A team of technologists monitoring pathogens for the US’s Disease Surveillance System was summarily fired with no reason given, as “DOGE” continued to cut federal jobs– and turned its attention to SaaS spend.
Itir Cole, a “digital services expert” and product management specialist said that her team had been assigned to the Department of Health unit which tracks everything from Anthrax to Covid for the government.
She had been seconded from the United States Digital Service (an entity set up under President Obama and rebranded the United States DOGE Service by President Trump) but resigned after the mass firings, she said.
Cole posted: “On the day I resigned, nearly all of my team was fired, locked out of their computers without time to transition responsibilities. No real cause was given. No one in my chain of command was consulted.”
When the Bubonic plague wiped out half of medieval Europe, they hadn’t figured out organisms yet. Some blamed the stars, others turned to self-flagellation, or worse, sealed families in their homes to die in isolation. Without public health, people resort to grotesque methods to control what they don’t understand. We had a real chance to learn from the pandemic. We lost it.”
She added: “I worry for my colleagues—highly skilled, intelligent, and deeply committed people who chose public service. They deserved better.
"A single engineer on my team had more experience than the entire reported expertise of those on the DOGE team—at least of those willing to share their names. When talent is squandered and programs are gutted, we don’t get them back. It took decades to build both, and we’re losing them together—a sacrifice in the name of efficiency.”
DOGE targets Photoshop licences
DOGE, spearheaded by Elon Musk and set up to “dismantle government bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures and restructure federal agencies" has taken a shock-and-awe approach to cutting government spending – even as President Trump looks to deploy $4.5 trillion in tax cuts and approve a $4 trillion increase in the debt limit
DOGE this week drew ridicule for naming free software in a list of SaaS it said that federal agencies had overspent on – saying the Department of Labor had “250 VSCode licenses; only using 33” (VSCode is free software) and that it had “129 Photoshop licenses; only using 22” and five “cybersecurity licenses, each with > 20k seats; DOL headcount is < 15k.”
“Sir, a second unused Microsoft Teams conference room license has been found” pic.twitter.com/nhfTuUMwp2
— Kenneth Dredd (@KennethDredd) February 26, 2025
On social media, federal departments scrambled to emphasise that they were already finding major IT savings in response to DOGE’s posts.
Economist Betsy Stevens, who sat on Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, described DOGE as "performance art… to dazzle us and have us look away from trillions of dollar in tax cuts to the uber-wealthy.”
Political wrangling over Trump’s first budget continues meanwhile. A plan passed by House Republicans this week would extend Trump's 2017 tax cuts, implement new ones at a cost of $4.5 trillion, raise the debt ceiling by $4 trillion over two years, and add $3 trillion to the federal deficit.
DOGE has been contacted for comment.
