# DOGE; the department of Government Efficiency **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Tags:** elon-musk\ **Created:** [November 13, 2024, 11:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doge-the-department-of-government-efficiency/1010227 "2024-11-13T23:28:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 21
**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2025, 12:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doge-the-department-of-government-efficiency/1010227/401 "2025-03-14T12:54:39Z")
Thanks. Though I just discovered my probation actually ends on March 24, not March 15. So a little over a week. Not sure if that will insulate me from a RIF, though. I _might_ have a backup plan if that happens. I got a Teams message out-of-the-blue from someone in my previous org about a position opening up for a Lab Manager in an analytical lab. Would be responsible for running SEMs, scanning acoustic microscope, etc. Would love doing it and would be a good fit for me. (I am doing logistics-related engineering now.) Though it’s rather odd, because I thought there was a hiring freeze. Furthermore, wouldn’t I be put on probation again? I’ll see how it goes. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2025, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doge-the-department-of-government-efficiency/1010227/402 "2025-03-14T13:01:11Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > > [@Machine\_Elf](#): > > > > Has there been any explanation about why DOGE felt it was necessary to shut the cards down during their investigation? > > I’d be surprised if it’s anything more than “these are government cards, people _must_ be abusing them”. Certainly. The philosophy here is that government is inherently evil and definitely can’t be trusted. Therefore, the solution is to elect a tyrannical orange ignoramus as your president, and give him unchecked, unconstitutional, and virtually unlimited powers. What could possibly go wrong? 🙄 ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2025, 1:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doge-the-department-of-government-efficiency/1010227/403 "2025-03-14T13:05:30Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > Well, the good people of Idaho should be happy to see Donald Trump fulfilling his campaign promise of eliminating the deep state at the US Forest Service. I expect they will be. I remember visiting Wisconsin, and chatting with my cab driver as he talked about how awful the paperwork was if he just wanted to cut down some trees. It turns out, he was talking about harvesting lumber on federal land. Not _his_ trees. And yes, there is some paperwork to extract resources from the federal government. But if there’s no one to notice, heck, free timber. Getting the nasty government off our backs. > [@Al128](#): > > i think shit will hit the fan, when people reckon that stuff that miraculously always worked, is no longer working … even from not-too-well-liked-agencies, like IRS … sorry, but we cannot calculate your tax return in the same timeframe as always, b/c we are now only 50% of the staff. Except many people will react by thinking, “the IRS sucks. I always thought so, now i know it. Cut it back, toxic thing.” ---
**Author:** ![DavidNRockies](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidnrockies/32/6279_2.png) [@DavidNRockies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidNRockies)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2025, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doge-the-department-of-government-efficiency/1010227/404 "2025-03-14T13:53:04Z")
> [@puzzlegal](#): > > Except many people will react by thinking, “the IRS sucks. I always thought so, now i know it. Cut it back, toxic thing.” _“The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work and then they get elected and prove it.”_ –Conservative author, PJ O’Rourke (deceased) ---
**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2025, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doge-the-department-of-government-efficiency/1010227/405 "2025-03-14T14:00:12Z")
Speaking of efficiency. For those of us that work from home, do you take sick days for a cold anymore? I don’t but the main reason is I haven’t had a cold since I started working from home. Sure I get exposed at grocery stores and what not, and I took a week of sick leave for elbow surgery. But I just don’t use sick leave. Working from home, I don’t get sick. All of the co-workers with kids still get sick. And they would then bring that into the office. Just got a shout out from a person at work. Thinks she might have ‘hopefully’ a small cold. Another fellow worked from home yesterday because his kid was sick. I see this as a huge improvement for productivity for all of us. They aren’t spreading shit around, and can still work. Case in point, 35 years ago I worked for a company at the beginning of GIS development. The place worked 24/7. So somebody would stand up, the next person would take their station. Sick leave? 3 days a year. We where all pretty much sick all of the time. Now the micro-managers and bullies want to bring that back. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2025, 2:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doge-the-department-of-government-efficiency/1010227/406 "2025-03-14T14:03:33Z")
> [@DavidNRockies](#): > > PJ O’Rourke (deceased) Damn, I had no idea! He’s been gone for three years now. I also had no idea he was the author of that famous “… then they get elected and prove it” line. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2025, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doge-the-department-of-government-efficiency/1010227/407 "2025-03-14T15:15:49Z")
