Updated at 3:20 p.m. March 2, 2025.
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Late Friday evening, the Trump administration, as part of its push Modernize the government with softwareLicensed approximately 90 people from the General Services Administration – all federal technologists whose role was to modernize the government with software. Employees of team 18F, a group trained in the Obama era To build and improve software for other agencies, have been informed around midnight that their roles are eliminated, according to several former 18F workers with which I have spoken. The team members were sent by e-mail to letters of dismissal, of which I obtained copies, declaring that their position “is deleted within the framework of a reduction of the agency in force”. (Last month, Elon Musk alluded to the group’s disappearance when he wrote on X that 18F “was deleted”.)
For some of the workers, it was their second time that it was dismissed in a month. At least some of the 18F probation employees, who have generally been in their role of government for one to two years, had already been dismissed in the mass layoffs of the Trump administration, then reinstated this week, then dismissed on Friday evening, according to the old 18F staff with whom I spoke.
The role of 18F was to help federal agencies improve their digital services. The group has worked on federal and state projects used by millions of Americans. It was, in essence, an internal council group within the federal government, deployed in other agencies to solve technical problems. By acting, essentially, as an internal entrepreneur for the federal government, the team did not need to spend the dollars directly from taxpayers and was rather reimbursed by the partner agencies. 18F worked on projects, especially Direct IRS fileA new service that allows citizens to produce online income declarations; Covid.gov, who allowed Americans to ask and receive free cocovated tests during the pandemic; Weather.gov, which provides weather forecasts and alerts to the whole nation; And a new way to file the complaints of civil rights with the Ministry of Justice, among others. Without 18F staff to continue the work, many of these projects are now in danger, have told me of former agency employees; The current efforts in progress, as with Weather.Gov, will probably cease or will be confronted with delays, and the completed services could deteriorate because they cease to be monitored or updated.
The team was tailor -made for government efficiency and technology, which is in a way the new Ministry of Government efficiency and its allies could, in theory, increase. But as Trump and his substitutes continue to centralize power over government operations, it is logical that Doge would like to reign, or simply Bulldoze, 18F. Thomas Shedd, a former Tesla engineer who is now director of technological transformation services, a IT division of the GSA which houses 18F, praised the team as a “gold stallion” to improve federal technology in a team every hand last month. But during the same meeting, Shedd also described TTS as a faulty start-up. (I obtained a recording of the meeting.) It was the day when Musk, the chief of Doge, made an article on X describing 18F as a “computer office in the far left” and wrote that 18F “was deleted”. This led to the confusion for the team and its partner agencies; At the time, 18F persisted, but his account X disappeared. At 1 a.m. on Saturday, about an hour after the termination of the employees, Shedd sent a message to TTS indicating that 18F had been deemed “non -critical” in the context of the agency’s level reduction.
The Obama administration initially formed 18F, alongside the United States Digital Service, in 2014 to help Healthcare.Gov, a health care market established under the affordable care law. These projects have reduced costs for certain federal agencies up to 50%, according to to a press release from GSA 2016, although the team has struggle To recover your own costs in the past. The previous federal audits also noted that the team had not complied with certain IT regulations. Musk’s commentary on the abolition of 18F previously referenced alleging That the team was “an extreme left agency which viciously overthrew Trump during their first mandate”, and distinguished the “inclusion bot” of TTS, which sent automated messages to an inclusive language in Slack. (TTS removed the inclusion bot shortly after the inauguration of President Donald Trump in January, said an employee to me.)
Jeff White, spokesperson for the General Services Administration, told me in a written statement that 18F had been eliminated in accordance with several executive decrees requiring a reduction in the size of the federal labor. “GSA will continue to support the administration’s desire to adopt the best class technologies to accelerate digital transformation,” he wrote.
The announcement of Friday layoffs was drawn and harassed, according to former employees. TTS workers had already received many messages from the new administration who told me to feel phishing attempts – from a new messaging server, without headrests and feet of standard page, also sent up to 1 am – what makes them on the delayed resignation program, an offer for federal employees to stop ceasing the expected layoffs. Several federal employees have described the emails, which I examined, by putting them pressure to resign. In a message, Stephen Ehikian, the new director of the GSA, stressed that the offer “is real and that everyone must” consider it seriously. He wrote twice that each GSA employee needed to “make the best decision for you and your families”.
In the midst of the word of dismissal, the workers of TTS were subject For brief interviews with the employees of DOGE – who have often presented themselves late and without revealing their last name – by linking the responsibilities of federal workers, with questions such as “what is your superpower?” GSA employees have also been informed that they should work from a federal office, but without specifications from where; A large part of 18F worked remotely. A former worker of 18F said to me: “It’s chaotic, and I have the impression that it is chaotic on purpose.”
The experience of 18F echoes a model of chaos in Doge’s actions through the Federal Government – at USAID, at the Consumer’s Financial Protection Office, at the Ministry of Health and Human Services, and elsewhere. DOGE exposed potentially sensitive data on its website, then fired, then tried to rehthe nuclear security, Bird-Flu, food safety and medical devices Experts. As my colleagues and I pointed it out, Doge has stamped Cybersecurity protocol to access IT data and systems in a number of federal agencies – potentially including sensitive information on American citizens, defense technologies and infectious diseases.
Doge’s actions have been largely compared With the game book that Musk used to decimate and reditter in X: ineffectiveness is the point. Asking workers to resign or justify their work through scrambled and aggressive messages almost inevitably causes exodus and collapse, voluntary or not. But another useful comparison could be the game book that Musk results from space programs for his company SpaceX. Government teams, their staff and the citizens they serve are like testing prototypes of rockets: try a new ship design without connection, knowing that it could well explode and repeat. But in this case, people are on board.
Correction: This article previously destroyed the title of Thomas Shedd to TTS as acting director.