This paper sets out a vision for a progressive alternative to DOGE, the US Department of Government Efficiency. The questions DOGE asks are good ones: how can governments reduce waste, inefficiency and unnecessary bureaucracy. But the answers have been poorly thought out and implemented. This paper makes the case for a different approach – a department instead organised around intelligence, meshes (linking multiple tiers of government, both vertically and horizontally) and a movement. This might be called the Ministry of Value and Efficiency (MOVE).

The paper sets out how MOVE would work and the principles it should use to save money but also avoid harmful cuts (including boomerang cuts that end up creating higher costs). It describes how to connect a central team to a distributed movement that taps into collective intelligence, both inside and outside the bureaucracy, to generate options for reducing waste and improving public value, managing portfolios of projects, and acting in a more organic, biological way rather than the crude mechanistic methods of DOGE.

It explores a policy area that would give citizens a greater say in how the state is shaped, achieving a more diverse and inclusive influence on central government. It puts forward an approach that is radically inclusive, including voices that would otherwise be left behind. Fairer use of taxes and ensuring spending goes to the frontline where the public can most benefit from them would also amount to a more just fiscal policy.