History of DOGE

The Bureaucracy That Wanted Access to Bank Accounts Above $600, is Now Whining About DOGE

DOGE is not a new program. US Digital Service (USDS) was established in 2015 due to the embarrassing and disastrous rollout of the Affordable Care Act. USDS was made up of tech experts who were embedded in federal agencies to modernize the govt IT infrastructure and improve efficiency. It was and still is funded by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) and has broad authority to scrutinize all executive agency operations and expenditures. The current administration reorganized some of the program's internal structure and renamed it DOGE.

You can see the providence for DOGE below, starting from the bottom with Obama's Executive Order 13704:

Trump on Day One:

Executive Order 14158, signed January 20, 2025

Legal Basis for the Restructuring: 

5 USC 3161

44 USC Chapter 35 (3502)

Obama in 2015

Presidential Innovation Fellows Program (USDS, tied to 18F, is buried at the bottom)

Executive Order 13704, signed August 17, 2015

White House Press Release Announcing USDS, March 2016 (It took 7 months to roll this out)