内容摘要：That process had already started before Musk’s team arrived, with the federal government’s real estate portfolio steadily declining over the last decade. Indeed, critics of DOGE say if it were truly interested in cost-cutting it could learn from GSA, whose mission even before Trump took office was to deliver “effective and efficient” services to the American public.

That process had already started before Musk’s team arrived, with the federal government’s real estate portfolio steadily declining over the last decade. Indeed, critics of DOGE say if it were truly interested in cost-cutting it could learn from GSA, whose mission even before Trump took office was to deliver “effective and efficient” services to the American public.

Family and friends grieve while paying their last respects to alleged drug user Robert Manuel Jr. during funeral rites at Manila’s North Cemetery, Philippines, Sept. 12, 2016. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila, File)Family and friends carry the coffin of alleged drug user Robert Manuel Jr. during funeral rites at Manila’s North Cemetery, Philippines, Sept. 12, 2016. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila, File)

Family and friends carry the coffin of alleged drug user Robert Manuel Jr. during funeral rites at Manila’s North Cemetery, Philippines, Sept. 12, 2016. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila, File)Family and friends walk alongside tombs while attending the funeral of alleged drug user Marcelo Salvador at a public cemetery in Las Pinas, south of Manila, Philippines, Sept. 14, 2016. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila, File)Family and friends walk alongside tombs while attending the funeral of alleged drug user Marcelo Salvador at a public cemetery in Las Pinas, south of Manila, Philippines, Sept. 14, 2016. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila, File)

Cemetery workers carry the coffin of alleged drug user Marcelo Salvador during funeral rites in Las Pinas, south of Manila, Philippines, Sept. 14, 2016. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila, File)Cemetery workers carry the coffin of alleged drug user Marcelo Salvador during funeral rites in Las Pinas, south of Manila, Philippines, Sept. 14, 2016. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila, File)

Everything he had been holding — the coffee, the chocolate powder — had scattered across the ground when the first shots rang out. If he was running for his life, how could he have held on to shabu, she asks, but dropped the rest?

She won’t bring it up with the police, though, because “we don’t want any trouble,” she says. “What’s the point? What for?”To many veterans of the agency, the irony of DOGE’s slash-and-burn approach to GSA is that it is jeopardizing one of the agency’s longstanding missions: improving government efficiency.

The agency, for example, had an in-house consulting shop that during the first Trump administration focused on improving government services, especially those relying on technology. Among its initiatives, the team helped create systems to allow Americans to file taxes online and was working to improve online passport renewal.In the early weeks of the second Trump administration, DOGE officials gutted the team. Shedd defended that move, telling employees in a meeting that the team was eliminated because its work was not cost-effective, according to a transcript of his remarks.

Any reduction in headcount could also jeopardize the government’s ability to police contracts once they are issued to keep costs down.Such decisions have baffled those who have tracked GSA’s work.