Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, the co-leaders of President-elect Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) met with lawmakers in Washington, D.C., this week to discuss and share ideas. The 119th Congress will include a DOGE Subcommittee in the House of Representatives, to be chaired by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) will chair a Senate DOGE Caucus, while Reps. Aaron Bean (R-FL) and Pete Sessions (R-TX) will co-chair the House DOGE Caucus.

FMA has expressed interest in working with all parties on DOGE, ensuring bipartisan congressional oversight as the panel produces ideas and initiatives to cut costs within the federal government.

One common refrain that emerged from Musk and Ramaswamy’s meetings with legislators was a desire to eliminate or significantly reduce telework moving forward. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) said, “One of the first things that I think you'll see is a demand from the new administration, from all of us here in Congress, that federal workers return to their desks and get back to the work that they're supposed to be doing. I think that is common sense.”

A recent report from the Government Accountability Office (GAO) suggests telework improves recruitment and retention. Specifically, the report shows telework helped the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) recruit customer service representatives by expanding the potential talent pool to people who lived further away from agency locations. The GAO studied telework usage at four agencies: the Farm Service Agency (FSA), IRS, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA). The GAO plans to issue a future report on telework usage at the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Social Security Administration, and the Department of State.

Telework is a hot-button issue that continues to generate a lot of disagreement, including basic stats such as the numbers feds who utilize it. Some legislators have pegged the number of teleworking employees at 90 percent or greater, while the Office of Personnel Management says nearly 50 percent of the federal workforce is actually ineligible to telework.

FMA urges the use of data to make decisions on telework policy. We endorsed bipartisan legislation in the 118th Congress that would have monitored telework’s impact on office building utilization, agency performance, customer service, backlogs, and wait times. We believe this data is necessary before Congress makes decisions affecting telework in the federal workforce. For example, FMA supports the federal government reducing its footprint and ending leases on unused buildings if the data supports it. We look forward to working with the DOGE and lawmakers in the 119th Congress on this issue.