Dominic Cummings on the Sisyphean struggle of getting things done quickly within a government bureaucracy:
Various media organizations have been leaked an email from me, sent at the height of the covid disaster last year, regarding getting cash urgently to Our World in Data. Tellingly, a ‘Whitehall source’ says this is ‘so damaging’ for Cummings because he ‘is just being very blatant that due process, and procedures, are being thrown out the window’. I do not regard it as ‘damaging’ that I tried to throw ‘due process’ out the window. Sticking with ‘due process’ was killing people. I was right to send this email, I sent many other similar messages on PPE, testing, the Vaccine Task Force (see below), and my interventions saved lives / reduced suffering / speeded vital projects like vaccines. I think that if I had NOT acted like this, it would been unprofessional and unethical.
Operation Warp Speed was perhaps the most successful government program in more than 50 years but it was funded only because the Trump administration and then the Biden administration finagled the rules, almost certainly breaking some laws in the process. But that is sometimes the only way to get things done today, especially at speed.
Gregor J. Rothfuss 