An unsigned agreement between the US DOGE Service (USDS) and the Department of Labor (DOL) provides significant insight into the evolving working protocols between DOGE and federal agencies.
Notably, the agreement, obtained by WIRED, calls for the DOL to reimburse the USDS up to $1.3 million for work done by four DOGE affiliates, or “a slightly different number,” over an 18-month period. The agreement also includes a section titled “scope of work” that details how DOGE will operate with the DOL. Together, these aspects of the agreement give the clearest look yet at how DOGE’s relationships with government agencies may be structured.
The USDS is the renamed US Digital Service, an Obama-era agency originally set up to attract private sector tech workers to the federal government. It has been refitted as Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) home in the federal government.
The agreement is backdated to start on January 20, the day President Donald Trump was inaugurated, and ends on July 4, 2026—a timeline consistent with the executive order that created DOGE. Paying the USDS an estimated $1.3 million for the services of four employees, or their equivalent, over that timespan would establish an implied annualized pay of about $217,000. (The federal pay scale for career civil servants tops out at $195,200.)
DOGE has spent the last few months ripping through the government, gutting agencies, and pushing out tens of thousands of federal workers in an effort, Musk has said, to eliminate “waste and fraud” and achieve savings of about $1 trillion. As part of this plan, Musk has previously stated that DOGE staffers would cost taxpayers nothing. This $1.3 million figure, coupled with previous WIRED reporting about DOGE salaries, tells a different story. Musk did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
While the agreement does not include the names of individual DOGE operatives, Aram Moghaddassi, Miles Collins, and Marko Elez are named as being at the agency in notes from a March 18 meeting previously reported by WIRED. In addition to other documents obtained by WIRED, the meeting notes, marked “Internal/Confidential,” detail an audit the Government Accountability Office (GAO) is conducting of DOGE’s work throughout a number of federal agencies.
“So far they do not have write access,” the meeting notes read about DOGE’s access at the DOL. “They have asked; we’ve held them at bay. We’ve tried to get them to tell us what they want & then we do it. They only have read access.”
Moghaddassi and Elez have appeared as DOGE operatives at other federal agencies. Moghaddassi has worked at a number of Musk’s companies, including X, Tesla, and Neuralink; according to previous WIRED reporting tracking DOGE operatives, he has also been linked to the Treasury department. Elez, a 25-year-old engineer who has worked at Musk’s X and SpaceX, has also gained access at the Treasury and Social Security Administration. While at the Treasury, WIRED reported, Elez had both read and write access to sensitive Treasury systems. Elez briefly resigned from DOGE after racist comments posted by an account he was linked to were discovered by The Wall Street Journal. Elez returned to DOGE after Musk and Vice President JD Vance posted in defense of him on X.
