Trump’s management agenda targets eliminating waste, leveraging tech

The Trump administration outlined management plans for implementing its priorities Monday in a brief agenda focused on downsizing the government, leveraging federal buying power, and implementing technology solutions.

At just two pages, the President’s Management Agenda framework and memo from Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought is shorter than past versions. Nonetheless, the plan largely reflects the existing focuses of the administration.

For example, the government will continue to “eliminate woke, weaponization, and waste,” specifically calling to “end discrimination” and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. It will also maintain cuts to the federal workforce. The president’s first year has already been characterized by his significant shrinking of the federal workforce and cuts to programs related to DEI.

Continuing plans for technology use and contracting were mentioned in the agenda. Per the document, the government plans to “consolidate and standardize systems,” reduce the number of federal websites, “eliminate data silos” in government, and replace “wasteful processes” with AI.

Meanwhile, the government will “demand partners who deliver” and install political appointees to control grant processes “to deliver results.” The administration plans to “buy as one entity” and change the procurement process — efforts already underway at the General Services Administration through efforts like its OneGov strategy.

In a recent interview with FedScoop, federal CIO Greg Barbaccia provided more insight on artificial intelligence use and IT consolidation in government. On consolidation, he said a problem is agencies thinking that their needs are special, and said technologies should be consolidated if they’re “agnostic to the end mission of the agency.” 

“It does not help the taxpayer that we have hundreds of HR systems potentially that are different,” he said.

With respect to AI, Barbaccia said that initial “easy targets” for the technology are translation and summarizing large documents, specifically highlighting work at the State Department. When asked about job displacement, however, he said he hadn’t yet seen someone outsourced as the result of AI or another technology. Rather, the motivation is to automate tasks to save humans time, he said.

Interestingly, the management agenda also mentions ending censorship, over-classification, and government overreach as priorities, but few additional details were provided.

The document said the government will “reverse malicious schemes to hide truth and information from Americans” and “abolish abusive use of intelligence activity that improperly targets unwitting Americans or the exercise of constitutional rights,” though it does not say exactly what activities it’s referencing.