I worked as a corporate accountant for 40 years. When I was hired we did everything by hand with big old 10 key calculators, pen and paper. We had staff over 50 with 33 degreed accountants. Also, in the same building we had over 50 IT people that ran programs that were designed and run in-house, an engieering staff of over 50 and a Purchasing Department with 40 to 50 people.

Today, all those departments and people are gone. Huge increases in efficiency related to purchased software provided by SAP and other companies, centralization of services and corporate reorgnizations eliminated the need for large local staffs.

During that time there have most likely not been significant increases in efficiency by any government agency. All of the huge gains in efficiency due to information systems have apparently bypassed government agencies. There are many systems like the retirement system for government agencies that are still being done manually and huge numbers of paper records.

DOGE could do wonders for that if given the leverage to do so.