Dismissal notices went out Saturday to about 85 employees of 18F, a federal agency that works on improving government technology — effectively shutting down an office hailed a decade ago as Uncle Sam's new tech startup.
The news came in an email early Saturday morning from Thomas Shedd, a former Tesla engineer who's now the deputy commissioner of the Federal Acquisition Service, which sets purchasing policy for the government.
"The 18F Office has been identified as part of this phase of GSA's Reduction in Force (RIF) as non-critical," Shedd said in an email sent at 1:01 a.m. Washington time on Saturday and obtained by Bloomberg. "This decision was made with explicit direction from the top levels of leadership within both the Administration and GSA."
The small but influential office was once seen as the future of government technology, created out of President Barack Obama's Presidential Innovation Fellows. It was often seen as a sister agency to the U.S. Digital Service, a technology group that President Donald Trump renamed the U.S. DOGE Service on his first day in office.
DOGE is the government efficiency initiative associated with Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who has been critical of 18F online.
"That group has been deleted," Musk said on
General Services Administration spokesman Jeff White said affected employees would receive transition assistance.
"GSA will continue to support the Administration's drive to embrace best in class technologies to accelerate digital transformation and modernize IT infrastructure," he said in a written statement. "This includes understanding what solutions are the most effective and necessary to meet the needs of our customer agencies and the American taxpayer."
Among 18F's many projects over the years was IRS Direct File, a free service that helps some taxpayers file tax returns online, and websites like Login.gov and Weather.gov. It even built the system used for managing .gov domains.
But 18F fell out of favor under Trump, who put it under the Federal Acquisition Service in his first term. Trump allies saw the group as promoting diversity, equity and inclusion in federal software.
The group also came under criticism over the years in audits that found lapses in cybersecurity, unapproved software, and management failures that "routinely disregarded and circumvented fundamental GSA information security policies."
