The Trump administration has directed the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the Elon Musk-led effort to minimize federal spending, to establish a “centralized technological system” in each agency to track grant awards and contracts in a recently released executive order (EO).
Agency staff members who authorize individual contracts and grant payments will be required to provide a written explanation for their decisions as part of the rollout of these systems. According to the EO, agency chiefs will have the ability to “pause and rapidly review” any payment for which authorizing staff have not provided a rationale.
Additionally, with DOGE’s help, the EO directs agency heads to develop systems to “centrally record” clearance for travel for conferences and other “non-essential” reasons that get government funding. The order’s text states that agency employees will need to provide written explanations for “non-essential” and conference travel costs once the processes are in place.
This action is the most recent extension of DOGE’s already broad authority to examine federal spending. Federal workers received an email earlier this month from DOGE requesting that they provide a summary of their work from the previous week or risk termination. To ascertain whether a person’s work is mission-critical or not, DOGE reportedly intends to feed the contents into an AI system.
On January 20, President Trump signed an Executive Order creating DOGE, renaming the U.S. Digital Service to DOGE, and assigning groups of “special government employees” from various federal departments. Comprising a majority of youthful, private-sector workers from Musk’s companies and connections, DOGE has mainly evaded scrutiny, raising concerns about whether cybersecurity and privacy policies are being adhered to.
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