The Trump administration has pulled the plug on a team of tech-savvy civil servants that helped build the IRS’s free tax-filing service and revamped websites across government, a spokesperson for the General Service Administration said on Saturday.
GSA’s Director of Technology Transformation Services Thomas Shedd notified employees of a digital service team known as 18F that their jobs had been terminated as they had been identified as “non critical.”
Roughly 90 18F employees were immediately locked out of their devices.
The GSA said the action had been taken in support of a number of executive orders, including the “Implementing the President’s Department of Government Efficiency Workforce Optimization Initiative”, dated February 11.
Billionaire Elon Musk, who leads the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency team, earlier this month responded to a post on X that called 18F a “far left government-wide computer office” by saying the group has been “deleted.”
First launched in 2014 under former President Barack Obama, the 18F team was housed within GSA and helped federal agencies improve their digital services.
It was tasked with improving federal website accessibility, modernizing technology, enhancing data access, and making the government’s customer service experience more user-friendly.
The IRS’s free direct-file tax website is currently still online.
Reuters
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