The recent wave of dismissals across the government’s workforce also hit the United States Department of Government Efficiency Service, formerly the U.S. Digital Service, on Valentine’s Day.
It’s unclear exactly how many employees were fired, although one of the impacted employees publicly estimated that about 50 people were dismissed.
“Due to the restructuring and changes to USDS’s mission, USDS no longer has a need for your services,” reads an unsigned email sent to another USDS employee late Friday and viewed by Nextgov/FCW.
That employee was in the legacy USDS organization before it became the DOGE, and has since lost access to their work systems. They knew of 29 people who were terminated. USDS had a headcount of 200-plus as of late last year.
On his first day in office, President Trump signed an executive order focused narrowly on government tech remaking USDS into the DOGE. But the work, led by billionaire Elon Musk, has thus far been wide-ranging. Last week, Trump put Musk and the DOGE at the center of efforts to further shrink the federal workforce.
Legacy employees of the organization set up during the Obama administration to help federal agencies with their technology in the wake of the Healthcare.gov crash have so far largely been sidelined in the government-slashing work of DOGE. They were re-interviewed at the start of the administration after the organization became the DOGE.
“President Trump returned to Washington with a mandate from the American people to bring about unprecedented change in our federal government to uproot waste, fraud, and abuse,” Harrison Fields, principal deputy press secretary, told Nextgov/FCW in a statement. “This isn’t easy to do in a broken system entrenched in bureaucracy and bloat, but it’s a task long overdue.”
The White House did not immediately respond to questions about who is leading USDS at this point as its administrator or acting administrator, or how many of its employees were dismissed.
Prior to this administration, the tech team had worked on projects like simplifying and improving the Social Security Administration’s website and setting up the tech needed to deliver free COVID-19 tests to Americans.
“If they want a more efficient government, they just fired some of the people most skilled to get them there,” Jennifer Pahlka, civic tech leader who was involved in the creation of USDS, told Nextgov/FCW in a statement.
“I hope this helps anyone who still foolishly thought this was about ‘efficiency’ finally catch up,” said Mikey Dickerson, the first administrator of USDS.
