DOGE program

Goals

Drive out waste and fraud, large-scale structural reform, entrepreneurial approach to government, modernize government software

Leaders

Elon Musk, Vivek Ramaswamy

Purpose

Make government smaller and more efficient, cut spending, downsize federal workforce, purge diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives

Full Name

Department of Government Efficiency

Criticisms

Driven by political ideology, claims of fraud not holding up, cuts to foreign aid linked to estimated 300,000 deaths

Scope of Access

Pervasive access to government data (citizens, public properties, scientific datasets, official websites, financial records, classified material, federal contracts), capacity to terminate programs, destroy data, contact every federal employee

Associated Administration

Trump Administration

Estimated Savings Claimed

Over $160 billion

2025-01-15

2025-05-08

2025-05-30

Proponents of DOGE have described it as a project to make the government smaller and more efficient by cutting government spending and downsizing the federal workforce. Critics have described DOGE as a project to make the federal government conform to the Trump administration's political ideology. DOGE has outlined a plan to purge federal agencies of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). The plan calls for large-scale firing, including removal of any employee deemed DEI-adjacent. While [...] executing its plan, DOGE has gained pervasive access to government data. Its takeover of federal infrastructure is such that it holds information about American citizens, public properties, scientific datasets, official websites, financial records, classified material, and federal contracts; it gained the capacity to terminate programs, destroy data, and contact every federal employee, including judges. DOGE's agenda maps onto Project 2025 goals. [...] programs to build political support; budget experts said DOGE cuts were driven more by political ideology than frugality. Musk, DOGE, and the Trump administration have made multiple claims of having discovered significant fraud, many of which have not held up under scrutiny. As of May 30, 2025( DOGE cuts to foreign aid programs have led to an estimated 300,000 deaths, mostly of children.

Dogecoin (DOGE) is an open-source peer-to-peer cryptocurrency designed for sending and receiving digital payments processed through the Dogecoin blockchain network. Dogecoin was developed by software engineers Jackson Palmer and Billy Markus and launched in December 2013 as a decentralized cryptocurrency for instant payments. Dogecoin was originally created as a hard fork of the now non-existent Luckycoin, a fork of Litecoin (LTC). So, as a fork of a fork (of a fork), Dogecoin joined the [...] The Dogecoin blockchain – and the DOGE crypto that powers it – were created by software engineers Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer. Billy Markus worked at IBM, and Palmer was a software engineer at Adobe, and the duo shared a vision to develop a fun and easy-to-use crypto that stands out from traditional (read: “boring”) banking systems while offering near-zero fees on instant transactions. [...] Dogecoin is a cryptocurrency that uses a custom Proof-of-Work consensus algorithm to enable instant payments on its ledger. Dogecoin’s coin price depends on trading activity, technical value, mainstream use, adoption, collective trends in the crypto market, and a multitude of other factors.

## What is DOGE, the acronym? DOGE stands for the newly formed "Department of Government Efficiency" led by Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. The pair of billionaires are tasked with driving out what President-elect Donald Trump refers to as "massive waste and fraud" in government spending, according to USA TODAY. Trump has said their work is expected to conclude no later than July 4, 2026. [...] Musk is quoted in Trump's statement saying the Department of Government Efficiency will "send shockwaves through the system, and anyone involved in Government waste, which is a lot of people!" Trump has said DOGE will provide advice and guidance from outside of the government, and it will partner with the White House and the Office of Management and Budget to "drive large scale structural reform, and create an entrepreneurial approach to Government never seen before."

The software is an updated version of a decades-old Pentagon program, known as AutoRIF, that had been little used in recent years. [...] Trump established DOGE to modernize government software, cut spending and drastically reduce the size of the federal workforce, which he complains is bloated and wasteful. DOGE has said it has saved more than $160 billion through cuts to federal contracts and staff, but it has given few details publicly about what it is doing to modernize technology to make the government more efficient. [...] Under direction from Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), software developers at the U.S. Office Of Personnel Management (OPM) have created a more user-friendly web-based version over the past few months that provides targets for layoffs much more quickly than the current labor-intensive manual process, four sources said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Advertisement · Scroll to continue