Billionaire Elon Musk paid a visit to the Office of Personnel Management’s building on Friday, people familiar have confirmed to Nextgov/FCW.
Musk is leading President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, originally aimed at slashing federal headcount, costs and regulations.
His official title and capacity remain unclear, although those answers — and how exactly the DOGE is structured — will have ramifications for ethics and transparency requirements. The White House has not responded to a request for comment on Musk’s official role or the setup of the DOGE, and OPM did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Last week, the White House set up the DOGE within what was formerly the U.S. Digital Service with a mandate to “implement the President’s DOGE agenda, by modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity.” Since then, the DOGE has been re-interviewing current USDS employees.
Still, despite the apparent tech focus of the order creating the DOGE team, working with the government’s HR agency could prove to be useful for the DOGE if its original focus on the federal workforce remains a priority. In a November op-ed with his former co-lead Vivek Ramaswamy, Musk promised “mass head-count reductions across the federal bureaucracy.”
And last week, Trump signed an executive order that tapped the new USDS administrator — who is yet to be named — to help the heads of the Office of Management and Budget and OPM create a plan to cut the size of the federal workforce “through efficiency improvements and attrition.”
The DOGE also features in an order on “reforming the federal hiring process,” and Trump’s nominee for OPM’s head, Scott Kupor, himself posted on X thanking the president “for the opportunity to serve our country in helping [DOGE] make efficiency a central tenet of the federal government.”
Kupor comes from Andreessen Horowitz, and he’s one of many Trump nominees or appointees with ties to Elon Musk’s businesses and Silicon Valley more broadly. Amanda Scales, a former employee of Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI, is OPM’s new chief of staff. She’s been listed as a point of contact for OPM guidance since Trump took office, as GovExec has reported.
For now, Charles Ezell, OPM’s branch chief for data and analytics, is the acting head of the agency as it awaits permanent leadership. Already, the agency’s C-suite has seen a shakeup since Trump took office, with its new CIO being reassigned on day two of the administration.