This WIRED article investigates the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a government initiative established by an executive order, and the confusion surrounding its personnel. The article highlights the ambiguity of who constitutes a DOGE employee. While every federal agency is mandated to have a DOGE team, the actual definition of 'DOGE employee' remains unclear.
DOGE's initial focus was on improving government efficiency. However, its scope has expanded significantly to include combating waste, fraud, and abuse, leading to concerns about access to sensitive information. This has resulted in a lawsuit filed by the AFL-CIO and other labor groups.
The article presents the case of Riley Sennott, a former Tesla employee listed as a 'senior adviser' at NASA and an IT specialist at GSA, highlighting the ambiguity. His father clarifies that Sennott works for GSA, not directly for DOGE, but acknowledges his involvement in DOGE-related work. The article also details other high-profile individuals associated with DOGE, some listed on GSA payroll with varying salary levels, further blurring the lines.
The GSA (General Services Administration) processes payroll for other agencies, creating further uncertainty about the employment status of those involved with DOGE. GSA employees confirm sightings of various individuals associated with DOGE within the GSA offices, further suggesting the integrated nature of their work within the larger government structure.
The question of who DOGE is has taken on an almost metaphysical quality as the organization’s mandate has expanded. According to Trump’s January 20 executive order establishing DOGE, every federal agency is required to create a DOGE team of at least four employees. (Ehikan’s claim that there is no DOGE team at the GSA may be technically true, but if so, the agency would seem to be in violation of the order.)
Those teams—some members of which are career civil servants and certainly not DOGE employees of any description—were originally tasked with carrying out DOGE’s stated mission to make the government more efficient. But subsequent orders, including a March 20 order to eliminate waste, fraud, abuse, and data silos, have massively widened the scope of DOGE’s work, leading one set of plaintiffs to allege that “‘waste, fraud, and abuse’ are not magic words, and they cannot conjure up a need to grant DOGE Team members on-demand access to Americans’ most sensitive and personal information,” according to a lawsuit filed by the AFL-CIO and other labor groups.
All of this means that the line between who is working for DOGE and who is enthusiastically doing DOGE is blurry at best.
Take DOGE affiliate and former Tesla employee Riley Sennott, who according to a recent Business Insider report was listed as a “senior adviser” at NASA and also appeared to work for the GSA. Sennott was listed as an “IT specialist” GS-15 employee on the GSA’s payroll at the time, WIRED confirmed. Sennott’s journalist father, Charles Sennott, published a column later that month in the Columbia Journalism Review explicitly stating that his son works at the GSA—not DOGE. “It is fair to say that Riley’s current work is part of a broad effort that the public has come to know as DOGE,” the elder Sennott wrote—but also argued that “the General Services Administration is not the same as Elon Musk’s self-proclaimed Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.”
A number of other high-profile DOGE team members, including Edward “Big Balls” Coristine, Ethan Shaotran, Nicole Hollander, Jeremy Lewin, Luke Farritor, Kyle Schutt, Nathan Cavanaugh, Justin Aimonetti, and Ashley Boizelle, were listed on the GSA payroll at the time Ehikian made his comments at the March 20 all hands, according to documents viewed by WIRED. (Coristine, Shaotran, Hollander, and Farritor are listed as having salaries of $0, while the others collect from $120,000 to more than $150,000 annually.) Sara Sami, the president of an HR consultancy serving federal agencies, says this doesn’t necessarily confirm that they work within the agency, since the GSA processes payroll for other agencies and committees. “They could be classified as DOGE employees, but their pay could be run through the GSA,” she says. GSA employees can also be detailed to other agencies.
Still, GSA employees say they see DOGE affiliates in the office every week. WIRED has confirmed sightings of Coristine, Shaotran, Farritor, Cavanaugh, Gavin Kliger, and Marko Elez over the past few months.
“They’re young tech bros walking around together,” says a current GSA employee. “It’s obvious who they are,” agrees another.
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