“If there are wonderful instruments, GSA’s job is to buy them, not to make medium substitutes,” a colleague added.

‘Did you use this AI to [reduction in force]? ”Asks another federal worker.

“When will the Adobe Pro be returned to us?” Say another. ‘This is a critical program we use daily. Return it or at least a date on which it will be back. ‘

Employees also pushed back against the mandate for the return to office. ‘How are it going [return to office] Increase collaboration when none of our clients, contractors or people on us [integrated product teams] Is it going to be in the same office? “A GSA worker asked.” We will still do all work on email or Google meetings. ‘

One employee asked Ehikian who the Doge team at GSA actually is. “There is no Doge team at GSA,” Ehikian answered with direct knowledge of the events according to two employees. Employees, many of whom have seen at GSA, did not buy it. “Like we didn’t notice a lot of young children working behind a safe area on the 6th floor,” one employee told Wired. Luke Faritor, a young former SpaceX practitioner who has worked since the earliest days of the organization, has been seen in the GSA office over the past few weeks, just like Ethan Shaotran, another young dog worker who recently served as president of the Harvard Mountaining Club. A GSA employee described Shaotran as ‘smile in a jacket and a T-shirt’.

GSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent by Wired.

During the meeting, Ehikian showed a slide setting the goals of GSA-which set out the current cost savings by the right size, streamline, deregulation and IT innovation. ‘Overall costs avoided’ was listed at $ 1.84 billion. The number of employees who have generative AI instruments built by GSA is listed at 1.383. It is said that the number of hours stored by automation was 178.352. Ehikian also pointed out that the agency has canceled or reduced 35,354 credit cards used by government workers and ended 683 leases. (Wired cannot confirm any of these statistics. It is known that Doge misleading and inaccurate statistics on the cost -saving efforts.)

“Any efficiency calculation needs a denominator,” wrote a GSA employee in the chat. “Cut can reduce expenses, but it can also reduce the value delivered to the American public. How is it captured in the scorecard?”

Ehikian set out his vision for the future in a slide entitled ‘The Road Abound’. ‘Optmize Federal Real Estate Portfolio,’ reads one pillar. ‘Centralize purchases,’ read another one. Subcategories include “Reduce the Compliance Lass to Increase Competition,” “Centralizes our data to be accessible about teams,” and “Optimize GSA’s cloud and software spending.”

Online, employees looked like. “Is Stephen going to limit him to work on any federal contracts after his term as GSA administrator, especially with regard to AI and IT software?” asked one employee in the chat. There was no answer.