The digital service did great work modernizing digital infrastructure of citizen-facing federal services.
AFAIK, it has *never* been stated publicly that DOGE or Mr. Musk would get control of this most essential service, responsible for sourcing identity verification, etc.
There's no relationship between bureaucracy efficiency efforts and the digital service. Indeed, one would have expected DOGE to be injected into the Office of Personnel Management.
It's disconcerting to see such a mismatch between rationale and deployment, particularly for a new agency with no oversight in Congress.
I think there will a be a lot of 'this isn't what we voted for' moments under this new administration, , and that warnings dismissed as hyperbolic during the campaign season will turn out to have been entirely sober and realistic predictions.
They literally published their plan and no one believed them. After COVID my expectations for our country were pretty low, but now they are even lower. My Dad who worked as a public health nurse for 20 years supported this guy who wanted to shut down the DoE and leave the WHO. I just don't understand anymore.
>AFAIK, it has never been stated publicly that DOGE or Mr. Musk would get control of this most essential service, responsible for sourcing identity verification, etc.
The man has been plotting on Signal with a bunch of cronies. Of course, he was never revealing his plans.
But, honestly, this makes perfect sense. USDS is an easy way for them to backdoor their way into the technology environment of the federal government on day 1. He gets a crew of talented people to report to him on day 1 who know the ins and outs as good as anyone in the federal government.
On top of that, after 4 years, they can tout all the successes of DOGE. Hell, they might even claim it saved Healthcare.gov
> He gets a crew of talented people to report to him on day 1
The Digitial Service was pitched initially as a way for technologists to serve the country. The payscale was peanuts compared to most tech companies. I suspect some of the best will leave if the mission no longer aligns with their values, because they certainly weren’t doing it for the money.
It does make sense on paper, but I wonder how effective they will be. USDS never really controlled much (at least when I was there). It was much more about soft power, connecting disparate efforts, establishing best practices, boosting other teams when needed.
The idea that it's a backdoor to government technology is something that an outsider would think. For the record this also happened eight years ago when Jared Kushner tried to put his tennis buddy in charge.
It makes sense as an agency that was already providing consultation to other agencies, and was inside the executive office of the president rather than being embedded in some other agency.
It’s also possible DS had a critical mass of SV people that wasn’t beholden to existing bureaucracies. The structure of the DOGE teams embedded in each agency makes me think that someone thought through this quite carefully: https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/trump-inauguration-presiden...
Absolutely thought through carefully. People who think it's a joke because of the name will probably get a shock. Apparently they've been planning DOGE for months.
We can conclude a few things given this move, which I've been anticipating right since DOGE was first announced. It comes as no surprise. I think Elon's plan looks like this:
1. The purpose of the DOGE teams will be only partly efficiency. It will primarily be about control. Control initiatives might be disguised as efficiency initiatives in some cases.
2. The Trump agenda will be enforced by combining X.ai infrastructure with IT systems at big data scale using small projects. Think Grok reading every email sent by every federal employee looking for signs of subversion, stuff like that.
3. Targeted efforts to replace or augment key employees with LLMs, in particular to speed up approval processes in cases where Congress hasn't yet simplified the underlying procedures.
All this will NOT look like conventional government IT projects that take years and frequently stall out due to institutional inertia. They will be more like lightning strikes in which existing procedures, workflows and software are preserved but rendered essentially irrelevant by AI based automation, and which are forced on agencies by embedded outsiders given carte blanche administrator access before the middle managers even know what's happening. And maybe in some cases without the middle managers knowing what's happening.
Taking over USDS and then inserting loyal strike teams into each agency is exactly the right way to start such a strategy. You don't need many people to inject an LLM call into a teed off communication feed. USDS has people familiar with the broad outlines of the IT systems used across government.
