The Federal Human Resources Agency in the heart of the efforts of billionaire Elon Musk to reduce federal workforce is ready to implement software to accelerate layoffs throughout the United States government, two people familiar with the matter said.
The software could turn the quick effort to reduce the government at a time when several larger federal agencies are preparing to execute plans for mass layoffs of tens of thousands of workers.
Some 260,000 government workers have already accepted purchases, anticipated retirees or were fired since Republican President Donald Trump returned to the presidency in January, according to a Reuters count. The process has been far from being soft. Some workers were dismissed by mistake and had to hire again.
The software is an updated version of a program of the Pentagon of decades, known as Authorif, which had been little used in recent years.
Under the direction of the Efficiency Department of the Government of Musk (Doge), software developers of the United States Personnel Management Office (OPM) have created an easier version to use on the web in recent months that provides objectives for layoffs much faster than the current work hand manual process, four sources said, speaking in anonymity.
The program is ready to be launched to OPM agencies just when Musk goes back from Dege, which has driven the effort to reduce personnel, to focus more on Tesla and its other companies.
The authorific name comes from “force reduction”, a term used to describe mass dismissals. The renewed version has been given the most benign name “Remodeling tool of the workforce,” said three sources.
With the software renewal now complete, OPM will direct demonstrations, user tests and start adding new users in the coming weeks, said one of the sources.
Doge, OPM, the White House, the Pentagon and Musk did not respond to the requests for comments.
Wired magazine was the first to inform about the effort of renewal. But Reuters first informs when completing that renewal, the capacities of the new program, the deployment plans and its new name.
Work Cutter
Trump established Dogs to modernize government software, reduce spending and drastically reduce the size of the federal workforce, which complains is blocked and wasteful.
Dege has said that he has saved more than $ 160 billion through cuts to contracts and federal personnel, but has given few details publicly about what he is doing to modernize technology so that the government is more efficient.
The Pentagon software update, which has not publicly confirmed, is the only known example of that effort with fruit.
Currently, most federal RIFs are carried out manually, with human resources employees studying spreadsheets that contain data on the age of employees, veteran status and performance, three sources told Reuters.
The new software is being implemented, as well as the largest agencies, such as the Department of Veterans Affairs, will advance with plans to eliminate about 80,000 jobs. The internal tax service has said that it wants to reduce its payroll by 40%, according to media reports.
The tool will allow the agencies “to eliminate a massive number of federal employees of their positions,” said Nick Bednar, associate professor of law at the University of Minnesota who has been tracking government dismissals.
“What Dege has begun will continue without Elon Musk,” said Bednar.
Authorif was developed by the Pentagon more than a quarter of a century ago. He extracted data from his human resources system, sifted through shooting rules quickly and produced names of eligible employees to be fired.
But it was difficult to migrate to other agencies, whose workers had to enter manually data on possible candidates for dismissal, a cumbersome process that is subject to errors. The program, described as “clumsy” by a 2020 HR bulletin in the Pentagon, would also allow only one employee to work in a RIF, two sources said.
The update does so based on the web, relieve employees’ access to the tool while allowing several people to work in a mass dismissal, three sources said. It also allows the loading of employee data for analysis, releasing human resources workers from having to manually enter personal records of possible objectives for dismissal.
While speed is a clear advantage, the software could raise other challenges, according to Don Moynihan, professor at the Ford Public Policies School at Michigan University.
“If you automate the bad assumptions in a process, then the error scale becomes much greater than an individual could undertake,” said Moynihan.
“It will not necessarily help them make better decisions and will not make those most popular decisions,” Moynihan added.
Trump’s impulse towards the reduction and remodeling of the government has already led to the destruction of entire agencies such as the United States Agency for International Development, as well as the Office of Financial Protection of the Consumer, which seeks to protect the Americans from financial abuses.
The government review has led to numerous demands that seek to prevent the Trump administration from progressing with some of the planned dismissals.
—Asexandra Alper, Reuters
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