United States is digging it's pit when Presidential Executive Orders take over judiciary and legislature, or pretend to do so. Armed with Presidential Executive Orders, Mr.Elon Musk and the US President have been very vocal how they are out to shut down many government agencies as the agencies are indulging in fraud. While the manner in which American democracy has to be safeguarded from delusional realities of personalities is for the American citizens and judiciary to decide, I have something to say about evaluation, something generic applicable in any context.
I would like to hold a mirror to the claims made by Mr.Elon Musk with regard to evaluation through DOGE initiative because it is absent of ethics and logic. There is need for some form of conceptual based to carry out assessment or evaluation of such large program, often this is part of even assesment of small projects and it can't be wished away.
Mr. US President, bureaucracy is what gives form and stability to governance and it is what ensures a nation survives disruptive governance based on personalities of the leaders. A universal reality for all countries and fatal to assume a few tech billionaires and AI can take over that job.
Mr. US President, the US goverment has in place a process and guidelines for carrying out assessment of government programs and it has been around for decades. Let me briefly indicate of them, so that it is clear that tweets " there is fraud of millions" "shut the program or departments" is not in line with the same.
Let me briefly indicate some of the provisions under USCODE-2023, TITLE 5, Government Organization and Employees - U.S.C 311-315
1. " (b) Identify best practices for evaluation that would improve Federal Program Evaluation.
2. Guidance for Office Of Personnel Management, the director of OPM in consultation with Director of the Office of Management and budget shall- identify the key skills and competencies needed for program evaluation in an agency.
3. Further under section U.S.C 312 it is clearly stated that there is a need for Agency Evidence Building Plan and for which the details needed include:
a) as per 306 section a systematic plan for identifying and addressing policy questions relevant to the program, policies and regulations of the agency.
b) A list of policy relevant questions for which the agency intends to develop evidence to support policy making.
c) A list of data the agency intends to collect for use or acquire to facilitate the use of evidence in policy making.
d) A list of methods and analytical approaches that may be used to develop evidence to support policy making.
e) A list of challenges in the process, this would include restrictions to access to relevant data.
f) Descriptions of the steps the agency will take.
In addition to Evidence Building Plan there is need for details about Evaluation Plan. This plan would include:
a) Description of key questions for each significant evaluation study that the agency plans to begin.
b) Describe the key information to be collected or acquired
c) Set in place a process of consultation with different stakeholders, including the public, agencies at different levels and non-governmental agencies.
Besides all these, there is clear indication as to who can be an evaluation officer.
Mr. President of US, if all these regulations are in place how are you carrying out an government agencies evaluation by a Tech expert billionaire, who has no experience in evaluation or assessment. He has no subject expertise in development, humanitarian issues, or health care. The only evaluation he has carried out is of his own staff and in the process he made the world aware that he is misfit for the same. Evaluation is far beyond saving, for it is just one of the sub-goals.
By the way, none of Elon Musk's team has any of the required skills to carry out evaluation of development or other programs of the government. His team members may be experts or brilliant at many tech skills, but that is not central or crucial part of evaluation.
The simplest indication of bias in the process is the choice of sector to evaluate and Elon Musks existing contracts with the government. Mr. Elon Musk is a government contractor for Military industry, a sector that accounts for significant percentage of government budget. But the sectors choosen for evaluation are those that account for less than One percent of goverment budget. Why?
Military industry is getting away with blue murder, for till today no one has asked the military industry to pay for the environmental damage it creates. Nor have they been charged for resources they use be it, land, water and others. No one has looked into how studies done in civil sectors are feed into military sector knowledge base. This is done as the scale possible within civil sector is way beyond what can be done within military industry be it with regard to use of AI or other products. This transfer of knowledge is done free of charge and military contractors benefits from the same. There is no indication as to how use value of military products is assessed or how field testing is carried out for innovation, how this impacts human rights or sovereignty violation of other countries.
Under such circumstances it is probably the duty of US government is to bar Elon Musk from carrying out any evaluation of government programs for he has considerable grounds for bias, he does not have the conceptual base either for evaluation or about various subject matter expertise, neither does his team.
Artificial Intelligence tools and Evaluation:
Al tools can contribute towards pattern detection or its categorisation which could be used to detect fraud. But fraud detection or corruption is one part of evaluation and without contextual details such information is irrelevant for course correction or improvements something that forms important part and purpose of evaluation.
Mr. Elon Musk has decided in advance his goal is to detect fraud and shut down agencies. If all agency work within a sector or across sectors come to a standstill who will carry out Governance would Mr.Elon Musk and his team be carrying out US governance.
Dependence on AI alone is limited for the following reasons:
a) Evaluation is as much qualitative, conceptual and abstract as it is quantitative. This is the reason statistician rarely do evaluation without having subject matter expertise or experts.
b) If the idea is to use existing digital tools to make up for subject matter expertise, then it is bound to fail. For subject matter expertise is beyond text based knowledge, it is observation made on interaction during live dynamics with different change agents across varied contextual realities. It is this soft knowledge base that set apart relevant and crucial evaluation studies from others.
c) Since none of Elon Musk's team has professional subject matter expertise they probably plan to evolve pattern for finalisation as the data gets analysed. But this will be inadequate for they will have no idea about the confounding factors or actual grading of various aspects to be considered along with interactions of the factors and scope for the same varying across spaces and scenarios.
This is my perspective and I am sharing the same with US citizens and others interested in it. I am doing this because I am tired of watching Delusional personalities creating havoc within US and abroad.
Molly Charles
Comments
Post a Comment