This strategy makes sense for the Trump administration and others. Governments all over the west, not just America, are struggling with civil servants that have gone rogue and just refuse to implement direct orders or actively wage war against elected leaders. Nowhere is this more extreme than the USA, but this problem isn't unique to the right. In the UK recently some anonymous civil servants told the BBC that "there is a mood that we should just pull the plug on [Kier Starmer]". Starmer's "crime" in this case was to criticize the civil service, calling them comfortable with managed decline. I'm not a Labour supporter but he won the election fair and square. It's dystopian that elements of the civil service are openly telling high profile journalists that they are the ones in charge and can simply "unplug" Prime Ministers who mildly criticize them.
> There's no relationship between bureaucracy efficiency efforts and the digital service
Really? I thought much of the value of the USDS came from consolidating technology implementations that were aging and duplicated across different agencies, providing standard platforms and access, etc.
It seems directly related to “bureaucracy efficiency.” In fact I’m sure if you went back to read comments and discussion on previous posts about the USDS, you’d find people clearly referencing this value add.
Last Trump administration, the Digital Service decided it wouldn’t assist in certain DHS operations. I don’t know if that was just family separation stuff, of immigration enforcement more broadly.
That seemed short sighted. The employees can refuse to do something, and threaten to quit. But don’t expect your department to last long.
I have a few friends who were involved in the creation of the US Digital Service, and as it stands it is one of the absolute best parts of our government. Formed after the Healthcare.gov disaster, the USDS brings Silicon Valley tech knowledge to the government in an attempt to ensure that we all have the online government services that we deserve. It's a tiny agency up against a massive bureaucracy that is anything but open to new ways of doing things. And they've made progress, but not enough.
I'm going to try to look on the bright side and say that maybe this means the wonderful people at the USDS are about to get a huge influx of funding and staffing, and will get to better fulfill the promise of their agency. But at the same time, I'm afraid that this White House may not have the best interests of this particular agency in mind.
Fun side story: on my first day working on Barack Obama's presidential transition, I spent about four hours watching a presentation from the Section 508[1] department about how to make screen-reader accessible PDFs. It took three people to give that presentation – one to speak, one for the live demo, and another to advance the slides. It was quite a downshift from the campaign, where we'd moved very quickly to harness the tech we needed.
"Agency has the meaning given to it in section 551 of title 5, United States Code" ... "each Agency Head shall establish within their respective Agencies a DOGE Team of at least four employees" ... "each DOGE Team will typically include one DOGE Team Lead, one engineer, one human resources specialist, and one attorney"
that's at least 500k in salaries even for the lowball public sector, and there are at least 230 federal agencies, which you can be damn sure are gonna interpret this as broadly as possible, i.e. including the subagencies that's 400+ under 5 USC § 551 (see https://www.federalregister.gov/agencies)
nothing like kicking off your "efficiency" drive with a $200m+ expense
"that's at least 500k in salaries even for the lowball public sector"
I'm not sure I agree with the approach, but this seems overstated. At least from an engineer perspective, there are sub-$70k engineer jobs. That four person team could be $250k. Also, they could be pulling that internally instead of external hires.
Those teams will be tasted with heavy responsibilities (or at least workload) and most of them will want to compensated accordingly. Also, even for low paid jobs you're overlooking benefits, pension contributions etc.
While some of them might be internal hires, to the extent that they were previously productive, those jobs will have to be replaced, and to the extent that they were not, they will be incentivized to make broad decisions whose eventual costs may fall upon the public in terms of lower responsiveness or less effective outcomes or the loss of impartiality.
The US government has standard pay tables. My understanding is that the grades are determined by experience. They couldn't pay skilled workers less than their rate.
Some of these agencies have IT infrastructure meant to accommodate thousands of people. Many have convoluted structures to protect data; webs of contractor-led programs that are barely connected. You really think an engineer that will accept 70k pay is going to even understand what's going on?
Was the external DOGE organization, as previously described, supposed to have a digital modernization component? It seemed like more of a project to ‘cut expenses’, like an external GAO.
The silly part of me wants to say they picked USDS because it had a D in it, but I’m guessing that wasn’t it.
Jen Pahlka—a HealthCare.gov rescue team member who helped start the US Digital Service—has been writing a really informative series of posts that summarize what the Obama administration learned from its efforts to make government more efficient.
