Ex-DOGE official says government isn’t recruiting enough tech talent

A former Department of Government Efficiency employee says DOGE has fallen short on some of its goals, and that the federal government isn’t recruiting enough tech talent to make lasting changes.

Sahil Lavigna, a former DOGE employee at the Department of Veterans Affairs, speaking at the Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) conference in New York, said that DOGE never acted as a cohesive unit, and that individual DOGE teams worked independently on their own projects.

“I was expecting DOGE to be more like a startup — more like a central organization with a clear goal, all the vectors aligned in a specific direction, a way of breaking up this big goal into subgoals, and making a lot of progress on it on a weekly basis — this sort of, ‘What did you get done last week’ meme that Elon [Musk] created,” Lavigna said on Aug. 15. “But it really was sort of a bunch of people who were just trying to make the agencies efficient in this very broad, undefined way.”

At the VA, Lavigna worked on a “contract muncher” tool to support the department’s goal of reviewing and terminating unnecessary contracts.

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ProPublica reported in June that the AI tool frequently exaggerated the size of contracts that it flagged for disposal. The outlet reported that the “contract muncher” flagged more than 2,000 contracts, and that VA contracting officials have terminated over 600 contracts so far.

Federal News Network first reported in March that the VA cancelled contracts with six companies tasked with supporting the rollout of its new multi-billion-dollar Electronic Health Record system.

Lavigna said the contract muncher compiled a “shortlist” of contracts for VA employees to review for possible termination.

“Nothing is getting cut because an AI said to cut it,” he said. “That would be dumb.”

Lavigna said he relied on feedback from VA contracting officers when building the tool, and that it gave them substantially fewer contracts to manually review.

“I said, ‘Hey, instead of having to review 90,000 contracts, you can review these 4,500 contracts,’” he said. It’s kind of a new way of sorting.”

Lavigna said he planned to develop software that would help the VA process benefits claims faster, but he was removed from his position before he could complete the project. Lavigna wrote on his blog in May that he “got the boot from DOGE” shortly after agreeing to a Fast Company interview.

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Few DOGE employees have spoken publicly about their experience.

The VA says it’s reduced the claims backlog by 37% under the Trump administration. In May, the Veterans Benefits Administration brought back mandatory telework for employees who process those claims.

‘I wanted to ship code for the federal government’

Lavigna said he joined DOGE not because of any political motivation, but because of a longstanding desire to work in the federal government. He applied for a job at the U.S. Digital Service under the Obama administration, but was not accepted for a role.

“I wanted to ship code for the federal government. I think that’s a really great way to make the world a better place,” he said. “People who’ve interacted with the federal government and probably aren’t super impressed with the HTML, CSS and JavaScript that runs the place. There’s like 500 million consumers of that software every year, whether you like it or not. You’re forced to be a consumer of the largest company on Earth. So I thought being a software engineer would be a good way to have a positive impact, and for better or worse, this was the path to doing it — DOGE, Trump, etc,” he said.

Lavigna said his official title was senior adviser to VA’s Chief of Staff Christopher Syrek. In this role, he said he had access to massive amounts of data on VA employees.

“I had access to all the HR data at VA  — all 473,000 people, all their Social Security numbers, how much they got paid, all their promotions, all that kind of stuff,” he said.

Lavigna said he also weighed in on the VA’s now-scrapped plans to conduct widespread layoffs through a reduction-in-force. The VA is no longer planning to eliminate 83,000 jobs. Instead, it expects to shed nearly 30,000 jobs by the end of fiscal 2025 through attrition.

The VA has hired more than 14,000 employees so far in fiscal 2025, according to the department’s recent data. The VA fired 2,400 probationary employees, but later rehired about 1,400 of them.

Lavigna said he went through a “political alignment interview” as part of the DOGE hiring process. He said he was asked his opinion on some of the administration’s policy measures, like tariffs, and whether he had donated money to any political candidates.

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“It’s terrible, but this is just the way the federal government works,” he said.

Trump recently withdrew Ryan Cote’s nomination to serve as the VA’s chief information officer. A congressional staffer told Federal News Network last month that Cote’s nomination ran into hurdles over donations he made to Sen. Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) reelection campaign in 2019.

He said some of these screening steps have been prohibitive to getting more tech talent into government.

“If you can’t hire Democrats, guess what? Most software engineers are Democrats, so good luck hiring a lot of software engineers,” he said.

Lavigna described himself as “not a diehard Trump supporter,” and that he volunteered for Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) presidential campaign.

‘Basically, no software engineers work for the federal government’

He added that the federal government “was more efficient than I was expecting,” and encouraged more tech workers to consider a stint in the federal government.

A governmentwide hiring freeze has been extended to last until Oct. 15. Once the freeze lifts, the Trump administration has instructed agencies to only hire one new employee for every four that leave the federal government.

“Basically, no software engineers work for the federal government,  which is kind of a problem, because it makes it really hard to ship good software,” Lavigna said.

Lavigna said he and VA Chief Technology Officer Charles Worthington met with acting DOGE Administrator Amy Gleason for approval to hire more software developers.  Beyond that interaction, Lavigna said he had very little interaction with senior DOGE leaders.

“Elon was not really involved with DOGE, to be honest. He was really just kind of like a figurehead,” he said.

Under the Biden administration, the VA spearheaded a “Tech to Gov” initiative to recruit private-sector tech workers to join the federal government, at a time when many tech companies were laying off staff.

In 2023, VA approved a Special Salary Rate to narrow the pay gap between the private sector and the federal government.

The Trump administration has recruited many tech executives to lead certain agencies. But many rank-and-file federal tech workers have accepted voluntary separation incentives, or been fired or laid off.

Lavignia said he disagreed with the General Services Administration’s decision to shutter its tech shop 18F and lay off its employees.

The layoffs occurred shortly after Musk posted on X that the organization had been “deleted,” over its role in helping the IRS launch Direct File, its free, online tax filing platform.

“I certainly think we should hire more software engineers for the federal government, including a lot of the people who worked at 18F. I don’t know why that decision was made. I don’t agree with it. And actually, they shipped a lot of really cool software,” Lavigna said.

Despite his concerns that DOGE lacked a government-wide focus, Lavignia said tech officials now have a greater role in agency decision-making under DOGE, compared to its predecessor, the U.S. Digital Service.

“USDS 1.0 had basically no power. You know, software engineers have very low credibility in the federal government, which is unfortunate, because they should have the most,” he said.

However, Lavigna said media reports have overplayed DOGE’s level of influence in the Trump administration.

“They’ve done a very good job of making DOGE feel super powerful, even though we have literally zero authority to do anything besides be an advisory body,” he said.

Despite being fired from DOGE, Lavigna said he had a positive experience working for the VA, and said he would consider joining the federal government for another tour of duty.

“I’d love to do this every four years for the rest of my life, because I think there’s a huge amount of value to be had by just trying to make the system better,” he said.

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