A former employee of the Department of Government Efficiency says that he found that the federal waste, fraud and abuse that his agency was supposed to uncover were "relatively nonexistent" during his short time embedded within the Department of Veterans Affairs.
"I personally was pretty surprised, actually, at how efficient the government was," Sahil Lavignia told NPR's Juana Summers.
Lavignia was a successful software developer and the founder of Gumroad, a platform for online sales, when he joined DOGE in March. Lavignia said he had previously sought to work for the U.S. Digital Service, the technology unit that was renamed and restructured by the Trump administration. He told NPR that he just wanted to make government websites easier for citizens to use and didn't really care which presidential administration he was working for, despite protests from his friends and family.
Lavignia said the overall message at DOGE was transparency and a vibe of "ask for forgiveness, not permission." So, when a blogger asked for an interview about Gumroad, he agreed. And when asked, he talked about his work at DOGE, including how little inefficiency he saw compared to what he was expecting.
"Elon [Musk] was pretty clear about how he wanted DOGE to be maximally transparent," Lavignia said. "That's something he said a lot in private. And publicly. And so I thought, OK, cool, I'll take him at his word. I will be transparent."
Shortly after the interview was published online, Lavignia got an email. Just 55 days into his work at DOGE, his access had been revoked.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Interview highlights:
On why he wanted to work there
It's hard for me to think of a better way to have a larger impact as someone who writes code every day and enjoys, you know, designing and building products, web applications, iPhone applications than working for the U.S. federal government.
And Bernie, Hillary, Obama, Trump, it doesn't really matter to me if the work is making it easier to pay taxes or, you know, making it easier for veterans to collect benefits. I like when my software gets used by a lot of people and people send me nice emails. In this case, people weren't sending me the nicest emails, unfortunately. But they also didn't really know what I was doing. They saw DOGE, weren't a fan of certain things that they were associated with. But I think at the end of the day, like, the role of the U.S. Digital Service is to improve the UX (user experience) of being an American, which is pretty exciting. And anyone who lets me do that, I will try to work for, even if my friends and family aren't huge fans.
On the lack of fraud and spending abuse he saw
I did not find the federal government to be rife with waste, fraud and abuse. I was expecting some more easy wins. I was hoping for opportunity to cut waste, fraud and abuse. And I do believe that there is a lot of waste. There's minimal amounts of fraud. And abuse, to me, feels relatively nonexistent. And the reason is — I think we have a bias as people coming from the tech industry where we worked at companies, you know, such as Google, Facebook, these companies that have plenty of money, are funded by investors and have lots of people kind of sitting around doing nothing.
The government has been under sort of a magnifying glass for decades. And so I think, generally, I personally was pretty surprised, actually, at how efficient the government was. This isn't to say that it can't be made more efficient — elimination of paper, elimination of faxing — but these aren't necessarily fraud, waste and abuse. These are just rooms to modernize and improve the U.S. federal government into the 21st century.
On what happened before he was let go
I, probably stupidly, was asked by a — not even a journalist but a writer who just has a blog about my business going open-source, and I spoke to him. He had a bunch of questions about me working for DOGE and I felt that Elon was pretty clear about how he wanted DOGE to be maximally transparent. That's something he said a lot in private and publicly. And so I felt, OK, cool, I'll take him at his word. I will be transparent and sort of "ask forgiveness not permission" sort of thing. I said mostly that the government was not as inefficient as I was expecting.
And then, my access got revoked pretty shortly after. I didn't get notified. I was basically ghosted and I just got an email notification that my access was no longer valid.
Unfortunately, they did not tell me directly that the reason I was let go was because of my transparency. I don't know if irony is the right word, but I do think that it's maybe, as Elon says, the most entertaining outcome is the most likely, and letting someone go for being transparent in the most maximally transparent organization is a little bit entertaining.
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