"He was fired from his role at the VA in May after he spoke to a reporter about his work at DOGE. Lavingia told WIRED at the time that he really believed in the role of technology to try and make government services better, but he quickly became disillusioned with DOGE's lack of organization and transparency, noting that Steve Davis, Musk's right-hand man and CEO of the Boring Company, appeared to be the only person communicating across DOGE teams at various agencies."
"Through his work at the VA, Lavingia came to find that the DOGE narrative around the government as inefficient and government workers as ineffective to be largely false, noting that many problems were not due to a lack of technical expertise, but to complicated legal and policy requirements. "The government is pretty efficient," he said. "Could move faster." While the strike force that characterized DOGE's early months has largely subsided, many DOGE operatives remain in government, often with full-time jobs inside federal agencies."
Lavingia attempted to modernize VA systems by using an AI tool to write code and by pushing the agency to eliminate paper forms. He built a tool to "munch" contract data to identify potential cuts. He was fired in May after speaking to a reporter about his DOGE work and became disillusioned with DOGE's organization and transparency, noting centralized communication through Steve Davis. Through VA work he found the narrative that government is inefficient largely false, attributing many issues to legal and policy complexity rather than technical shortcomings. He anticipates a decade of government work focused on modernizing taxpayer-facing software.
Read at WIRED
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