General Services Administration Cuts Tech Unit

The General Services Administration cleaved one of its technology units Saturday morning as part of a Trump administration directive to cull the federal workforce and reduce government spending.

The agency announced the cut to the 18F office — which employs researchers, website designers and product managers — on Saturday at around 1 a.m., according to an internal email obtained by POLITICO.

The cuts affected about 70 product and account managers; procurement specialists; user interface engineers; researchers; and front-end, content and service designers, said a GSA manager who, like other government workers in this story, spoke anonymously to avoid retribution. About two dozen more 18F employees were slashed in February when the agency cut probationary staffers.

The 18F department was responsible for building key government services like Login.gov, the central login system for programs like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. This work touches many agencies, which means cuts here could have a ripple effect across the government.

“This decision was made with explicit direction from the top levels of leadership within both the Administration and GSA,” Thomas Shedd, a one-time Tesla employee who is now the director of the Technology Transformation Services subagency at GSA, wrote in the memo. “There are no other TTS programs impacted at this time, however we anticipate more change in the future.”

These cuts, which were done at the bidding of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, are part of President Donald Trump’s crusade to shrink the federal government and cut the budget. GSA’s acting administrator Stephen Ehikian, a software entrepreneur, has said that the agency aims to slash its budget by eliminating contracts and personnel, according to memos POLITICO obtained.

It comes during a particularly tumultuous night for federal workers, who received a second order from the federal government to demonstrate their productivity. Trump and Musk have taunted the workforce with threats of termination if they do not respond, though it's unclear if this is legally enforceable.

These cuts underscore a culture shift in the federal government from a bulkier, bureaucratic one to a Silicon Valley hack-and-slash ethos incompatible with the agency’s work, GSA staffers previously told POLITICO.

“We’re not talking about saving money here. We’re talking about saving people’s lives and providing services people cannot go without,” a GSA data scientist said then.