DOGE crusade against consultancies continues
As the head of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), Elon Musk is now on a mission to cut contracts with consultancies that the Trump team considers wasteful. That crusade has now been directed at firms like Booz Allen Hamilton, Accenture, and government agencies like the General Services Administration (GSA).
In just the first two months of the new Trump administration, there has been more than a triple-fold increase in the number of consulting contracts canceled. These contracts were for services with different parts of the federal government.
Just last week, DOGE gave several agencies just a few days to justify their contracts with 10 large consulting firms. It is not clear what assessments or actions might follow that deadline.
Major consultancies, long under scrutiny for huge invoices at the expense of federal agencies, have gone damage control. In moves made apparently to appease the Trump administration, Accenture announced it was ending its DEI programs and Deloitte told employees to remove pronouns from their email signatures.
McKinsey, for their part, have already been largely black listed from any US federal government contracts after being force to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in various legal settlements related to their work in promoting highly-addictive opioid medications for Purdue Pharma. The firm was also grilled by members of congress for their work with the government of China.
Booz Allen Hamilton
Perhaps no other consultancy stands to lose as much as tech and digital transformation firm Booz Allen Hamilton. The firm relies on the US government for 98% of its contracts, which range from national park web services to defense industry cybersecurity tools.
CEO Horacio Rozanski of Booz Allen Hamilton said in a recent interview that the firm functions more as a tech company than a consultancy, perhaps in an effort to distance the firm from the negative perceptions surrounding consultancies.
Booz Allen Hamilton stock has dropped by around 30% since Trump took office in January, though it has rebounded a bit since the beginning of March.
The GSA
Since Trump’s inauguration, DOGE has taken over the GSA, the government’s procurement arm. It is now headed by Trump-appointed software entrepreneur Stephen Ehikian.
After Trump and Elon’s takeover, around 200 employees resigned or were fired from the GSA, a serious staffing issue that could negatively affect everything from passport applications to public health.
Steven Reilly, the engineering lead for the main text messaging platform built for government agencies, notify.gov, resigned in February from the Technology Transformation Services arm of the GSA after the branch’s new director tried to gain access to the notify.gov website.
Musk ‘deletes’ new tax filing system
One major blow to the Technology Transformation Services division of the GSA has been the disbanding of the digital agency known as 18F. The team included designers, software engineers, and more who collaborated with other agencies to improve public service through technology.
This team had been working with federal agencies since 2014 and was recently developing a streamlined online system for Americans to file taxes more easily and free of charge. That new digital service for paying taxes, called Direct File, is now likely to be scrapped.
Around 90 employees of 18F were immediately locked out of their devices after an announcement from the GSA that their jobs were deemed ‘non-critical’, according reporting from Reuters.
Filing taxes is notoriously complicated for Americans, many of whom rely on paid third party tax services to crunch the numbers. By all measures, the move to scrap Direct File appears to be a clear move away from ‘government efficiency’: In this case, the goals of 18F actually appeared to align with the alleged goals of DOGE.
Musk appears to have had a previous gripe with 18F. Earlier this month he called the group a “far-left government-wide computer office” in a reply to a post on X. He added that the group has been “deleted.”