It became standard practice in my office to work from home if you were under the weather, but well enough to get work done, for a few years now. It started before covid. (Except for a few people who were mostly resented by their co-workers, who didn’t want to have to sit near them.) My job was pretty easy to do from home, and working from home here and there has been acceptable since… at least 2000. So I pretty much stopped picking up bugs at work back then. ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2025, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doge-the-department-of-government-efficiency/1010227/408 "2025-03-14T15:22:40Z")
> [@enipla](#): > > Speaking of efficiency. For those of us that work from home, do you take sick days for a cold anymore? I don’t but the main reason is I haven’t had a cold since I started working from home. Yes, this is absolutely a factor. My actual sick days are far fewer, and if I am only mildly sick, I can usually still work at least a little bit. It’s also easier to do half-days. I might wake up feeling like crap, but after a few hours, and a long hot shower, I might feel well enough to log on and work for the afternoon. If I had to drive to work, and pay for parking, and all that, I’d just end up taking the full day off. ---
**Author:** ![enipla](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/54ee81/32.png) [@enipla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enipla)\ **Post date:** [March 14, 2025, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doge-the-department-of-government-efficiency/1010227/409 "2025-03-14T18:33:49Z")
For some of us, it’s a must. We have what are called Maintenance Windows for our systems. They are ‘off’ hours of course. So I can get up at 2am on a Sunday and boot systems or install software without having to do a 40 minute one way drive to an empty building. I do it from my home office which is just a loft area in our bedroom. Work does not pay a dime for any of my workspace or computer hardware. When COVID hit, I updated all my stuff. I paid for it. It’s mine, I just log in remotely. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2025, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doge-the-department-of-government-efficiency/1010227/410 "2025-03-16T17:50:50Z")
The Doonesbury comic strip today drew attention to an earlier effort to improve government efficiency; the National Partnership for Reinventing Government under Vice President Al Gore during the Clinton administration. The [Wikipedia article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Partnership_for_Reinventing_Government) says > During its five years, it catalyzed significant changes in the way the federal government operates, including the elimination of over 100 programs, the elimination of over 250,000 federal jobs, the consolidation of over 800 agencies, and the transfer of institutional knowledge to contractors. NPR introduced the use of performance measurements and customer satisfaction surveys, and encouraged the use of technology including the Internet. The Doonesbury strip noted, “You didn’t notice because the process was carefully planned and responsibly executed.” Unlike the deliberate clusterfuck that is the Trump administration. ---
**Author:** ![wguy123](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wguy123/32/3161_2.png) [@wguy123](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wguy123)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2025, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doge-the-department-of-government-efficiency/1010227/411 "2025-04-05T01:23:53Z")
Guys, breaking news here: DOGE saved $1,000,000. Yes, one MILLION dollars! At this rate, the annual nation spending deficit should be wiped out in a couple million years. You are hard pressed to find any news about the stock market’s nose dive on the main Fox News webpage (seriously, go look), but DOGE finding a few sticky cents in Vance’s couch cushions is above the fold headline news. > **[DOGE says GSA saving $1M by converting decades-old information storage...](https://www.foxnews.com/politics/doge-says-gsa-saving-1-million-converting-decades-old-information-storage-technology-digital-records)** > > DOGE on Friday said the General Services Administration is saving $1 million by converting magnetic tapes to permanent modern digital records. ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2025, 1:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doge-the-department-of-government-efficiency/1010227/412 "2025-04-05T01:32:01Z")
I wonder if and for how long the GSA has been asking Congress for the funds to upgrade their information storage technology. But such questions are better left unasked… ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2025, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doge-the-department-of-government-efficiency/1010227/413 "2025-04-05T01:33:48Z")
That so-called news is such a nothingburger that a Google News search only finds it reported by Fox News (and even there, reading it requires a Fox News login). It _is_ the kind of stuff that ought to happen regularly but does require spending some money to accomplish. And that’s the thing; DOGE is mostly about firing government employees but that’s not the best way to accomplish savings. ---
**Author:** ![wguy123](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wguy123/32/3161_2.png) [@wguy123](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wguy123)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2025, 1:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doge-the-department-of-government-efficiency/1010227/414 "2025-04-05T01:37:27Z")
First of all, I don’t have a Fox News logon and want to make sure no one here would ever think that! 🤮 Not sure why I was able to read it without one. Second, yes, this is a gigantic nothingberder. They are desperate to hide the economic meltdown that is happening and this is their tactic. I’m wondering when my parents and inlaws will learn their retirement accounts might’ve dropped a bit in the last short while. I’m assuming the broadcast Fox News is glossing over this as well. I saw somewhere they removed the stock ticker from their chryon to help hide it from viewers. ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2025, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doge-the-department-of-government-efficiency/1010227/415 "2025-04-05T01:38:15Z")