I hate to be flippant, but it's just abundantly clear that Pahlka is soon going to be the newest recipient of a "fell for it again" award. I'm still an Elon fan at heart, but it's absolutely impossible to believe he's interested in the nuts-and-bolts view of government efficiency she's describing. He's repeatedly said that the problem is the government spending too much money, which he'll fix by finding employees, departments, and regulations to get rid of.
The photo op of the US president signing the country out of the Paris Agreement in 2025, in public, to a cheering crowd is also a great fit for a Mad Max backstory intro montage.
Max stands on a tall wall made of scrap, inside a compound protecting him from the mad man with a bullhorn and his cronies below. The broad chested mad man on the ground belows:
- I know words, I know the best words for I am the most stable genius.
I know Americans tend to be patriots, but also that they often have a misunderstanding of the rest of the western world. I wonder if they care how the rest of the western world views the US democracy (which was never considered to be strong implementation of democracy) and the clown government that is now being installed.
Really? I’m looking forward to finally getting some adults in the room.
It’s hilarious when the campaign is focused on getting immigration, public safety and the government budget under control (all basic functions of government that haven’t been functioning) and people’s response is “i feel sorry for you”.
Musk, who has revolutionized two massive industries, is “serious.” The outgoing administration was cosplaying seriousness. America didn’t want to reelect Trump. They did it because the “grownups in the room” were a tire fire that managed to do almost everything wrong, from immigration to foreign policy.
The digital service did great work modernizing digital infrastructure of citizen-facing federal services.
AFAIK, it has *never* been stated publicly that DOGE or Mr. Musk would get control of this most essential service, responsible for sourcing identity verification, etc.
There's no relationship between bureaucracy efficiency efforts and the digital service. Indeed, one would have expected DOGE to be injected into the Office of Personnel Management.
It's disconcerting to see such a mismatch between rationale and deployment, particularly for a new agency with no oversight in Congress.
No refunds
I think there will a be a lot of 'this isn't what we voted for' moments under this new administration, , and that warnings dismissed as hyperbolic during the campaign season will turn out to have been entirely sober and realistic predictions.
They literally published their plan and no one believed them. After COVID my expectations for our country were pretty low, but now they are even lower. My Dad who worked as a public health nurse for 20 years supported this guy who wanted to shut down the DoE and leave the WHO. I just don't understand anymore.
I totally understand your point, but Musk said this was the end game when he bought twitter.
He wants x.com to be a single monolith “everything” app, just like they have in China.
The idea is to control currency, authentication, identity, reputation, commerce and communication, and to make use of it mandatory.
Imagine being forced to use X. That sounds horrible.
Which quote was that? Not finding anything, but then again I'm not sure exactly how to phrase the search.
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And funnel inauthentic adoration in the general direction of divorced dad billionaires
Musk isn't satisfied with being an oligarch. He wants to be a dictator.
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>AFAIK, it has never been stated publicly that DOGE or Mr. Musk would get control of this most essential service, responsible for sourcing identity verification, etc.
The man has been plotting on Signal with a bunch of cronies. Of course, he was never revealing his plans.
But, honestly, this makes perfect sense. USDS is an easy way for them to backdoor their way into the technology environment of the federal government on day 1. He gets a crew of talented people to report to him on day 1 who know the ins and outs as good as anyone in the federal government.
On top of that, after 4 years, they can tout all the successes of DOGE. Hell, they might even claim it saved Healthcare.gov
> He gets a crew of talented people to report to him on day 1
The Digitial Service was pitched initially as a way for technologists to serve the country. The payscale was peanuts compared to most tech companies. I suspect some of the best will leave if the mission no longer aligns with their values, because they certainly weren’t doing it for the money.
It does make sense on paper, but I wonder how effective they will be. USDS never really controlled much (at least when I was there). It was much more about soft power, connecting disparate efforts, establishing best practices, boosting other teams when needed.
The idea that it's a backdoor to government technology is something that an outsider would think. For the record this also happened eight years ago when Jared Kushner tried to put his tennis buddy in charge.
