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What an AI slopfest of a website.

Also: the "United States DOGE Service"? Really?





That's its official name. Obama had created the US Digital Service (USDS) back in 2014- it was essentially a formalization of the "Tiger Team" that had fixed Healthcare.gov the year before. The idea was that you would take mid-career to senior SDE's, PM's, UX people, DevOps, etc. from industry, and bring them into the government for a 2-3 year period, where they would jump into a specific government IT thing and fix it up, revamp and improve, and then after a few years leave the USDS and go back to industry. It was part of the Executive Office of the President, though it was funded by Congress through 2024 (and then via CR like the rest of the government until the shutdown).

It wasn't a large group, and they weren't really responsible for much so they never got much attention. They would just try and fix a few specific pain points at a time. I only knew about it because one of the best PM's I ever worked for did a stint exactly like it was supposed to work- she joined the USDS, worked for the American people for a few years, then left and went back to industry.

And then on January 21st, 2025, his first full day in office, Trump renamed the USDS to the United States DOGE Service, because USDS had money to pay salaries and since it was part of the EotP he could easily hire new people without civil service restrictions. So he could bring in new people (Big Balls etc.) easily enough. By February, essentially everyone who had been in the USDS on the last day of Biden's term were either laid off or resigned. And since then the USDS has been entirely DOGEified.




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