After Federal Workforce Cuts, DOGE Chief Says ‘we Need to Hire’

President Donald Trump has extended a governmentwide hiring freeze twice, and it is currently scheduled to expire on Oct. 15. Even once the hiring freeze lifts, the Trump administration has instructed agencies to make only one new hire for every four federal employees who leave.

The Partnership for Public Service estimates that about 199,000 employees have left the federal government so far this year.

The acting head of the U.S. DOGE Service — formerly known as the White House’s U.S. Digital Service — says the federal government needs more tech hires to provide better services to the public.

Acting USDS Administrator Amy Gleason, who also serves as a strategic advisor for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said agencies are searching for tech talent to help improve service delivery.

The Trump administration recently outlined its plans for recruiting new hires into the federal government. But many federal tech experts have left the government or were fired under the Trump administration.

The U.S. DOGE service removed about 50 of its 200 employees in February. That same month, the General Services Administration shuttered its 18F tech shop.

The IRS, which has lost more than 25% of its total workforce under the Trump administration, has also lost about a quarter of its tech employees.

The agency’s acting chief information officer told employees in June that the agency’s IT office needs to “reset and reassess,” in light of its shrinking headcount.

Sahil Lavingia, a former DOGE employee at the Department of Veterans Affairs, recently urged more tech experts to consider working for the federal government.

Speaking at a hacking conference last month, Lavingia said some DOGE screening steps, like a “political alignment interview,” create hurdles that prevent tech experts from joining the government.

“If you can’t hire Democrats, guess what? Most software engineers are Democrats, so good luck hiring a lot of software engineers,” he said.

CMS is also looking to modernize its legacy IT systems. More than $1 trillion in annual payments go through systems programmed in COBOL, an older programming language unfamiliar to most contemporary tech workers.