It makes sense as an agency that was already providing consultation to other agencies, and was inside the executive office of the president rather than being embedded in some other agency.
> It's disconcerting to see such a mismatch between rationale and deployment, particularly for a new agency with no oversight in Congress.
Disconcerting, but not surprising.
There was already a lawsuit filed off the bat challenging the structure of DOGE, so repurposing DS might have been to preempt that: https://www.politico.com/news/2025/01/20/doge-lawsuits-musk-...
It’s also possible DS had a critical mass of SV people that wasn’t beholden to existing bureaucracies. The structure of the DOGE teams embedded in each agency makes me think that someone thought through this quite carefully: https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/trump-inauguration-presiden...
Absolutely thought through carefully. People who think it's a joke because of the name will probably get a shock. Apparently they've been planning DOGE for months.
We can conclude a few things given this move, which I've been anticipating right since DOGE was first announced. It comes as no surprise. I think Elon's plan looks like this:
1. The purpose of the DOGE teams will be only partly efficiency. It will primarily be about control. Control initiatives might be disguised as efficiency initiatives in some cases.
2. The Trump agenda will be enforced by combining X.ai infrastructure with IT systems at big data scale using small projects. Think Grok reading every email sent by every federal employee looking for signs of subversion, stuff like that.
3. Targeted efforts to replace or augment key employees with LLMs, in particular to speed up approval processes in cases where Congress hasn't yet simplified the underlying procedures.
All this will NOT look like conventional government IT projects that take years and frequently stall out due to institutional inertia. They will be more like lightning strikes in which existing procedures, workflows and software are preserved but rendered essentially irrelevant by AI based automation, and which are forced on agencies by embedded outsiders given carte blanche administrator access before the middle managers even know what's happening. And maybe in some cases without the middle managers knowing what's happening.
Taking over USDS and then inserting loyal strike teams into each agency is exactly the right way to start such a strategy. You don't need many people to inject an LLM call into a teed off communication feed. USDS has people familiar with the broad outlines of the IT systems used across government.
This strategy makes sense for the Trump administration and others. Governments all over the west, not just America, are struggling with civil servants that have gone rogue and just refuse to implement direct orders or actively wage war against elected leaders. Nowhere is this more extreme than the USA, but this problem isn't unique to the right. In the UK recently some anonymous civil servants told the BBC that "there is a mood that we should just pull the plug on [Kier Starmer]". Starmer's "crime" in this case was to criticize the civil service, calling them comfortable with managed decline. I'm not a Labour supporter but he won the election fair and square. It's dystopian that elements of the civil service are openly telling high profile journalists that they are the ones in charge and can simply "unplug" Prime Ministers who mildly criticize them.
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> There's no relationship between bureaucracy efficiency efforts and the digital service
Really? I thought much of the value of the USDS came from consolidating technology implementations that were aging and duplicated across different agencies, providing standard platforms and access, etc.
It seems directly related to “bureaucracy efficiency.” In fact I’m sure if you went back to read comments and discussion on previous posts about the USDS, you’d find people clearly referencing this value add.
Last Trump administration, the Digital Service decided it wouldn’t assist in certain DHS operations. I don’t know if that was just family separation stuff, of immigration enforcement more broadly.
That seemed short sighted. The employees can refuse to do something, and threaten to quit. But don’t expect your department to last long.
I have a few friends who were involved in the creation of the US Digital Service, and as it stands it is one of the absolute best parts of our government. Formed after the Healthcare.gov disaster, the USDS brings Silicon Valley tech knowledge to the government in an attempt to ensure that we all have the online government services that we deserve. It's a tiny agency up against a massive bureaucracy that is anything but open to new ways of doing things. And they've made progress, but not enough.
I'm going to try to look on the bright side and say that maybe this means the wonderful people at the USDS are about to get a huge influx of funding and staffing, and will get to better fulfill the promise of their agency. But at the same time, I'm afraid that this White House may not have the best interests of this particular agency in mind.
