US DOGE Service Agreement With Department of Labor Shows $1.3 Million Fee—and Details Its Mission

An unsigned statement betwixt the US DOGE Service (USDS) and the Department of Labor (DOL) provides important penetration into the evolving moving protocols betwixt DOGE and national agencies.

Notably, the agreement, obtained by WIRED, calls for the DOL to reimburse the USDS up to $1.3 cardinal for enactment done by 4 DOGE affiliates, oregon “a somewhat antithetic number,” implicit an 18-month period. The statement besides includes a conception titled “scope of work” that details however DOGE volition run with the DOL. Together, these aspects of the statement springiness the clearest look yet astatine however DOGE's relationships with authorities agencies whitethorn beryllium structured.

The USDS is the renamed US Digital Service, an Obama-era bureau primitively acceptable up to pull backstage assemblage tech workers to the national government. It has been refitted arsenic Elon Musk’s alleged Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) location successful the national government.

The statement is backdated to commencement connected January 20, the time President Donald Trump was inaugurated, and ends connected July 4, 2026—a timeline accordant with the enforcement bid that created DOGE. Paying the USDS an estimated $1.3 cardinal for the services of 4 employees, oregon their equivalent, implicit that timespan would found an implied annualized wage of astir $217,000. (The national wage standard for vocation civilian servants tops retired astatine $195,200.)

DOGE has spent the past fewer months ripping done the government, gutting agencies, and pushing retired tens of thousands of national workers successful an effort, Musk has said, to destruct “waste and fraud” and execute savings of astir $1 trillion. As portion of this plan, Musk has antecedently stated that DOGE staffers would outgo taxpayers nothing. This $1.3 cardinal figure, coupled with erstwhile WIRED reporting astir DOGE salaries, tells a antithetic story. Musk did not instantly respond to a petition for comment.

While the statement does not see the names of idiosyncratic DOGE operatives, Aram Moghaddassi, Miles Collins, and Marko Elez are named arsenic being astatine the bureau successful notes from a March 18 gathering antecedently reported by WIRED. In summation to different documents obtained by WIRED, the gathering notes, marked “Internal/Confidential,” item an audit the Government Accountability Office (GAO) is conducting of DOGE’s enactment passim a fig of national agencies.

“So acold they bash not person constitute access,” the gathering notes work astir DOGE’s entree astatine the DOL. “They person asked; we’ve held them astatine bay. We’ve tried to get them to archer america what they privation & past we bash it. They lone person work access.”

Moghaddassi and Elez person appeared arsenic DOGE operatives astatine different national agencies. Moghaddassi has worked astatine a fig of Musk’s companies, including X, Tesla, and Neuralink; according to erstwhile WIRED reporting tracking DOGE operatives, helium has besides been linked to the Treasury department. Elez, a 25-year-old technologist who has worked astatine Musk’s X and SpaceX, has besides gained entree astatine the Treasury and Social Security Administration. While astatine the Treasury, WIRED reported, Elez had some work and constitute entree to delicate Treasury systems. Elez concisely resigned from DOGE aft racist comments posted by an relationship helium was linked to were discovered by The Wall Street Journal. Elez returned to DOGE aft Musk and Vice President JD Vance posted successful defence of him connected X.