fix. And again, that's where we say, you know, it's more costly to fix than, than if you just left it. So that's. That there's a lot of this stuff that's just not being done from a cost reduction standpoint. And all the, a lot of, I think your viewers, you know, Bulwark Bloomberg folks, I ran a Republican state senate campaign in college. Like, you know, I know the way our, these folks, our folks think is that we want to see Republicans and Democrats want to see efficient, effective.

[Sam Stein]

Well, I think that gets to the first government. Yeah, I think that gets to your first part, which is that one of the ways you guys were successful is that you had buy in from each side going into it. Let me ask you a closing question here and we'll get you back on when we get to this place. But anytime, if you have to sit here right now, how do you predict that Doge ends or whether it's a success? And how do you would you even define success?

[Tony Altomore]

Well, my hope would be that over time the, I fear that they've sort of damaged the brand of cost reduction for the government in a bad way because again, this is not with good intent with what they're doing is not intended to save money. So my best case scenario and if you look at the people working on Doge, there are a couple, you know, we sort of, we hear about these, these, these clown hackers they have. There's a partner from McKinsey who's to have that level at McKinsey you've got to be really smart and really great that's gotten in there. Now their, their top lawyer, actually a friend of mine from freshman year lived down, was a surfer, surfer bro from, from Malibu down the hall from me freshman year. Brilliant guy. So you know, they, they do have some people that are getting in there that, that are, are good people and I think that if you can get more of those good people in, it will really. There's a lot to fit. I, I have to imagine also by the way, that Booz Allen, Deloitte McKinsey and BCG are salivating at the opportunity to fix the messes.

[Sam Stein]

Well, sure, I mean no, no offense, not to cast dispersions, but I think they would like the contracts too to do it. But.

[Tony Altomore]

Well, I've done this for my clients too before where they've done things and I, I saw what they were doing. I was like, okay, do me a favor. And they're like what? It's just save my number, call me when it's a mess and I will help you fix it. And there's, there's more money to be made in fixing the mess than, than cutting the cost.

[Sam Stein]

So do you think, do you think Doge will come out of this with what like 500 billion that they can pinpoint to. Do you think it's going to be.

[Tony Altomore]

Well, first of all, their numbers will be. Their, their numbers are complete nonsense. I saw, I saw one analysis.

[Sam Stein]

There's a major trust deficit already. Like anything they put up, people can be like, are you really representing the truth here? Like, and that's problematic if you're trying to do anything that's cost cutting related.

[Tony Altomore]

Yeah. And you, and the other thing too with cutting costs is that you don't now can one thing Canada that was really good is that once they agreed on the number, and this is by the way a process for you guys listening, this is a better process. Once they agreed on the number, they lost that number in the next budget and so that, that money wasn't there. And then you know, they had, and then the agencies had to get, you know, move the people on you figure out the stuff. You can't really know what you save until the money is not spent the next year.

[Sam Stein]

Right. So it's up to Congress to institutionalize the Doge cuts, and they're still having trouble getting.

[Tony Altomore]

And the other problem is, if you've done a bad job of it, and we know they've done a bad job of it, is that then you end up, you know, Congress can cut the money. Well, then you're actually cutting the money from somewhere else because you're having to also paper over the cracks with contractors.

[Sam Stein]

This also gets to your point, this gets to your point about having buy. And we do need to cut it here. But if you want to make these cuts permanent, you do need to have people on both sides of the aisle committed to the enterprise, because ultimately, whatever you decide right now, it could be undone in a year or two. Right. And that's where I think the Doge thing is going to fall apart, is that if you come in and you're just burning it down and you're saying, I have the best answers and I'm not going to listen to anyone else, and that's that, then you're just inviting the opposition to say, actually, no, you.

[Tony Altomore]

Well, and the other thing, too, on that also, it's not even just buy in, I think, but at least in authenticity.

[Sam Stein]

Right.

[Tony Altomore]

You know, for example, the concern. I mean, they only had, I don't know what. There were 15 people on the committee, maybe, and two are with the opposition party. I mean, it wasn't, it wasn't like a bipartisan effort. But. But just you. One of the issues with Doge 2 is with transparency. You know, you can't do cost cutting in a transparent world because you can't talk. You can't talk. Should we cut this? Should we. You can't. You can't do that. It has to be done, you know, very confidentially until the decision point comes, and then it should be transparent. So you just, you need those people to be there to have some kind of authenticity, to be like, okay, this is not, you know, we're actually doing this thing. We're not secretly trying to just wreck usaid. Right.

[Sam Stein]

All right. Tony Olimar, thank you so much, man. Appreciate it. Thank you. Didn't think we'd be doing 33, 34 minutes on Doge cannabis. This was awesome.

[Tony Altomore]

Sorry about that.

[Sam Stein]

No, no, I loved it. Thank you. We're going to have you back when we get a little bit further down the Doge timeline. Until then, man, take care. Good luck to your Trojans.

[Tony Altomore]

Bite on.

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