I really, really, loved this, > “Good work by @DeptVetAffairs,” DOGE said in an X post on Wednesday. “VA was previously paying ~$380,000/month for minor website modifications. That contract has not been renewed, and the same work is now being executed by 1 internal VA software engineer spending ~10 hours/week.” So typical of Musk’s understanding of the best way to keep websites functioning. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2025, 1:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doge-the-department-of-government-efficiency/1010227/416 "2025-04-05T01:39:59Z")
I’m calling bullshit on that one; I _really_ doubt that they replaced a contract worth $380,000 per month with ten hours each week of an internal software engineer’s time. ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2025, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doge-the-department-of-government-efficiency/1010227/417 "2025-04-05T01:43:04Z")
I totally believe it. Now we just wait until that VA website doesn’t work on the rare occasion that it loads. ---
**Author:** ![Ms2001](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ms2001/32/18463_2.png) [@Ms2001](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ms2001)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2025, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doge-the-department-of-government-efficiency/1010227/418 "2025-04-05T05:08:56Z")
This WIRED article has some more details: > **[Inside DOGE’s AI Push at the Department of Veterans Affairs](https://www.wired.com/story/doge-department-of-veterans-affairs-ai/)** > > A DOGE operative at the Department of Veterans Affairs appears to be trying to use an AI tool to write code for the agency’s systems, among other proposals. $380,000 per month is a shocking number. I imagine the requirements for security, documentation, regulatory compliance, etc. add some cost, but you could hire a couple dozen engineers for that price. I have to think that if they were paying that much, they were getting more than just minor content updates on the website. The single engineer might be Sahil Lavingia, described as “a startup CEO and engineer with no government experience” and “the second employee at Pinterest”. He joined Pinterest in 2010, at age 18, and [quit in 2011](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/22/early-pinterest-employee-on-decision-to-quit-before-equity-vested.html). He left to found Gumroad, “a platform that helps creatives sell their work and takes a cut of each sale”. > [@](#): > > In a GitHub ticket viewed by WIRED, Lavingia also suggested abandoning Drupal, a content management system (CMS) that the VA uses for publishing updates and information about the agency and the services it provides on VA facility websites. “I think we should consider removing Drupal as part of our workflow, and all content should just live in the codebase,” he wrote. > > Sources say that the regular office administrators and health workers staffed at VA locations around the country are often the ones responsible for making sure that the content about their facilities are clear and up to date on their VA webpages. Eliminating the CMS sounds like a terrible idea. First, the point of a CMS is to make it easy for non-engineers to update content on a website. Without it, all those people currently updating the CMS would have to, at the very least, become familiar with Git—one of the least user-friendly tools ever invented, one that’s often difficult for software engineers to work with, let alone hospital staff. And those difficult situations are most likely to happen when multiple people are editing the same parts of the codebase simultaneously, which sounds like exactly what he’s suggesting. Second, how is that content going to get out of the CMS and into the form he’s envisioning? That seems to imply rewriting the entire site. Some quick googling suggests that Gumroad has a few tens of thousands of creators on its platform, while the VA has around 10 million beneficiaries. Building something that large is a challenge. Rebuilding it _while it’s still in use_ without major service disruptions is doable, but it’s a big project. It takes a long time, it’s a unique challenge, and you don’t learn how to do it by working at a startup that hasn’t gotten off the ground yet. I wouldn’t be so bold as to think that I could rebuild the VA’s web operations myself, but I suspect I’m more qualified to do it than he is, because I’ve at least seen how it’s done. ---
**Author:** ![crowmanyclouds](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crowmanyclouds/32/19884_2.png) [@crowmanyclouds](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/crowmanyclouds)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2025, 5:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doge-the-department-of-government-efficiency/1010227/419 "2025-04-05T05:13:04Z")
> [@Ms2001](#): > > Rebuilding it _while it’s still in use_ without major service disruptions is doable But, it seems clear, in no way desired. ---
**Author:** ![Zoobi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/13edae/32.png) [@Zoobi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoobi)\ **Post date:** [April 8, 2025, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doge-the-department-of-government-efficiency/1010227/420 "2025-04-08T17:45:07Z")
> **[Trump promises $1 trillion in defense spending for next year](https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2025/04/08/trump-promises-1-trillion-in-defense-spending-for-next-year/)** > > Trump's plan for a huge increase in defense spending next fiscal year would mean billions more for equipment and training. I’m sure this will help. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doge-the-department-of-government-efficiency/1010227.md?page=20) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/doge-the-department-of-government-efficiency/1010227.md?page=22)