Dealing with one of Donald Trump’s massive first-day executive orders is like identifying a single bullet in a blast from an AK-47. But someone hit me in the gut. that it “Establish and implement the President’s Department for Government Efficiency.”The abbreviation for this is DOGE (named after the memecoin), an effort led by Elon Musk to cut government spending by a trillion dollars or two. Although DOGE had, until this week, been viewed as an outside body, the move makes it officially part of the government — by merging it into an existing agency that was previously part of the Office of Management and Budget called the United States Digital Service. The latter will now be known as the US DOGE Service, and its new chief will be more closely linked to the president, reporting to his chief of staff.
It is clear that the new USDS will shift its previous focus on building cost-effective, well-designed programs for various agencies to rigorously implementing Musk’s vision. It’s a bit like the government’s version of a SPAC, the dodgy financial maneuver that launched Truth Social onto the public market without having to disclose a coherent business plan to underwriters.
The ranking is somewhat surprising, because DOGE, on the face of it, seems more limited than its original, ultra-ambitious offering. This iteration appears to be more focused on saving money by simplifying and modernizing the government’s massive and cluttered IT infrastructure. There are significant savings to be made, but a handful of zeros is short of trillions. As of now, it is not certain whether Musk will become DOGE director or not. It doesn’t seem big enough for him. (USDS Senior Director Mickey Dickerson jokingly posted on LinkedIn that “I would like to congratulate Elon Musk on his promotion to my old job.”) But it is said that Musk paid for this Structure as a way to embed DOGE in the White House. I’ve heard that inside the Executive Office Building, there are many pink slips of paper claiming space even outside the USDS area, including one such note around the office that is the envy of a former CIO. So perhaps this could serve as a starting point for a more comprehensive effort that would eliminate entire agencies and change policies. (I was unable to get a White House representative to answer questions, which is not surprising given that there are dozens of other orders that require similar interpretation.)
One thing He is This clearly ends the US Digital Service as it previously existed, and represents a new and potentially risky era for USDS, which I have been covering enthusiastically since its inception. The 11-year-old agency emerged from the high-tech rescue squad that salvaged the mess that was Healthcare.gov, the hellish failure of a website that nearly gutted the Affordable Care Act. This intrepid team of volunteers set the model for the agency: a small group of programmers and designers who used Internet-style technologies (the cloud, not the mainframe; Agile programming style. Instead of outdated “waterfall” technology) to make government technology as elegant as the apps people use on their phones. Its soldiers, who often left lucrative jobs in Silicon Valley, were attracted by the prospect of public service. They worked at the agency’s unconventional headquarters on Jackson Place, just north of the White House. USDS typically takes on projects that were mired in 2-million contracts and never completed, delivering superior results within weeks. It will embed its staff in agencies requesting assistance, making sure to work collaboratively with life sentences in IT departments. The pilot project involves making Department of Defense military medical records interoperable with various systems used by the Department of Veterans Affairs. USDS has become a darling of the Obama administration, a symbol of its affiliation with cool geeks.
During the first Trump administration, skillful maneuvering kept the US dollar afloat – and it was a rare Obama initiative that survived. Haley Van Dyke, his second-in-command, has cleverly secured the endorsement of Jared Kushner, Trump’s internal aide. When I went to meet Kushner for an informal conversation in early 2017, I met Van Dyke in the West Wing; It gave me a conspiratorial signal that things were improving, at least for now. However, Trump’s four years have become a balancing act in sharing the agency’s accomplishments while somehow remaining under the radar. “At the Disney theme parks, they paint the things they want to be invisible with this particular green color so people won’t notice them in passing,” one USDSer told me. “We specialized in painting ourselves that green.” When the coronavirus hit, that became an accomplishment in itself, as USDS worked closely with White House coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx to compile statistics — some of which the administration wasn’t keen on publishing.
By the end of Trump’s term, the green paint was beginning to weaken. One source told me that at one point a Trump political appointee noticed — not happily — that USDS was recruiting at tech conferences for lesbians and minorities, and asked why. The answer was that it was an effective way to find great product managers and designers. The appointee accepted that but wondered if they could have said LWT instead of putting “Lesbians Who Tech” on the checkout line?