Scott Kupor, who was confirmed as director of the Office of Personnel Management this month, takes the job as the federal civil service is reeling from sweeping cuts and mass firings under Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge).
A former partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, Kupor questioned the scale of Musk’s proposed cuts and some of his methods — such as pushing civil servants to report on their weekly progress.
But he said the stringent efficiency drive would continue.
“What [Doge] did was catalyse the start of a process,” said Kupor. “Now, we have to actually institutionalise those things” and pursue “operational efficiency”.
He is aiming to cut roughly 1,000 employees at OPM — about a third of its workforce — in the coming months, as well as hundreds of government contractors.
Kupor signalled he would continue to shake up the civil service, saying it seemed “off” that roughly 70 per cent of federal government employees receive the highest marks in their performance reviews.
Before entering the US government, he was a board member of a number of companies, including location technology platform Foursquare, and served as chair of the board for the National Venture Capital Association.
He said his three main goals were “operational efficiency”, promoting a “high performance culture” and integrating artificial intelligence into the federal government.
He said that AI could be used to summarise and distil the public comment review process for federal rulemaking and improve customer service systems.
Lambert here: Turning public comments into AI slop is indeed “efficient,” but at what?
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