Addressing even one of Donald Trump's massive first-day executive orders is like firing a bullet from an AK-47. But one of them hit me in the gut. he is 'Establishment and implementation of the President's Department of Government Efficiency.''The acronym of that name is DOGE (named after a memecoin), and it's an effort led by Elon Musk to cut government spending by a trillion dollars or two. Although DOGE was introduced as an external body until this week, this move makes it an official part of the government – by incorporating it into an existing agency that was previously part of the Office of Management and Budget known as the United States Digital Service. Was called. The latter will now be known as the US DOGE Service, and its new head will be more tightly linked to the President, reporting to his Chief of Staff.
The new USDS will apparently shift its former laser focus on building cost-efficient and well-designed software for various agencies to hardcore implementation of the Musk vision. It's like a government version of a SPAC, the questionable financial maneuver that launched Truth Social on the public market without disclosing a coherent business plan to the underwriters.
This order is surprising in a sense because, at first glance, DOGE seems more limited than its original overly ambitious pitch. This iteration seems to be more focused on saving money through streamlining and modernizing the government's vast and disorganized IT infrastructure. There are big savings to be made, but there are a handful of zeros short of trillions. As of now, it is uncertain whether Musk will become the DOGE administrator or not. It doesn't seem big enough for him. (The first USDS director, Mickey Dickerson, jokingly posted on LinkedIn, “'I'd like to congratulate Elon Musk on getting promoted to his old job.'”) But reportedly Musk insisted for this Structure as a way to incorporate DOGE into the White House. I hear that inside the Executive Office Building, there are several pink Post-It notes claiming space even beyond the scope of the USDS, including one such note on the coveted office of former Chief Information Officers. So maybe this could be a launch pad for a more sweeping effort that would dismantle entire agencies and change policies. (I was unable to call a White House representative to answer questions, which is not surprising given that there are dozens of other orders that similarly demand clarification.)
One thing Is Obvious – this ends the United States Digital Service as it previously existed, and marks a new, and perhaps dangerous, era for the USDS, which I have been covering enthusiastically since its inception. 11 year old agency started high tech rescue team Saving the mess of Healthcare.gov, the hellish failure of a website that almost derailed the Affordable Care Act. That intrepid team of volunteers laid out the blueprint for the agency: a small group of coders and designers who used Internet-style technologies (the cloud, not the mainframe;); Agile “Agile” programming style Instead of the old “waterfall” technology) to make government technology as excellent as the apps people use on their phones. Its soldiers were attracted by the prospect of public service, often leaving lucrative Silicon Valley jobs. He worked out of the agency's funky brownstone headquarters in Jackson Place, just north of the White House. USDS typically worked on projects that were mired in millions of contracts and were never completed – delivering better results in just a few weeks. it will be Involve your employees in agencies Which requested help while being careful to work closely with Lifers in IT departments. A specific project involved making DoD military medical records interoperable with various systems used by the VA. The USDS became the darling of the Obama administration, symbolizing its association with quiet stupidity.
During the first Trump administration, a clever maneuver kept the USDS afloat – it was rare obama initiative who survived. Its second-in-command, Haley Van Dyke, shrewdly bought off Trump's in-house fixer, Jared Kushner. When I went to meet Kushner for an off-the-record conversation in early 2017, I met Van Dyke in the West Wing; She nodded to me conspiratorially that things were going well, at least for the time being. Nonetheless, Trump's four years somehow became a balancing act of sharing the agency's accomplishments while remaining under the radar. A USDSer told me, “At Disney amusement parks, they paint things this certain shade of green that they want to make invisible so people won't notice it.” “We have specialized in painting ourselves green.” When COVID hit, that became a feat in itself, as USDS worked closely with White House coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx to gather data — some of which the administration was not eager to publicize .
The green color had faded by the end of Trump's term. A source told me that at one point a Trump appointee noticed — not happily — that USDS was recruiting at tech conferences for gays and minorities, and asked why. The answer was that it was an effective way to find great product managers and designers. The appointee accepted this, but asked if, instead of putting “Lesbians Who Take” on the reimbursement line, could they just say LWT?