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President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday to set up his Department of Government Efficiency, charged with “modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.”
Billionaire Elon Musk is leading the effort, which Trump set up shortly after the election to slash government headcount and spending. Originally, Trump said that the effort would be advisory.
Now it looks like Musk will have help on the inside, specifically from the U.S. Digital Service, a White House tech team set up by former president Barack Obama in the wake of the Healthcare.gov crash to detail out to agencies and help them with their tech efforts.
That team, which doesn’t have statutory backing, is now named the “United States DOGE Service,” and housed within the Executive Office of the President, per the new executive order. It remains unclear what additional parts, if any, the DOGE will have outside of and in addition to USDS.
The USDS administrator will be reporting to the White House chief of staff — Trump has tapped his 2024 campaign co-chair Susie Wiles for that role. In recent years, the USDS team has boasted a 200-plus headcount. Employees are hired for two- to four-year terms.
Agencies are also getting their own “DOGE teams” of at least four employees, which could be special government employees, a category of employee meant to work in government temporarily to give specific expertise.
The order directs agencies to tap those teams — consisting “typically” of a DOGE team lead, engineer, human resources specialist and attorney — in consultation with the USDS administrator.
Trump’s DOGE executive order also establishes a “temporary organization” within USDS, led by the administrator, to advance the agenda of the president through July 4, 2026 — the pre-set end date for the DOGE.
During Trump’s first go-round in office, some in OMB considered consolidating USDS elsewhere in government. On the table was the question of whether the organization was aligning with the president’s priorities, as Nextgov/FCW has previously reported.
Now, USDS is set to work on a “Software Modernization Initiative,” per the executive order, “to improve the quality and efficiency of government-wide software, network infrastructure, and information technology (IT) systems.”
“Among other things, the USDS Administrator shall work with Agency Heads to promote inter-operability between agency networks and systems, ensure data integrity, and facilitate responsible data collection and synchronization,” the executive order read.
The tech focus may be familiar to the organization, but there’s still potential for culture clash between the DOGE and the existing team. The current mood among those at USDS is uncertain but businesslike and positive, one current employee, not authorized to speak on the record, told Nextgov/FCW.
The order does not mention Musk’s previously stated goals to roll back government headcount, spending and regulations. Trump initially said that the DOGE was going “to dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies.”
The DOGE has undergone some change already. Former presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy previously was co-leading the effort with Musk, although the White House confirmed today that he is no longer involved in the effort.
The focus on tech isn’t unexpected — Ramaswamy previously called efforts to update old government technology “low-hanging fruit” for the enterprise — but it may end up being one of many priorities.
“We’re gonna take DOGE to Mars,” Musk told a crowd in Capital One arena in D.C. today, where he gave a controversial salute to the crowd during his remarks. Mars also got a shoutout from Trump in a speech today after being sworn into office.
Musk founded the aerospace company SpaceX, which is valued at $350 billion.
The DOGE-focused executive order is one of many signed by the new president, including an order rescinding nearly 80 actions from the Biden administration like memos and executive orders, including those focused on diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility.
As for the DOGE, reaping cost savings via tech modernization isn’t a guarantee, and modernization generally takes upfront investment, which could butt up against Trump 2.0’s goal to cut government costs.
Government tech historically has been a nonpartisan priority for presidents on both sides of the aisle. It’s unclear if some of the second Trump administration’s culture war issues will seep into the work at this point, though, as they have with AI policy already. The Republican platform said that former-President Joe Biden’s AI executive order, which Trump has already repealed, foists “radical Leftwing ideas” on AI.
The DOGE effort is already facing several lawsuits. Among them is one from the American Federation of Government Employees, alongside Public Citizen and the State Democracy Defenders Fund. They charge that the DOGE as it is set up violates the Federal Advisory Committee Act.
Although many of the details about the work have thus far been hazy, the DOGE has raised concerns about ethics and influence, especially given the business interests of Musk, as GovExec has reported.
But some lawmakers are already eager to collaborate on Capitol Hill, where a House DOGE Caucus wants to “rein in wasteful federal spending, streamline our bureaucracy and make Washington work better for Americans,” per co-chair Rep. Blake Moore, R-Utah.
Even House Oversight’s top Democrat, Gerry Connolly, D-Va., is “interested” in working with the DOGE on tech issues where there is common ground, he previously told Nextgov/FCW, although he also warned that “we can end up being at hammer and tong because [Musk is] insisting on something that would be injurious to the American people.”
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