Almost two weeks after New York Times reported That the co -founder of Airbnb, Joe Gebbia, had joined the “Government Efficiency Department” of Elon Musk, Gebbia clarified his role on Thursday, Announcing in x That as a starting point, will take advantage of your design experience as part of an effort to review the retirement process notoriously slowly and heavy of government.
The system could certainly use help. Chuck Ezell, interim director of OPM, said in a Video testimony Released today, and republished by Gebbia, which a week ago, the administration “challenged” the agency to “process a retiree, at the end, digitally, without printing anything on paper.” The deadline? Just a week.
In the same video, an agency employee tells the cameraman that he has already managed to reduce the process to two days.
It remains to be seen if that process is scalable or sustainable or even repeatable, but OPM has been under pressure for years to modernize its systems. Last summer, the agency launched a Pilot program for a new online retirement application platform in response to continuous concerns about delayed benefits processing; The problem had caught attention in 2023, when several legislators issued a Press releaseurging OPM to address the slow processing of retirees, some of whom expected more than 90 days to receive their benefits.
Gebbia, a billionaire many times thanks to its Airbnb holdings, still serves at the Short -term rental giant board. Since September 2022, he has also been a member of the Board in Tesla.
In his publication X on his next steps, Gebbia wrote: “Since he left my operating role in Airbnb in 2022, I have been looking for the next digital design challenge. And I can think of some more important than being volunteers to improve user experience within our government. “
In addition to the co-foundation of Airbnb, Gebbia is the co-founder of Samara, a Airbnb spin-out that builds prefabricated houses that customers can customize, choose designs, colors, windows, doors and covers, with Samara saying that it handles the rest, including obtaining the associated permits.
Last week, Samara announced that she would donate $ 15 million in homes to support Los Angelenos, who lost her homes in the January fires that caused an estimated $ 30 billion in lost real estate.
Since Gebbia’s participation with Doge was revealed, some Airbnb hosts have expressed consternation on the platform, and some tell the San Francisco standard that they have He threw his listings. “Being in the DC area and seeing the impact that Dege has had on our community and economy, I feel that I can no longer be an Airbnb host in good faith,” said an Airbnb host for a long time of the standard.
In a statement at the exit, Airbnb stressed that Gebbia has not been involved in its daily operations since 2022, with a spokesman who adds: “Airbnb has always been more than the point of view of anyone. Our community consists of millions of hosts and hundreds of millions of guests from all areas of life. “