Elon Musk’s U.S. government department (which is not actually a government department and is supposedly not led by Musk) has made enough headlines for a whole year this week.
Driving the news: Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday to create a system detailing federal spending overseen by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — giving more power to the agency even as it’s been racked with criticism.
- The order also asks agencies to work with DOGE to review contracts and make cuts “where appropriate,” and to identify government properties that can be offloaded.
Catch-up: The order caps off an eventful few days for DOGE, which kicked things off last Saturday by ordering federal workers to provide a list of five recent accomplishments, lest they be fired. Monday saw a judicial hearing into DOGE’s actions, followed by the resignation of 21 technical staffers on Tuesday.
- The week before, DOGE also began posting all the cuts it claimed to have made so far, providing figures showing it had cut billions in spending. These claims were immediately debunked.
- DOGE had already slashed personnel levels, including senior National Nuclear Security Administration workers and USDA officials handling bird flu.
Why it matters: Public-sector inefficiencies are a real problem, and not just in the U.S. (read: Canada). The use of private-sector tactics to find solutions isn’t new, and while there’s a case for running governments more like businesses, DOGE isn’t gracefully demonstrating it.—QH