President Trump Saves Money Just By Creating DOGE

On his first day in office, President Trump moved quickly to modernize federal information technology, which is essential to the objective of the Department of Government Efficiency's (DOGE) efforts to improve the effectiveness of government programs. His Executive Order (EO) to transform the U.S. Digital Services (USDS) into the U.S. DOGE Service places the operation inside the White House.

The President killed two birds with one EO. The USDS was established in 2014 to fix the problems with the Affordable Care Act's Healthcare.gov system, which was supposed to help Americans sign up for Obamacare but crashed the day the system was deployed. CAGW has been long concerned about the USDS, which created the wasteful Internal Revenue Service Direct File system, as well as the General Services Administration's 18F office that provides funding to help federal agencies with their IT modernization efforts. The lack of coordination between the two organizations has resulted in duplication of services. Changing the mission of the USDS and establishing DOGE at the same time has already made the government more efficient.

The new USDS will undertake "a 'Software Modernization Initiative' to improve government software, network infrastructure, IT systems and their interoperability." CAGW has also been concerned about the need to upgrade IT systems as well as related issues like software asset management. Keeping better track of the number of users and the quantity of software programs in each agency would save money, as would using more off-the-shelf software management systems commonly used by private sector companies rather than creating duplicative government systems.

The USDS includes a temporary organization to conduct the broader DOGE effort that will present its final report to President Trump on July 4, 2026.

There are many proposals for the US DOGE Service to tackle within the federal government to help alleviate waste, fraud, abuse, duplication, and mismanagement, including CAGW's Prime Cuts report which would save $5.1 trillion over five years. The longer-term effort to modernize federal IT systems must work better than it has in the past or the government will continue to operate at a disadvantage and fail once again to become more efficient.

• Government Efficiency; DOGE
• Information Technology