[chevman]

For anyone that's been in corp/BigCo land for some time, this is the typical corp reboot playbook.

Pause all hiring, freeze travel and other casual expenditures, relook at all major initiatives/projects/programs, etc.

Definitely something (IMHO) worth doing every 5-7 years in any environment. Can't imagine what it will uncover in government where I'm guessing it hasn't happened in much longer in most cases.

[lanstin]

Having worked in big corporations and been married to and friends with a number of NIH folks, I can assure you that the government has 10x the openness of even the most transparent corporation, has a bunch of people trying to maximize the return on all expenditures related to their research, fanatical abilities to repair and reuse equipment for new things, and a base line of people who have consciously dedicated to service for the country rather than maximizing their personal prestige and wealth.

Their budgets are debated in TV. Imagine that in a big corp. it is simply false to say this organized attack on research is anything than a spasm of anti-science ideology.

[ross23]

While I agree with the sentiment that continual evaluation of how any organization operates is a good thing, there is an extensive corpus of studies on the fallacies of treating the management of public services like private business.

There is a good reason why there isn’t much (successful) precedent around this type of thing being done before.

[txomon]

I would argue with that looking at Argentina. I do see however there is not enough data to be biased against any side, but disruptive changes in management are in my perception more effective on changing the status quo.

Achieving change against current incentives with politically mindful measures I'd say is very time consuming and slow.

In regards to your point I agree that treating public services as companies that can't be running at a loss is been demonstrated to be bad, but there is a fine line between trying to make public services profitable VS trying to make them more efficient.

[shigawire]

Using Argentina as an example is wild. They have a pretty singular situation.

[travisporter]

Agree with pausing hiring and causal expenditures. Why block external communication? What does that do