Fun side story: on my first day working on Barack Obama's presidential transition, I spent about four hours watching a presentation from the Section 508[1] department about how to make screen-reader accessible PDFs. It took three people to give that presentation – one to speak, one for the live demo, and another to advance the slides. It was quite a downshift from the campaign, where we'd moved very quickly to harness the tech we needed.
[1] https://www.section508.gov/
> huge influx of funding and staffing
That would be antithetical to their new name.
It's not illogical to staff up an agency charged with efficiency so you can cut more staffing elsewhere. This is honestly what most SaaS does.
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So is having co-chairs (as opposed to just one)
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Unless they don't determine it to be waste. Then it'd be perfectly in-line.
the USDS is the biggest joke to tech people in DC – just silicon valley more cosplay
"Agency has the meaning given to it in section 551 of title 5, United States Code" ... "each Agency Head shall establish within their respective Agencies a DOGE Team of at least four employees" ... "each DOGE Team will typically include one DOGE Team Lead, one engineer, one human resources specialist, and one attorney"
that's at least 500k in salaries even for the lowball public sector, and there are at least 230 federal agencies, which you can be damn sure are gonna interpret this as broadly as possible, i.e. including the subagencies that's 400+ under 5 USC § 551 (see https://www.federalregister.gov/agencies)
nothing like kicking off your "efficiency" drive with a $200m+ expense
"that's at least 500k in salaries even for the lowball public sector"
I'm not sure I agree with the approach, but this seems overstated. At least from an engineer perspective, there are sub-$70k engineer jobs. That four person team could be $250k. Also, they could be pulling that internally instead of external hires.
Those teams will be tasted with heavy responsibilities (or at least workload) and most of them will want to compensated accordingly. Also, even for low paid jobs you're overlooking benefits, pension contributions etc.
While some of them might be internal hires, to the extent that they were previously productive, those jobs will have to be replaced, and to the extent that they were not, they will be incentivized to make broad decisions whose eventual costs may fall upon the public in terms of lower responsiveness or less effective outcomes or the loss of impartiality.
That GS-8 or whatever making $70k probably costs 50% or double that after benefits
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The US government has standard pay tables. My understanding is that the grades are determined by experience. They couldn't pay skilled workers less than their rate.
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Some of these agencies have IT infrastructure meant to accommodate thousands of people. Many have convoluted structures to protect data; webs of contractor-led programs that are barely connected. You really think an engineer that will accept 70k pay is going to even understand what's going on?
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They can make it revenue neutral by firing the DEI people :)
Was the external DOGE organization, as previously described, supposed to have a digital modernization component? It seemed like more of a project to ‘cut expenses’, like an external GAO.
The silly part of me wants to say they picked USDS because it had a D in it, but I’m guessing that wasn’t it.
The USDS Administrator shall commence a Software Modernization Initiative to improve the quality and efficiency of government-wide software
After seeing so many failed "modernization" projects that just made things worse, this should be the biggest worry.
On the other hand, it'll likely never be finished before the president's term is up, judging from my own experiences with modernization projects.
Not even that long:
The U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization shall terminate on July 4, 2026.
Is this going to be like what happened with NAFTA where something gets renamed with some token changes and then mission accomplished is declared?
> Doge is an Internet meme that became popular in 2013
Hopefully Elon gets to the Harlem Shake or Gangam style soon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doge_(meme)
Was the font always so massive?
No. If the content is thin, make a large headline.
(Worked well throughout Trump's campaign. They even printed it on red caps.)
Nope. That's new. wow. A big change in vibe/look right out the gate. Uggh.
"Big font. Much wow. Big win." - Doge
Not quite, it’s renamed to United States DOGE Service. This will surely help attract top talent.
Surely they’ll have their pick of the 4chan litter.
I have never been happier to not get a job.
Dodgy department
this is the saddest shit, the Digital Service was something good and wholesome and valuable.
We all saw what happened to Twitter, Inc, right?
What a joke.
Jen Pahlka—a HealthCare.gov rescue team member who helped start the US Digital Service—has been writing a really informative series of posts that summarize what the Obama administration learned from its efforts to make government more efficient.
