When the average internet user is asked about “DOGE”, they may think of the popular cryptocurrency with a meme mascot. However, as established by executive order on January 20, 2025, “DOGE” has become the acronym for the Department of Government Efficiency. Originally, this government agency was aimed at modernizing federal technology and increasing governmental productivity.
When logging onto the doge.gov website, the user initially sees a feed of all X(Formerly known as twitter) posts published by the official DOGE account. These posts have a wide range of content, from announcing a leaderboard competition for reducing the most governmental waste to asking the general public for help in reducing waste.
After looking through DOGE’s X posts, the user clicks on the “Savings” tab. This tab details what DOGE has saved the taxpayer money on. Scrolling down, the user sees a leaderboard titled the “Agency Efficiency Leaderboard”. This leaderboard shows which government agency has had the most and least waste eliminated. Scrolling down even further, the user sees what DOGE calls a “Wall of Receipts”. Each of the entries into this table shows exactly what DOGE has found and determined as waste and what they have done to save money after finding it. Finally, scrolling down to the bottom of the page, the user will find the “Real Estate” section of the Wall of Receipts. This details what leases and property have been identified and what has been changed in terms of leases and property ownership
The next page of doge.gov is the spending page. When initially visiting this site, the user sees a table of every government agency’s spending for Fiscal Year 2019 and Fiscal Year 2024. The next page is the Workforce page. This page details the salaries and rates of federal employees across all branches and agencies. While not all data is available right now, enough is available to track taxpayer dollars through payroll.
While there are plenty of pages on doge.gov, those are some of the most prominent. Elon Musk is one of the most prominent workers for the agency, and though he is not officially an employee of DOGE, he is an employee of the “White House Office”. So who is behind DOGE? The agency hires 19-24 year olds with little to no government experience to work for them. The new acting DOGE administrator is Amy Gleason. Gleason is a former nurse who has fought her whole career for technology in healthcare. DOGE is always open to applications to join the team on their join page. The join page is unlike a usual job application as it asks for an applicant’s personal websites, X (Twitter), and Github accounts. While it is not uncommon for software engineers to be asked for their GitHub account when applying for a job, directly asking for a social media account is uncommon. A personal website is almost never required to get a job, even an extremely professional one.
DOGE has a nearly $7 million dollar budget. Many Americans find this ironic as the main goal of agency is to freeze spending and eliminate waste. In its first month, the agency’s budget nearly doubled and does not show signs of ending its growth soon. The Department of Government Efficiency is not listed on the spend page of doge.gov as of now.
The creation of DOGE does not come without its controversies. Attorney Generals in 14 states are suing DOGE, claiming that the agency has virtually unchecked power and has no place as a government agency. This lawsuit was filed in a federal court in Washington D.C. and is against both the agency and Elon Musk.
Another lawsuit is from an electronic privacy group. This group is suing DOGE and many other government agencies over a very large data breach that recently occurred. This lawsuit was filed with a district court in Virginia.
Many critics believe that these are a halfway point between political protest and legitimate concern. Using federal courts as a method of protest is nothing new, but in recent years, it has become more and more of a common protest type. The two lawsuits listed in this article are just a couple of the dozens of suits filed against DOGE. Experts say that most of these lawsuits will not go anywhere
DOGE was created via executive order, one of many President Trump has signed in his last term. The agency talks about many executive orders signed by Trump. Including posting about the outcome of one of his executive orders on X (formerly Twitter). It is very clear that DOGE is one of the most massive products of any presidential administration to date. It is unclear the overall impact DOGE will have on the United States over a long period of time. Though, people on both the right and left of the political spectrum will fight to keep the agency alive even after Trump’s second term is over.
