[3][4][5][6] Its mission was to "To deliver better government services to the American people through technology and design.

"[7] On January 20, 2025, Donald Trump passed an executive order repurposing the acronym as the United States DOGE Service[8] with a mandate[9] to defund DEI initiatives, environmental, health, and safety protections, consumer protections, international aid, science and public health research, whistleblower protections, and government corruption oversight.

The HealthCare.gov technology crisis in 2013[11][12] accelerated the idea and served as one of the United States Digital Service's first project.

[14][15][5][6] In 2022 the federal government spent $100 billion on information technology, but the cloud computing systems have only garnered about $12 billion as much of the expenditure is dedicated to maintaining legacy systems which lack the efficiency, capability and security of newer architectures.

[16] The first head of the USDS was Mikey Dickerson, a former Google engineer who had previously been involved in the 2013–14 rescue of the HealthCare.gov website.