Simon Willison’s Weblog

18f.org. New site by members of 18F, the team within the US government that were doing some of the most effective work at improving government efficiency.

For over 11 years, 18F has been proudly serving you to make government technology work better. We are non-partisan civil servants. 18F has worked on hundreds of projects, all designed to make government technology not just efficient but effective, and to save money for American taxpayers.

However, all employees at 18F – a group that the Trump Administration GSA Technology Transformation Services Director called "the gold standard" of civic tech – were terminated today at midnight ET.

18F was doing exactly the type of work that DOGE claims to want – yet we were eliminated.

The entire team is now on "administrative leave" and locked out of their computers.

But these are not the kind of civil servants to abandon their mission without a fight:

We’re not done yet.

We’re still absorbing what has happened. We’re wrestling with what it will mean for ourselves and our families, as well as the impact on our partners and the American people.

But we came to the government to fix things. And we’re not done with this work yet.

More to come.

You can follow @team18f.bsky.social on Bluesky.