Staff across federal agencies said that red tape implemented by the Department of Government Efficiency is wasting more time than ever.
Workers at 19 agencies revealed how sweeping changes brought in by DOGE —Elon Musk’s team that pledged to eliminate waste, fraud and abuse— have instead resulted in delays for the most basic transactions and projects put on hold for months, The Washington Post reports.
“People are so demoralized, anxious and sleep deprived,” a NASA employee told the outlet. “Nobody is working at top efficiency.”
Employees at the State Department, Social Security Administration, National Institutes of Health and the Federal Aviation Administration were among those feeling the strain as DOGE laid off staff and brought in new hurdles, impacting financial and policy protocols.
One staffer at the State Department told The Post that hiring an international vendor for an event required multiple layers of additional sign off because of the administration’s requirement to eradicate diversity, equity and inclusion from government.
The vendor refused to sign paperwork confirming that it did not promote DEI, resulting in the staffer having to go through several rounds of sign-off to secure the contract. The process would have typically taken a day but instead took an entire week, according to the outlet.
In response, the State Department told The Post that it would “never apologize for putting processes in place to ensure taxpayer dollars are used correctly.”
While many federal workers told the newspaper they supported scrutiny of how the government spends taxpayer money, the reality was running “counter to the goal of efficiency.”
An employee at the Federal Aviation Authority said that the new process for payment systems means that staff must now write statements justifying all expenditures, from bigger expenses to ordering pens and pencils. It has slowed down the process of getting windows cleaned at air traffic control towers, the employee said. Purchase orders that would take 15 to 20 minutes now take up to 2 hours. “These are things that people don’t think about, but clean windows are crucial for controllers,” the employee told the outlet.
Meanwhile at some parts of the National Institutes of Health, one staffer revealed that grants must be fed through an AI tool to detect references to “DEI, transgender, China or vaccine hesitancy.” Staff must also check that grant recipients are not on the list of institutions that President Donald Trump has targeted, including Harvard,
Changes at the Social Security Administration pushed through by DOGE are also causing “chaos” after the team reassigned central-office workers to take lower-level positions, according to The Post. In February, the agency outlined plans to cut 7,000 jobs.
Staff are “overburdened” as they have reportedly been taken off normal duties in order to train new staffers. “You now have half the staff with very little knowledge of how to do the work,” a relocated staffer told the outlet. “And the other half of staff overwhelmed with work and unable to really train or mentor these new folks.”
The agency said that the reassignment of approximately 2,000 staff “has not caused disruptions.” A statement said the reassignment of the staffers would “further accelerate the progress the agency is making.”
Responding to the claims made in The Post’s reporting, White House spokesman Harrison Fields said that “President Trump is curbing government waste and reforming a system that has long burdened American taxpayers” through DOGE.
“Anyone resistant to these critical reforms has had ample opportunity to step aside, but the work of DOGE will press forward unobstructed,” he added.
