Symbols Used On This Site

In the hopes that it helps to better illustrate some of the themes within this data, this site relies heavily on the use of colorful icons provided by Font Awesome. This page offers some explanation of what these symbols mean.

Position Moves

DOGE staff are constantly being moved around to various agencies or within organizations. To better illustrate that, I will use symbols to illustrate the type of action.

or = detailing (an intra-agency position transfer)
= transfer within an agency to a subsidiary agency (_e.g._, HHS to FDA)
= appointment/hiring
= promotion
= demotion
= conversion of temporary/time-limited role to a permanent one
= exit from an organization/government (when known)

Event Types

Events are also roughly categorized by type to better illustrate the type of event it is.

= Access
= Action
= Directory
= Disruption
= Interagency
= Legal
= Official
= Onboard
= Oversight
= Offboard
= Report
= Sighting
= Website

Other Symbols

= sources
= external link

Terminology

Finally, a note on some government-specific terms that you might encounter in the tables listing details on DOGE staffing:

Detail is the government term for when an employee (or detailee) of one agency goes to work at another agency
Excepted means that the person was hired on an expedited and limited authority vs. the standard impartial and slow (aka competitive) hiring model. Usually, excepted appointments have limitations of a few years, but they allow for greater flexibility in hiring decisions and processes.
A Special Government Employee (SGE) is someone hired on an extremely short-term basis (less than 180 days), but who, on the other hand,doesn’t have to follow the standard government ethics rules.
The General Scale (GS) is a series of 15 different pay levels (each with 10 steps) that standardize government pay for employees; there also is commonly a locality adjustment to reflect the cost of living in the employee’s area.
Above the GS scale, there is a Special Executive Service (SES) series of levels for limited numbers of high-ranking agency staff.
Both excepted and SGE roles usually will have a Not To Exceed (NTE) date which is the maximum duration a person can be in that role.
Schedule C is another exemption from the normal civil service hiring rules for political staff in policy roles who are subordinate to other appointees like agency heads.