Notices by christa (christa@void.holdings)

new bloops on the hotline

419-452-4857

someone reviewing every skincare product at rainbow grocery coop

here’s don moynihan on why the letter fed employees got is not a “buyout”, why fed employees might find it attractive, and why this attempt at downsizing the federal government will have real negative impacts on the entire nation

https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/compelling-mass-civil-servant-resignations

US federal employees just received an elon twitter-takeover-style email, saying: "here's the deal. take it or leave it. let me know asap - here's a form resignation for you to submit"

here's the full email:
https://www.opm.gov/fork

and whatever small guidance there is around how it would actually be implemented: https://chcoc.gov/sites/default/files/OPM%20Guidance%20Memo%20re%20Deferred%20Resignation%20Program%201-28-2025.pdf

forum on kqed just had a good session on the federal spending freeze and intended purge of federal workers.

encourage folks listen to it - recording should be up in a few hours here: https://www.kqed.org/forum/2010101908672/trump-federal-funding-freeze-order-sows-confusion-fear

I submited my first on-air comment toward the end reflecting a lot of what's in this thread.

404 has a good article sharing what's happening internally at TTS / 18F the last week

https://www.404media.co/things-are-going-to-get-intense-how-a-musk-ally-plans-to-push-ai-on-the-government/

there's also a call to current and former 18F / TTS / GSA / similar org (I'd include USDS and other federal digital services in this) employees to get in touch.

in some ways these lackeys are following a civic tech tradition - coming into a complicated bureuacracy and saying "ah, wouldn't it be easier if we just had all the data"

here's Bay Area-centric reporting on GSA's mandated return-to-office and whether workers will need to show up in march to 50 un plaza (the existing GSA building), from the Chronicle.

answer: as of yet unclear? there's not enough room in existing offices, but the TTS administrator says they're banking on a reduced workforce after workers have to respond to the encouraged resignation offer on Thurs.

https://archive.ph/UE9wg

I'm thankful for whatever TTS employee said this in the allhands:

'During a question-and-answer session, a government employee told Shedd that The Privacy Act forbids agencies sharing personal information without consent.

“I think we were on the topic of login aggregating data. It's an illegal task,” the employee question, which was read aloud by a woman facilitating the meeting, said. “The Privacy Act forbids agencies sharing personal information without consent.”''

whats happening inside the federal government has been swifter than I expected. cruel dismantling of years of hard work, with real impacts to people and how government functions. sending so much <3 to folks at 18F, TTS, USDS - please reach out if you want to talk about anything, or want to think about what’s next (signal: christa.666)

https://www.404media.co/github-is-showing-the-trump-administration-scrubbing-government-web-pages-in-real-time/

going to share some links for folks that aren’t in us fed gov about situation as a fed right now

re: what’s happening at USDS, recently rebranded US DOGE Service (dumb). folks are being interviewed and expecting that a purge might happen soon

https://www.nextgov.com/people/2025/01/us-digital-service-employees-are-being-re-interviewed-under-doge-transition/402423/

calling out this from the 404 piece
https://www.404media.co/github-is-showing-the-trump-administration-scrubbing-government-web-pages-in-real-time/:

> Do you work for the federal government? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at +1 202 505 1702. Otherwise, send me an email at jason@404media.co.

the white house has placed diversity-adjacent positions (which also often includes work on accessibility) on paid administrative leave. they’ve directed agencies to work out how to let them go entirely.

I appreciate don moynihan’s writing about expected long term plan and how they can do it legally (I think TTS and USDS are particularly vulnerable because they rely heavily on term-limited positions, which don’t have protections of union or career civil service)

https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/how-will-trumps-executive-orders

all federal employees received a templated email from their agency leadership directing them to rat out any employees trying to continue on diversity (and accessibility) work by emailing a centralized email. people are spamming it, which is funny sure maybe even if likely ineffective, but it doesn’t change the culture it’s setting and what it’s demanding

https://fedscoop.com/opm-email-report-diversity-and-inclusion-initiatives/

the General Services Administration (where 18F, login.gov, others are housed) informed staff at 5pm yesterday that anyone in DC area must report to office within a week, and everyone else (a workforce that was largely hired to work from home, many of which are hours from a GSA building, which are not currently set up to handle in-person work anyway) will need to report in-person within 30 days, even though it’s unclear where.

it’s destabilizing and confusing, meant to force attrition.

there’s also an EO that demands a return to office. it’s a full one paragraph with no real detail but just directs agencies to terminate remote work agreements

https://archive.ph/2025.01.21-000222/https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/return-to-in-person-work/

in addition to it being bad policy generally, places like 18F and USDS are fully remote. your station is your house if you’re far from an office. it’s unclear what this guidance would mean individually or for the whole org. the cruelty is the point, and probably just aiming to get voluntary attrition

latest from NYTimes (via archive.ph):

Inside Musk’s Aggressive Incursion Into the Federal Government

https://archive.ph/j6UC6

here's Wired's latest on a meeting with TTS (18F and CoE?) this morning

"Shedd instructed employees to think of TTS as a software startup that had become financially unstable. He suggested that the federal government needs a centralized data repository, and that he was actively working with others on a strategy to create one, although it wasn’t clear where this repository would be based or if these projects would comply with privacy laws."

https://archive.ph/AS8Ll

@lzg at employer where I had my sabbatical we were expected to give a presentation about what educational thing we did on our (month long) sabbatical after we got back. was always surprised that people mustered presentations that weren't just "I managed to stop thinking about work"

@anna it really depends and is more complicated than I fully understand. as tim says, US government employees are generally unionized. many of my friends are in non-unionized term-limited positions that have basically no protections, though - this is a way many of the "tech to public sector" pipelines have happened recently, as a hack to more closely match private sector salaries more onerous hiring processes. also, many folks working for government are contractors.