DOGE is demanding ‘wins’ from this elite government tech group—while promising major layoffs

Technology Transformation Services (TTS), a high-tech consulting group housed within the General Services Administration (GSA), is tasked with helping agencies modernize their internal systems and public-facing websites. In the past, the group has had the resources and personnel to create innovative new solutions: for example, building Login.gov, a single sign-on system for secure access to government services, along with Cloud.gov, the government’s cloud hosting environment. But now, with Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) at the helm, the group faces a rapidly shrinking headcount and mandate, says a source within the GSA. Two DOGE operatives—GSA acting administrator Stephen Ehikian and TTS director Thomas Shedd—held a “demo day” last Friday where TTS technologists demonstrated the projects they’re working on to the larger organization, says a source within the GSA who spoke on a condition of anonymity. The source says Shedd has been evangelizing to TTS staffers that “shipping and delivery” of projects is the only focus of the group, echoing a common tech industry ethos. Shedd earlier commented that he believed the deep tech talent and government experience within TTS would be very useful in bringing new efficiency to the government. Shedd, who worked as a software engineer at Tesla for eight years before joining Musk’s DOGE, told staffers that he “needs wins” to demonstrate TTS’s value to DOGE leadership, the source says. Last week Shedd held an all-hands in which he read a statement saying that DOGE still intends to cut TTS staff by at least half. TTS staffers have been forced into an uneasy “waiting for the other shoe to drop” mode, according to the GSA source. “Blanket cuts across an organization rarely lead to increased efficiency,” says Kate Green, a former U.S. Digital Service engineer. “When you cut people in large groups, institutional knowledge is lost, those left have to rethink how they work, and there’s a significant loss in trust. This isn’t a recipe for quick wins.” Meanwhile, Shedd and Ehikian have kept TTS staffers busy continually submitting project status reports. But they are not setting new agendas or redirecting the efforts of TTS’s technologists. “The only agenda they really are driving is cutting costs for the most part,” the source says. “We haven’t received any clear guidance on what the goals of the organization are supposed to be after all the cuts—or even what they can be with so many cuts past the bone to the marrow,” the GSA source says. TTS’s scope will likely narrow to a handful of statutorily required projects, including Login.gov; FedRAMP, which standardizes cloud security for federal agencies, and Cloud.gov, a hosting environment for government digital services.. But the line between essential and nonessential projects has yet to be defined or explained, the source says. “The uncertainty around the products that will remain active is making it very difficult for organizations that depend on TTS products to be able to plan,” Green says. “For instance, state governments and other agencies that use login.gov are very concerned about how the product will evolve and they have data privacy concerns.” DOGE already completely eliminated one technology group under TTS, 18F, firing about 70 people including engineers, designers, and procurement specialists. The move was announced during the early morning hours of Saturday, March 1. (DOGE didn’t respond to Fast Company’s request for comment.) The federal government struggles to adopt more efficient technologies partly because of a risk-averse culture, and partly because of layers of policies and regulations that must be satisfied. A charitable interpretation is that DOGE has in mind a “destroy to create” approach to modernizing government systems. But, based on the group’s actions so far, and on the fact that its presidential mandate expires on July 4, 2026, it seems more likely that DOGE’s real agenda is just the “destroy” part. In other words Musk is trying to do the same thing to government that he did with his takeover of Twitter. “Maybe that’s fine in private industry where the tools that you’re working with are Twitter or Tesla and the impact to the public is not as great and lives are not lost,” says Itir Cole, a U.S. Digital Service staffer who recently left the government rather than becoming part of DOGE. “But when you do this for a federal program, if it fails at any point there could be lives lost.”

Mar 19, 2025 - 19:11

DOGE is demanding ‘wins’ from this elite government tech group—while promising major layoffs

Technology Transformation Services (TTS), a high-tech consulting group housed within the General Services Administration (GSA), is tasked with helping agencies modernize their internal systems and public-facing websites. In the past, the group has had the resources and personnel to create innovative new solutions: for example, building Login.gov, a single sign-on system for secure access to government services, along with Cloud.gov, the government’s cloud hosting environment.

But now, with Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) at the helm, the group faces a rapidly shrinking headcount and mandate, says a source within the GSA.

Two DOGE operatives—GSA acting administrator Stephen Ehikian and TTS director Thomas Shedd—held a “demo day” last Friday where TTS technologists demonstrated the projects they’re working on to the larger organization, says a source within the GSA who spoke on a condition of anonymity.

The source says Shedd has been evangelizing to TTS staffers that “shipping and delivery” of projects is the only focus of the group, echoing a common tech industry ethos.

Shedd earlier commented that he believed the deep tech talent and government experience within TTS would be very useful in bringing new efficiency to the government.

Shedd, who worked as a software engineer at Tesla for eight years before joining Musk’s DOGE, told staffers that he “needs wins” to demonstrate TTS’s value to DOGE leadership, the source says. Last week Shedd held an all-hands in which he read a statement saying that DOGE still intends to cut TTS staff by at least half.

TTS staffers have been forced into an uneasy “waiting for the other shoe to drop” mode, according to the GSA source.

“Blanket cuts across an organization rarely lead to increased efficiency,” says Kate Green, a former U.S. Digital Service engineer. “When you cut people in large groups, institutional knowledge is lost, those left have to rethink how they work, and there’s a significant loss in trust. This isn’t a recipe for quick wins.”

Meanwhile, Shedd and Ehikian have kept TTS staffers busy continually submitting project status reports. But they are not setting new agendas or redirecting the efforts of TTS’s technologists.

“The only agenda they really are driving is cutting costs for the most part,” the source says. “We haven’t received any clear guidance on what the goals of the organization are supposed to be after all the cuts—or even what they can be with so many cuts past the bone to the marrow,” the GSA source says.

TTS’s scope will likely narrow to a handful of statutorily required projects, including Login.gov; FedRAMP, which standardizes cloud security for federal agencies, and Cloud.gov, a hosting environment for government digital services.. But the line between essential and nonessential projects has yet to be defined or explained, the source says.

“The uncertainty around the products that will remain active is making it very difficult for organizations that depend on TTS products to be able to plan,” Green says. “For instance, state governments and other agencies that use login.gov are very concerned about how the product will evolve and they have data privacy concerns.”

DOGE already completely eliminated one technology group under TTS, 18F, firing about 70 people including engineers, designers, and procurement specialists. The move was announced during the early morning hours of Saturday, March 1. (DOGE didn’t respond to Fast Company’s request for comment.)

The federal government struggles to adopt more efficient technologies partly because of a risk-averse culture, and partly because of layers of policies and regulations that must be satisfied. A charitable interpretation is that DOGE has in mind a “destroy to create” approach to modernizing government systems. But, based on the group’s actions so far, and on the fact that its presidential mandate expires on July 4, 2026, it seems more likely that DOGE’s real agenda is just the “destroy” part.

In other words Musk is trying to do the same thing to government that he did with his takeover of Twitter. “Maybe that’s fine in private industry where the tools that you’re working with are Twitter or Tesla and the impact to the public is not as great and lives are not lost,” says Itir Cole, a U.S. Digital Service staffer who recently left the government rather than becoming part of DOGE. “But when you do this for a federal program, if it fails at any point there could be lives lost.”