Trump’s co-heads of the new Department of Government Efficiency—Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy—are targeting remote work.

Summary

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, leading Trump’s new DOGE, plan to cut $2 trillion in federal spending by ending remote work for federal employees and monitoring their productivity.

GOP Senator Joni Ernst supports the plan, citing remote work as wasteful, though federal data shows most eligible roles still require significant on-site work.

Critics argue the initiative overstates the issue and lacks enforcement power, as DOGE is an advisory body with no direct authority over government operations.

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.worldEnglish
    49·
    5 days ago

    “Literally thousands of empty buildings, not just in America, but around the world, paid for with your tax dollars!” Musk wrote in a follow-up X post.

    Before Covid there was a big push to work from home so they could rotate desks. Giving them a lower footprint so they could save on office space.

    Then Covid forced full work for home for the vast majority.

    Agencies rarely own their own buildings, they lease floor space from GSA. Who own and maintain damn near everything.

    Ironically going full telework would save every single agency (except GSA) literally tens (maybe 100s) of millions of dollars.

    And I know it’s two idiots in charge of it, but I think at some point they may realize the cheapest option is full telework and renting to private companies. Or second most economical, just mothball the buildings.

    Take everything out, prep for long term storage, and have a skeleton crew of security and maintenance

    But last time the unions bitched out of fighting return to office because it was Biden. They’ll fight it now even if agencies don’t.

    • jonne@infosec.pub
      271·
      5 days ago

      You’re assuming that Musk is actually going to make a good faith effort to improve efficiency. This is about paralysing the government so they can’t do any oversight on Musk and friends, while outsourcing as much as possible to private companies run by those same billionaires.

    • WxFisch@lemmy.worldEnglish
      25·
      5 days ago

      This guy s 100% accurate. When I was a contractor for the NWS in the mid 2010s they were working aggressively to get their HQ staff setup to telework at least some of the time to save on office leases. They built out a large fix work space in their silver spring building and when it went live they were able to vacate an entire floor, saving something like a million dollars in month in lease, utilities, etc costs.

      This mindset of return to office to force attrition also seems less likely to work for federal employees that often need to work in the office at least part time anyways, and often have very strong union protections that will cost a ton for the government to fight through.

      On top of that, the costs to return employees to offices will be astronomical both in fitting out those office spaces again and in terms of supporting infrastructure like transit costs. A lot of those additional costs get borne by state governments and often passed on to the federal government through grants and chargebacks for various services.