Here's a good starting point: "Bringing Elon to a Knife Fight": https://www.eatingpolicy.com/p/bringing-elon-to-a-knife-figh...
The basic goal of making government work well is (or should be) bipartisan. The nuts and bolts of how you do that are really hard to get right.
I hate to be flippant, but it's just abundantly clear that Pahlka is soon going to be the newest recipient of a "fell for it again" award. I'm still an Elon fan at heart, but it's absolutely impossible to believe he's interested in the nuts-and-bolts view of government efficiency she's describing. He's repeatedly said that the problem is the government spending too much money, which he'll fix by finding employees, departments, and regulations to get rid of.
Reality continues its convergence with The Onion.
The photo op of the US president signing the country out of the Paris Agreement in 2025, in public, to a cheering crowd is also a great fit for a Mad Max backstory intro montage.
Max stands on a tall wall made of scrap, inside a compound protecting him from the mad man with a bullhorn and his cronies below. The broad chested mad man on the ground belows:
- I know words, I know the best words for I am the most stable genius.
It was surreal seeing Fox News have polymarket bets being taken on what Trump would say side by side with him speaking.
And I don’t even know what to say about the president and First Lady releasing official meme coins…
> I don’t even know what to say about the president and First Lady releasing official meme coins…
wait, this actually happened?
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Why was this flagged? Highly relevant tech news.
I prefer when governments at least pretend to be serious.
Glad I'm not American, so sorry for you guys for the next four years.
Unfortunately, most nations aren't insulated from the consequences of what America has decided to do to itself.
With the US freely surrendering much of its soft power to China and Russia (e.g. by exiting the WHO, ...), I suppose it'll a bit more insulated.
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What is happening now will take a lot longer than 4 years to recover from if ever. Just feel sorry for us, that it is just us, which it won't be.
I don't think there is any sort of recovering from this. Have we recovered from the Bush years? Have we recovered from the fall of the Roman Empire?
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Unfortunately I think they are serious, just not about solving the problems they say they will solve.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joV-9FFoA3Q
It's going to be a very memorable four years a lot of us are looking forward to.
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I know Americans tend to be patriots, but also that they often have a misunderstanding of the rest of the western world. I wonder if they care how the rest of the western world views the US democracy (which was never considered to be strong implementation of democracy) and the clown government that is now being installed.
I much prefer it when they are actually serious. Hasn't happened anywhere on a while, at least on national stages
"Glad I'm not X" doesn't matter when the withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement will hit the whole planet.
That agreement does nothing but launder tax money into "green" companies.
We set oil burning records every year.
The people writing that agreement fly around in private jets.
Snap out of it!
We surpassed the goals set by the accord already and other countries ignore it because it has no teeth. Nothing was lost.
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It feels like being on a train about to go over a collapsed bridge. Watching as the first cars go over the cliff.
Which country are you based in, Canada? I have bad news for what’s happening with your government, both related to America and not.
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Serious like Biden preemptively pardoning all of his family and Dr "Gain of function research is worth the risk" Fauci?
Really? I’m looking forward to finally getting some adults in the room.
It’s hilarious when the campaign is focused on getting immigration, public safety and the government budget under control (all basic functions of government that haven’t been functioning) and people’s response is “i feel sorry for you”.
Uhh, ok?
They're renaming a government agency after an internet meme.
There are no adults left. Only a malignant narcissist, and the people willing to feed his insatiable ego.
If you voted for the man, you've been duped.
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The problem is that our government has been merely pretending to be serious while being extremely unserious: https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2024/03/28/....
Musk, who has revolutionized two massive industries, is “serious.” The outgoing administration was cosplaying seriousness. America didn’t want to reelect Trump. They did it because the “grownups in the room” were a tire fire that managed to do almost everything wrong, from immigration to foreign policy.
Sorry that we got what we voted for?
Don’t be.
Democracy is not a game focused on picking the best outcome. Democracy is a game of trial and error.
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(Not mine) This is like buying Twitter and renaming it to X