Elon Musk’s newly established Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been closed, eight months before its mandatory closure.
The DOGE was launched with fanfare in January this year, first introduced as a radical measure to overhaul the federal bureaucracy under the Trump administration, but now it has faded away suddenly.
The Department of Government Efficency short hand DOGE is no longer exists.
The initiative has been disbanded since the exit of de facto leader Elon Musk in May, coming to an end over seven months earlier than scheduled.
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) director Scott Kupor confirmed DOGE’s demise earlier this month to Reuters.
Now many of the DOGE functions have been taken over by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
OPM is the U.S. government arm of human resources and personnel policy manager.
Kupor took to X and wrote, “The Truth is: DOGE may not have centralized leadership under (the U.S. DOGE Service, previously known as the U.S. Digital Service).”
“But the principles of DOGE remain alive and well: deregulation; eliminating fraud, waste, and abuse; reshaping the federal workforce; making efficiency a first citizen; etc.,” he added.
DOGE was officially launched in one of the first acts of President Donald Trump’s second term; it was introduced as a department with a single purpose: to increase government efficiency by cost cutting.
And DOGE while pursuing this policy, laid off approximately 280,000 federal workers by April.
Although Musk initially claimed DOGE’s actions would save the U.S. government at least $2 trillion, he later revised that figure down to $150 billion by April.
Unfortunately, even this lower goal proved to be a massive overstatement.
Reports indicate the actual savings were a tiny fraction of the $150 billion, prompting the government to ask hundreds of fired federal employees to return.
DOGE was initially slated for an 18-month timeline ending July 4 of next year, but in reality its progress stalled after Musk’s May departure—a move that followed a public rift with Donald Trump.