“When there are good outside tools, the GSA's job is to get them, not to make moderate replacements,” one colleague added.
“Did you use this AI to fix the [reduction in force]? “Asked another federal worker.
“When will Adobe Pro bring us back to us?” said another. “This is a critical program we use every day. Please return it or at least one date it will return.”
Employees also pushed against returning to the office mandate. “How [return to office] increase in collaboration when none of our clients, contractors, or people in our [integrated product teams] will be in the same office? “A GSA worker asked.
An employee asked Ehikian who was the Doge team at GSA really. “There is no GSA team in the GSA,” Ehikian replied, according to two employees with direct knowledge of the events. Employees, who many of them saw DOGE staff at the GSA, did not buy it. “Like we didn't notice a group of young children working behind a safe place on the 6th floor,” one employee told Wired. Luke Farritor, a child Former Spacex Intern who worked with Doge since the very first days of the organization, has been seen wearing a day -to -day GSA office in recent weeks, as usual Ethan ShaotranAnother young dog worker who recently served as president of the Harvard Mountaineering Club. A GSA employee described Shaotran as “smiling at a blazer and t-shirt.”
GSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent by wired.
During the meeting, Ehikian presented a slide detailing GSA goals-the size, streamline operations, deregulation, and IT change-including the current saving cost. The “overall cost that is avoided” is listed at $ 1.84 billion. The number of employees using generative AI tools built by GSA is listed in 1,383. The number of hours saving from automations is said to be 178,352. Ehikian also pointed out that the agency has canceled or reduced 35,354 credit cards used by government workers and ended 683 leases. (Wired could not confirm any of these statistics. The Doge is known to share misleading and inaccurate statistics About cost -saving efforts.)
“Any calculation of efficiency requires a denominator,” an GSA employee wrote in chat. “Reduits can reduce costs, but they can also reduce the amount delivered to the American public. How did it get to the scorecard?”
On a slide titled “The Road Ahead,” Ehikian laid out his vision for the future. “Optmize federal real estate portfolio,” read a column. “Centralized the acquisition,” read another. The sub categories include “Reduce the burden of compliance to increase the competition,” “Central our data to access to teams,” and “optimize GSA's cloud and software expenditure.”
Online, employees seem to be Leery. “So, will Stephen prevent herself from working on any federal contract after her term as GSA administrator, especially about AI and IT software?” asked an employee in chat. No answer.
