“18F was the People’s Tech Shop,” one fired that 18F worker told Wired. ‘There’s a giant hole left at the closure of 18F. Requests from all over the country for help far exceeded the capacity of 18F before the closure. “
Like 18f, the US digital service, which has the Trump administration in Doge Herbenut, saw waves of fire and resignations. On February 14, approximately 50 USDS staff members were terminated, mainly affecting project managers and designers. Last week, another 21 resigned and wrote in an open letter obtained by Wired that Doge’s “scorched global approach drives the people who have the skills to solve the government’s problems.”
ITIR Cole, a USDS project that led with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), resigned from her position last week after a majority of her team was fired and closed from their computers before transferring their responsibilities.
“They are destructive and toxic. I didn’t want to be associated with it, or because of a postponed resignation, ‘says Cole van Doge. ‘The work has changed. I did not enter to work for Elon. I entered to work for the American people. And when that changed, I decided to leave. “
For more than a year, Cole has helped manage the development of the CDC’s disease supervision system, which has helped with the detection and prevention of dangerous pathogens and diseases such as anthrax and Zika across the country.
“It puts vulnerable populations in even more vulnerable situations,” says Cole. ‘The program is likely to die. There are not enough people to work on it. I know that people who are left at the CDC work very hard to find alternative plans. “
Within GSA’s Technology Transformation Services (TTS), which previously housed 18F, the recent shooting urged the remaining technologists. Some employees, say, have been reappointed to more public projects such as Login.GOV, where Americans report to access benefits such as VA services, Social Security and Cloud.gov, which provides cloud host services to other agencies.
“The big change in how people think about things is, why do they have an interview with everyone about their skills and shit if they just waste the entire attachment of TTs?” One current TTS worker says. At the beginning of February, young Doge engineers, such as Edward “Big Balls” Coristine, met with TTS workers, demanded information about their work and sometimes asked to review code.
In a Thursday city meeting, Thomas Shedd, a former Tesla engineer at the helm of TTS, announced that the reduction of the workforce at the agency was not over. Shedd, says one employee of the TTS, “sat there four inches from the screen and read or sounded like a hostage all the time from his pre -written scripture that recorded a proof of life.”
Over the next few weeks, Shedd said, GSA’s technical arm would shrink by 50 percent. Any projects not required by law will be closed, and the agency will prioritize more public services such as Login.gov, Cloud.gov and Fedramp, promoting the acceptance of safe cloud services across the government.
The executive order of the Doge authorized the group to work only at the beginning of July, so it is unclear what will happen to these projects and teams.