DOGE Is Putting Major Government Efficiency Projects at Risk

Since Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency took over important government technology teams within the General Services Administration (GSA) and what was formally known as the United States Digital Service (USDS), around 200 technologists have either resigned or been fired, jeopardizing about a decade’s worth of work dedicated to everything from public health to passport applications.

The culling of the GSA’s 18F division, in particular, a specialized digital services agency tasked with improving user experience with government services and helping agencies build and buy a variety of technologies, has crippled programs that silently but effectively prepared Americans for weather disasters or streamlined annoying errands, like renewing a passport or filing taxes. Over the weekend, around 90 technologists at 18F were fired via a surprise email that went out shortly before 1 am ET on Saturday.

“It’s clear that what’s been lost is much bigger than a handful of individual interrupted projects,” says one fired 18F worker, whom WIRED has granted anonymity, along with other sources mentioned in this story, to protect their privacy. “An entire ecosystem of dedicated technologists optimizing for the public and supporting civil servants is being dismantled.”

When the 18F team was disbanded, the group was in the middle of working on a number of projects for agencies across government, including the IRS, the State Department, and the Department of Homeland Security.

One of the most public-facing 18F-supported services is the IRS’s Direct File program, which allows taxpayers to file their taxes directly to the IRS for free. Direct File is a joint program with the IRS developed by 18F and USDS before the IRS team was able to take it over. This year, the service is available in 25 states. It will remain active, 18F employees tell WIRED, but the reduction in staff could make it harder to expand it to the remaining states.

Within the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs, 18F workers were in the middle of building a new system that would more efficiently process passport applications. Due to the firings, the bureau “is left with significantly reduced capacity and momentum” dedicated to this work, sources from 18F tell WIRED.

Before the firings, 18F was in the middle of revamping Weather.gov, the website for the National Weather Service, making it more user-friendly and stabilizing its public API, which outside applications use to provide weather information. As of this week, all development on the new site has stopped, employees tell WIRED, and its API improvement could slow dramatically. Weather has been a conservative point of interest for a while now: Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s presidential transition plan, proposes that an incoming Republican administration could commercialize weather forecasting, which has been the work of the National Weather Service for decades. Hundreds of workers for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration were also terminated last week—Project 2025 did call for the privatization of some functions of the NOAA.

“18F was the people’s tech shop,” one fired 18F worker tells WIRED. “There’s a giant hole left by the closure of 18F. Requests from across the country for help far outpaced 18F’s capacity before the closure.”

Like 18F, the United States Digital Service, which the Trump administration rebranded into DOGE, has seen waves of firings and resignations. On February 14, around 50 USDS staffers were terminated, primarily affecting project managers and designers. Last week, another 21 resigned, writing in an open letter obtained by WIRED that DOGE’s “scorched earth approach is driving away the people who actually have the skills to fix the government’s problems.”

Itir Cole, a USDS project lead with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), resigned from her position last week after a majority of her team was fired and locked out of their computers before they could pass along their responsibilities.

“They’re destructive and toxic. I didn’t want to be associated with it or have entanglements because of a deferred resignation,” Cole says of DOGE. “The job changed. I didn’t sign up to work for Elon. I signed up to work for the American people. And when that changed I decided to leave.”

For more than a year, Cole helped manage the development of the CDC’s Disease Surveillance system, which aided in the tracking and prevention of dangerous pathogens and illnesses like Anthrax and Zika across the country.

“It puts vulnerable populations into even more vulnerable situations,” says Cole. “The program is probably going to die. There aren’t enough people to work on it. I know folks who are left over at the CDC are working very hard to find alternative plans.”

Inside GSA’s Technology Transformation Services (TTS), which formerly housed 18F, the recent firings have spooked the remaining technologists. Some employees, sources tell WIRED, have been reassigned to more public-facing projects like Login.gov, where Americans sign in to access benefits like VA services, Social Security, and Cloud.gov, which offers cloud hosting services to other agencies.

“The big change in how people are thinking about things is, why did they interview everyone about their skills and shit if they are just lopping off entire appendages of TTS?” one current TTS worker says. In early February, young DOGE engineers, like Edward “Big Balls” Coristine, met with TTS workers, demanding information on their work and sometimes asking to review code.

In a Thursday town hall meeting, Thomas Shedd, a former Tesla engineer now at the helm of TTS, announced that the workforce reductions at the agency weren’t over. Shedd, says one TTS employee, “sat there four inches from the screen reading the entire time from his prewritten script and looked/sounded like a hostage recording a proof-of-life video.”

Over the next few weeks, Shedd said, GSA’s tech arm would shrink by 50 percent. Any projects not required by law would be shut down, and the agency would prioritize more public-facing services like Login.gov, Cloud.gov, and FedRAMP, which promotes the adoption of secure cloud services across government.

The DOGE executive order has authorized the group to operate only through the beginning of July, so it’s unclear what will then happen to these projects and teams.