By Alexandra Alper
Washington (Reuters) -The Federal Human Resources Agency in the heart of the efforts of billionaire Elon Musk to lower the federal workforce is ready to roll out software to accelerate dismissal about the US government, told two people who are familiar with the business to Reuters.
The software could accuse the quick -fire effort to reduce the government at a time when a number of larger federal agencies are preparing for the implementation of plans for massive dismissals of tens of thousands of employees.
About 260,000 government workers have already accepted buyouts, early retirement or dismissed since Republican President Donald Trump returned to the presidency in January, according to a Reuters count. The process is far from smooth. Some workers were wrongly dismissed and had to be hired again.
The software is an updated version of a decades of old Pentagon program, known as AutoRif, which had not used much in recent years.
Under the leadership of Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), software developers have created a more user -friendly web -based version at the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) in recent months that offers goals for dismissals much faster than the current labor -intensive manual process, said four sources, saying the condition of the condition of the condition of the condition of the condition of the condition of the condition of the condition of the condition of the condition of the condition of the condition of the condition of the condition of the condition of the condition of the condition of the condition of the condition of the condition of the condition of the condition of the condition of the condition of the condition of the condition of the condition of the condition of the condition of the condition of the condition of the condition of the condition of the condition of the condition of the condition of the condition of the condition of the conditions of the condition of the condition of the condition of the condition of the condition of the condition of the condition of the condition of the condition of the condition of the condition of the condition of anononity.
The program is ready to be rolled out to the agencies, just as Musk goes back from Doge, who has driven the contraction, to concentrate more on Tesla and his other companies.
The name of AutoRif comes from “Reduction in Force”, a term used to describe mass dismissals. The renewed version has been given the more benign sounding name “Workforce Reshaping Tool”, says three sources.
With the software -now completed, OPM will lead demonstrations, add the user tests and adding new users in the coming weeks, according to one of the sources.
Doge, Opm, the White House, Pentagon and Musk have not responded to requests for comments.
Wired Magazine first reported on the refurbishment financing. But Reuters reports for the first time about the completion of that refurbishment, the possibilities of the new program, the roll -out plans and the new name.
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Trump set up DOGE to modernize government software, reduce expenditure and drastically reduce the size of the federal staff, which he complains, is inflated and wasteful.
Doge has said that it has saved more than $ 160 billion by cutbacks on federal contracts and staff, but it has given few details about what it does to modernize technology to make the government more efficient.
The update of the Pentagon software, which did not publicly confirm Doge, is the only known example of that effort that carries fruit.
Currently, most federal RIF’s are done manually – where HR employees about spreadsheets containing data about the seniority of employees, veteran status and performance that Reuters contain, to Reuters.
The new software is being rolled out, just like larger agencies such as the Department of Veterans Affairs have been set to continue with plans to eliminate around 80,000 jobs. The Internal Revenue Service has said that it wants to lower its payroll by 40%, according to media reports.
With the tool, agencies can “remove a huge number of federal employees from their positions”, if it works, Nick Bednar said, a associate professor of law at the University of Minnesota who followed the government’s dismissals.
“What Dog started is continuing without Elon Musk,” said Bednar.
AutoRif was developed by the Pentagon more than a quarter of a century ago. The data from his HR system quickly got through shooting rules and produced names of employees who are eligible to be dismissed.
But it was difficult to migrate to other agencies, whose employees had to manually enter data about potential candidates for dismissal, a cumbersome process that is subject to errors. The program, described as “Clunky” by an HR newsletter from 2020, could also only work on one employee on a reef, according to two sources.
The upgrade makes the web -based, which makes access to employees to the tool easier, while several people can work on a massive dismissal, according to three sources. It also makes uploading employee data for analysis possible, which makes HR employees clear to manually enter personal data of possible purposes for dismissal.
Although speed is a clear advantage, the software could form other challenges, according to Don Moynihan, a professor at the Ford School of Public Policy of the University of Michigan.
“If you automate bad assumptions in a process, the scale of the error can undertake much greater than an individual,” said Moynihan.
“It will not necessarily help them make better decisions and it will not make those decisions more popular,” Moynihan added.
Trump’s urge to reduce and reform the government has already led to the highlighting of entire agencies such as the American Agency for International Development, as well as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which wants to protect Americans against financial abuse.
The revision of the government has led to numerous lawsuits that try to block the Trump government to continue with some of the planned dismissal.
(Reporting by Alexandra Alper; Additional reporting by Raphael Satter and Tim Reid; Editing by Ross Colvin and Will Dunham)
