United States Digital Service Renamed to DOGE
The Executive Order establishes the Department of Government Efficiency to modernize federal technology, rebrands the United States Digital Service, and mandates agency teams to support a Software Modernization Initiative.
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The Executive Order issued on January 20, 2025, establishes the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) aimed at modernizing federal technology and enhancing governmental productivity. The order rebrands the United States Digital Service as the United States DOGE Service (USDS) and creates a temporary organization within it, led by a USDS Administrator who reports to the White House Chief of Staff. Each federal agency is required to form a DOGE Team, consisting of at least four members, to support the implementation of the President's DOGE Agenda over the next 18 months. The USDS Administrator will initiate a Software Modernization Initiative to improve government software and IT systems, ensuring interoperability and data integrity across agencies. The order mandates that agency heads provide USDS with access to unclassified records and systems while adhering to data protection standards. It also clarifies that this order supersedes previous executive orders that may hinder USDS access to necessary information. The order emphasizes that it does not create enforceable rights against the United States or its entities.
- The Department of Government Efficiency is established to enhance federal productivity.
- The United States Digital Service is renamed to the United States DOGE Service.
- Each agency must form a DOGE Team to support the President's agenda.
- A Software Modernization Initiative will be launched to improve government IT systems.
- The order ensures USDS access to unclassified agency records while maintaining data protection standards.
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21 commentsAFAIK, 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'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.
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
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.
After seeing so many failed "modernization" projects that just made things worse, this should be the biggest worry.
Hopefully Elon gets to the Harlem Shake or Gangam style soon.
We all saw what happened to Twitter, Inc, right?
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.
Glad I'm not American, so sorry for you guys for the next four years.
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