By Ken Thomas and Natalie Andrews

WASHINGTON -- Twenty-one federal employees who had been working with Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency resigned, writing in a letter that they wouldn't offer their expertise to overhaul the government if it meant undermining essential services.

"We will not use our skills as technologists to compromise core government systems, jeopardize Americans' sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services," the former employees wrote on Tuesday in a letter addressed to White House chief of staff Susie Wiles. "We will not lend our expertise to carry out or legitimize DOGE's actions."

Also on Tuesday, one of the biggest mysteries surrounding DOGE was revealed. Amy Gleason, a healthcare product officer and senior adviser to the U.S. Digital Service, was named the acting administrator of DOGE, a White House official said, fulfilling a key part of the executive order that President Trump signed on his first day in office.

The employees who resigned also worked at the USDS, which the Trump administration renamed the U.S. DOGE Service. Musk, the Tesla chief executive who is guiding DOGE, has sought to overhaul the federal government with cuts to the workforce, the elimination of diversity, equity and inclusion programs and the closure of agencies such as the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The letter from the 21 employees was earlier reported by the Associated Press. It followed Musk's push to require federal workers to submit weekly progress reports -- in five bullet points. The White House said Tuesday that one million workers responded to the email, or more than 40% of the federal workforce of roughly 2.3 million.

The ex-employees, who didn't list their names, criticized the DOGE process, saying a day after Trump's inauguration they completed interviews with "individuals wearing White House visitor badges" who declined to identify themselves.

"This process created significant security risks," they wrote. They said that the firing of one-third of the USDS colleagues on Feb. 14 endangered millions of Americans who rely on their services to modernize Social Security, veterans' services and tax filing.

"DOGE's actions -- firing technical experts, mishandling sensitive data, and breaking critical systems -- contradict their stated mission of 'modernizing Federal technology and software to maximize governmental efficiency and productivity,'" they wrote.

Many of the employees who resigned had previously worked for tech companies, said one of the employees who resigned. The employees had served in roles such as engineers, data scientists, project managers and designers. Their work had spanned the first Trump administration, the Biden administration and the current White House, the employee said.

The Trump order established the Musk-led operation within the White House to slash government spending and the size of the federal workforce. But parts of its leadership has been shrouded in secrecy, including the DOGE administrator identified in the executive order who will report to the White House chief of staff.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt had previously declined to reveal the name of the DOGE administrator. In a legal filing earlier this month, a White House official told a federal judge that Musk was "not the U.S. DOGE Service Administrator," and was "an employee in the White House Office."

At a hearing Monday, U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly pressed a Justice Department lawyer about Musk's role at DOGE, as well as who was running the operation and supervising DOGE teams within federal agencies. The lawyer said Musk was a close adviser to the president but couldn't say who was running DOGE.

"It doesn't sound like you were prepared for these questions," the judge said.

Gleason, according to her LinkedIn profile, has been a senior adviser to the USDS since January and had previously worked in the office from 2018 to 2021.

After departing the USDS, Gleason served as the chief product officer of Main Street Health and with Russell Street Ventures in Nashville, Tenn., from 2021 to 2024, joining Brad Smith, the founder of Russell Street Ventures who has been serving as a de facto chief of staff of the DOGE team.

Earlier, Gleason worked as an emergency-room nurse but later transitioned into a career building software to help patients and their families manage their healthcare after her daughter was diagnosed in 2010 with a rare autoimmune disorder called Juvenile myositis.

In 2011, Gleason was a co-founder and chief operating officer of CareSync, a Florida company which built apps to help patients manage their healthcare, and also served as vice president of research for the Cure JM Foundation, according to her LinkedIn page.

"After her diagnosis, I started carrying around these mom binders, as I call them, with all of her different records because I was terrified they were going to be missing some important piece of information," Gleason said in a TEDx event in Boston in 2020, where she held reams of multicolored folders containing a single year of her daughter's medical records.

Gleason didn't respond to a request for comment.

Write to Ken Thomas at ken.thomas@wsj.com and Natalie Andrews at natalie.andrews@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 25, 2025 18:23 ET (23:23 GMT)

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