“When there are great tools, the task of GSA is to acquire them, not mediocre substitutes,” added a colleague.
“Have you used this artificial intelligence to organize [reduction in force]? “Another federal employee asked.
“When to call us Adobe Pro?” Another said. “This is a key program that we use every day. Give it back or at least the date that will come back.”
Employees also pushed the return mandate to the office. “How is it [return to office] Increase cooperation when none of our clients, contractors or people from ours [integrated product teams] Will they be in the same office? “GSA employee asked.
One employee asked Ehikian who is the Doge team in GSA. “There is no dog in GSA,” Ehikian replied, according to two employees with direct knowledge of events. Employees, many of whom saw the Doge staff in GSA, did not buy it. “As if we did not notice a group of young children working behind a safe place on the 6th floor,” said one Wired employee. Luke Farritor, newborn former internship Spacex, who worked in Doge from the earliest days of the organization, has been in the GSA office in the GSA office in recent weeks, like Ethan Shaotran, another newborn Doge worker, who recently was the president of the Harvard mountaineering club. The GSA employee described Shaotran as “smiling in a jacket and a T -shirt.”
GSA did not immediately respond to a commentary sent by Wired.
During the meeting, Ehikian showed a slide describing the GSA-inclined goals, size, improve operations, deregulation and innovations of IT-OCCOP current cost savings. “General avoided costs” were replaced with $ 1.84 billion. The number of employees using AI generative tools built by GSA was replaced with 1,383. The number of hours saved from automation was 178 352. Ehikian also pointed out that the agency canceled or reduced 35,354 credit cards used by government employees and terminated 683 lease agreements. (Wired cannot confirm any of these statistics. Doge is known for sharing misleading and inaccurate statistics Regarding savings efforts.)
“All performance calculations require a denominator,” wrote a GSA employee in chat. “Cuttings can reduce expenses, but they can also reduce the value of the American audience. How is it captured on the results card?”
In the slide entitled “Road ahead” Ehikian presented his vision of the future. “Optmize federal real estate portfolio”, read one pillar. “Centralize orders”, read another. Underwater categories included “Reduce compliance in order to increase competition”, “centralize our data so that they are available in all teams” and “Optimization of spending on the cloud and GSA software”.
Online employees seemed unbelievable. “Will Stephen limit himself to working on any federal contracts after his term as the GSA administrator, especially in relation to AI and IT software?” He asked one employee in chat. There was no answer.