“DOGE is a temporary organization repurposed from U.S. Digital Services,” explains The Epoch Times. “Trump and Musk previewed the idea to prospective voters on the campaign trail.”
The new “department” was not created ex nihilo, but, instead, fashioned out of an existing outfit that had been established by the Obama Administration. It was actually a “Reorganization and Renaming of the United States Digital Service. The United States Digital Service is hereby publicly renamed,” the January 20, 2025, executive order put it, “as the United States DOGE Service (USDS) and shall be established in the Executive Office of the President.”
Establishment of a Temporary Organization. There shall be a USDS Administrator established in the Executive Office of the President who shall report to the White House Chief of Staff. There is further established within USDS, in accordance with section 3161 of title 5, United States Code, a temporary organization known as “the U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization”. The U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization shall be headed by the USDS Administrator and shall be dedicated to advancing the President’s 18-month DOGE agenda. The U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization shall terminate on July 4, 2026. The termination of the U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization shall not be interpreted to imply the termination, attenuation, or amendment of any other authority or provision of this order.
Notice that this is a sunsetting operation, of limited duration. And also notice how the “Department of Government Efficiency” is contracted to DOGE (with its own history in the crypto space), which is then subsumed under the initialism of an existing organization, “United States Digital Services,” and note that many of the members of the DOGE team are proficient masters of modern technology and organizational methods — or, as The Epoch Times puts it, “Many individuals publicly associated with DOGE are very young and highly technically accomplished.”
“Doge” was also the title of rulers of several renaissance era Italian city states, perhaps made most recently memorable in the banter of Danny Kaye in the 1955 film The Court Jester:
King Roderick: The Duke. What did the Duke do?
Hubert Hawkins: Eh … the Duke do?
Roderick: Yes. And what about the Doge?
Hawkins: Oh, the Doge! King Roderick: Eh. Well what did the Doge do?
Hawkins: The Doge do?
Roderick: Yes, the Doge do.
Hawkins: Well, uh, the Doge did what the Doge does. Eh, uh, when the Doge does his duty to the Duke, that is.
Roderick: What? What’s that?
Hawkins: Oh, it’s very simple, sire. When the Doge did his duty and the Duke didn’t, that’s when the Duchess did the dirt to the Duke with the Doge.
Roderick: Who did what to what?
Hawkins: Oh, they all did, sire. There they were in the dark; the Duke with his dagger, the Doge with his dart, Duchess with her dirk.
Roderick: Duchess with her dirk?
Hawkins: Yes! The Duchess dove at the Duke just when the Duke dove at the Doge. Now the Duke ducked, the Doge dodged, and the Duchess didn’t. So the Duke got the Duchess, the Duchess got the Doge, and the Doge got the Duke!
Extremely clever. The legal creation of the DOGE, we mean. Much more clever than renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America.” And to much more pointed effect.