"Musk's Ministry of Government Efficiency Dispatches Silicon Valley Executives Without Pay for 6 Months"

The government efficiency department, led by Tesla Inc TSLA CEO Elon Musk in the second Trump administration, will operate with free service from Silicon Valley executives, the U.S. daily New York Times reported.

The New York Times said Silicon Valley figures, including Big Tech executives, will be assigned to two major government departments based on interviews with 12 unnamed officials with knowledge of the composition of the Information and Efficiency Ministry.

Considering that Silicon Valley investor Mark Andriesen and others participated in the interview process, the Ministry of Information and Efficiency will reportedly be a network connected by ties to Silicon Valley billionaires such as Musk.

Rather than creating another government department, it is said that employees dispatched to the project site will diagnose the problem themselves, share it with group messengers, and find a solution.

The New York Times reported that Musk called on voluntary participants who showed interest in government efficiency activities to work 80 hours a week without pay for six months.

Musk and some others are expected to gain "special civil service" status to work for the federal government for no more than 130 days of the year.

The Ministry of Information and Efficiency, which Musk and Indian-entrepreneur-turned-politician Vivek Ramaswamy have been named co-head, is being established to restructure the federal government.

In the meantime, specific activities such as size and how they are performed have been hidden even now, about a week before Trump's inauguration.

Earlier, Musk claimed that he could cut more than $2 trillion (about 290 billion won), about a third of the federal budget, through the Ministry of Government Efficiency.

However, experts are skeptical that such a goal cannot be achieved without touching on areas that Trump has vowed not to cut, such as social security or Medicare, a health insurance policy.