Department of Government Efficiency-style work could legally continue even though it was terminated, according to a new congressional report.
President Trump’s executive order establishing the U.S. DOGE Service, the core vehicle driving DOGE, also created a temporary organization within it to spearhead fund-cutting initiatives. The mandate specified a termination date for that temporary organization, but not for USDS itself.
The USDS Temporary Organization concluded its scheduled 18-month run on July 4. But that sunset clause never applied to USDS itself, nor to DOGE teams still embedded at agencies governmentwide, according to a Wednesday report from the Government Accountability Office.
“Since the EO does not call for the termination of the broader USDS entity, it is possible that USDS and personnel at federal agencies could continue to do work that advances some of these initiatives after the temporary organization’s termination,” the report reads.
The watchdog also found oversight gray areas, including whether DOGE personnel with outside financial interests were properly vetted.
Concerns have been raised about whether DOGE personnel may have been involved in policy decisions conflicting with their jobs.
Of the 206 DOGE personnel identified by GAO, 27 were special government employees, who can hold outside jobs and financial interests while working for the government, creating what GAO called a conflict-of-interest risk.
This number is a floor, not a full census.
The 206 figure covers only those in DOGE who held positions within the Executive Office of the President, meaning agency-level DOGE team members were not counted.
What’s more, the congressional watchdog was stonewalled by the Executive Office of the President when it requested access to training records and financial disclosures for DOGE personnel.
Because of this, the GAO could not determine all DOGE personnel who received training or completed financial disclosures, and the Executive Office of the President did not respond to the GAO’s interview requests or verification inquiries.
The Office of Government Ethics told the GAO it has not reviewed an Executive Office of the President ethics program since 2023.
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