Government Efficiency & the New York City Budget

Questions of government efficiency and policy delivery are front and center in political debates, from DOGE to “Abundance” to Mayor Mamdani’s Commission on Government Efficiency. But what is government efficiency, exactly? And how do we build it?

In city government, efficiencies are often synonymous with budgetary savings created in a given fiscal year. But the annual budgeting exercise—defined by moving target deadlines and complex political negotiations—makes it difficult to pursue longer-term structural reforms that build efficient and robust state capacity. Meanwhile, charter revision commissions aimed at core government functions are similarly constrained in their search for consequential reforms.

This event, hosted at the Rockefeller Foundation under the Chatham House Rule, surfaced debate about the goal of a more efficient government that works for all New Yorkers—and what the Mamdani administration is doing to pursue it.