After weeks of ambiguity about who leads the contested US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), the White House on Tuesday (February 25) revealed former healthcare executive Amy Gleason as its acting head.The newly constructed department, mooted by Trump and Elon Musk in a bid to cut wasteful government expenditure, has had a controversial run in the new presidency.While Musk has been the visible face of DOGE, the White House has maintained that he does not lead the department. In a declaration to a Columbia court, Joshua Fisher, the director of the White House’s Office of Administration, submitted that Musk “is not an employee of the U.S. DOGE Service or U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization”. Fisher wrote that Musk has “no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself”.Here is what to know.Who is Amy Gleason?Amy Gleason is a nurse-turned-entrepreneur who served as a Digital Services Expert between 2018 and 2021 for the US Digital Service, an Obama-era initiative that leveraged the use of IT in government. She also worked as Chief Product Officer for the investment firm Russell Street Ventures and Main Street Health, which offers healthcare to rural America.During her time at USDS, she headed the USDS healthcare team where she “spearheaded the technology efforts for the federal COVID-19 response, built modern surveillance tools for the CDC, and helped CMS advance interoperability” according to an archived profile of her on Main Street Health.In January 2025, she returned to the White House as senior advisor to the US Digital Service, according to her LinkedIn profile.Most notably, she has advocated for patient rights, following her daughter’s 2010 diagnosis of Juvenile Myositis, a rare auto-immune disease. She worked as Chief Operating Officer of CareSync, a telemedicine company that reportedly aimed to offer a centralised database of patient records. An Obama-era White House site lists her as a Champion of Change for her work to “help patients and their families better coordinate care and improve health outcomes.” The site also lists her voluntary role as the Vice President of Research for the Cure JM Foundation, a nonprofit that funds research and raises awareness of Juvenile Myositis.Story continues below this adAccording to an NYT report, Gleason was in Mexico when the White House made her role public and was not made aware of this decision ahead. She has offered no comment at the moment.The Department of Government Efficiency is named after the DOGE meme coin Musk has had a past affinity for. It was originally pitted as the American version of ‘Minimum Government, Maximum Governance’, a stance the Republican Party has long advocated for. According to the Trump administration, DOGE is targeting waste and fraud in the government.On January 20, President Trump renamed the existing US Digital Service to US DOGE Service in a presidential action. The action also mandated the creation of the US DOGE Service Temporary Organization as a temporary organisation, to be headed by the USDS administrator. The temporary organisation has an 18-month mandate to enforce the President’s DOGE agenda and is set to terminate on July 4, 2026.According to the presidential action, Gleason will report to Susie Wiles, the Chief of White House staff.Why has DOGE been under scrutiny?Story continues below this ad01DUBIOUS NUMBERSOn its website, DOGE claims to have saved $65 billion through “a combination of fraud detection/deletion, contract/lease cancellations, contract/lease renegotiations, asset sales, grant cancellations, workforce reductions, programmatic changes, and regulatory savings.”Experts have questioned the accuracy of the estimates shared by DOGE in its ‘Wall of Receipts’ last week where it displayed the extent of its apparent cost cuts. Fact-checks by NYT, Politico and other organisations indicated errors ranging from miscalculations to misrepresentations of contracts in the original list. This included a cancelled contract worth $8 million which DOGE had identified as worth $8 billion.Following this, the department deleted five of its biggest savings according to an NYT report.02REDUNDANCYSome experts have also flagged the pointlessness of the cancelled contracts, with a report in the Associated Press estimating that 40% of cancelled contracts were not expected to generate any savings. Charles Tiefer, a retired University of Baltimore law professor and expert on government contracting law who spoke to AP compared the contracts to “confiscating used ammunition”.Some of the cancelled contracts were reportedly for research awards, training completed, software already purchased and interns who had completed their internships.03LEGAL CHALLENGESIn recent weeks, DOGE has been beset by a series of court challenges over the scope of its mandate. The lawsuits have questioned Musk’s position, DOGE’s operation and its ability to access the personal information and sensitive payments data of US citizens through various government departments.04LAYOFFS and RESIGNATIONSA primary department mandate was to cut ‘wasteful expenditure’ through mass layoffs. While official data on the number of layoffs made possible by DOGE is not available, thousands of federal government employees were dismissed in the first month of the Trump presidency.Over 20 civil service employees resigned on Tuesday, saying they would not use their skills as technologists “to compromise core government systems, jeopardize Americans’ sensitive data, or dismantle critical public services,” according to a letter accessed by Politico. The signatories include engineers, data scientists, designers and product managers who, according to the letter, “left senior private sector technology positions to pursue nonpartisan public service.”