The Secret History of DOGE
In political news, many people are interested in the activities of a new “agency” being “run” by Elon Musk called the “Department of Government Efficiency.” Those aren’t my scare quotes, by the way–it’s from the President’s Executive Order of January 20, 2025.
Perhaps the reason that the White House put this “agency” in quotes is that they really just renamed the U.S. Digital Service to the U.S. Department-of-Government-Efficiency Service, which is a real mouthful. But the awkwardness is perhaps not entirely due to President Trump’s actions–the agency was actually started under Barack Obama in 2012 to help launch better websites. Now, the U.S. DOGE Service is supposedly–for lack of a more precise term–doing stuff around the 2.3 million-employee Federal government such as cutting jobs. It is not clear that they have the legal remit to do so. But then again, it was not clear what the U.S. Digital Service really did when it was started under the first Barack Obama Administration.
For more insight, we prepared a video that explains the history in more detail. For our clients, we recommend that the current American government be approached with great curiosity. The patterns of behavior are atypical–and the outcomes may be, as well.
