Nearly two weeks after The New York Instances reported that Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia had joined Elon Musk’s “Division of Authorities Effectivity,” Gebbia clarified his position on Thursday, announcing on X that as a place to begin, he’ll be leveraging his design experience as a part of a broader effort to overtake the federal government’s notoriously gradual, paper-heavy retirement course of.
The system may definitely use the assistance. Chuck Ezell, performing director of OPM, stated in a video testimonial launched at the moment — and republished by Gebbia — that one week in the past, the administration challenged the company to “course of a retiree, finish to finish, digitally, with out printing something to paper.” The deadline? Only one week.
In the identical video, an company worker tells the cameraman that they’ve already managed to shrink the method to 2 days.
Whether or not that course of is scalable or sustainable stays to be seen, however OPM has been beneath stress for years to modernize its methods. Final summer season, the company launched a pilot program for a brand new on-line retirement software platform.
In 2023, a number of lawmakers issued a press release, urging the OPM to deal with the sluggish processing of retirees, who have been generally ready greater than 90 days to obtain their advantages.
Gebbia — a billionaire many occasions over due to his Airbnb holdings — nonetheless serves on the board of the short-term rental large. Since September 2022, he has additionally been a board member at Tesla.
In his X publish about his subsequent steps, Gebbia wrote: “Since leaving my working position at Airbnb in 2022, I’ve been searching for the subsequent digital design problem. And I can consider few extra necessary ones than volunteering to enhance the person expertise inside our authorities.”
Along with co-founding Airbnb, Gebbia is the co-founder of Samara, a spin-out of Airbnb that builds pre-fabricated houses that prospects can customise, selecting layouts, colours, home windows, doorways, and decks, with Samara saying it handles the remainder, together with acquiring the related permits.
Final week, Samara introduced it might donate $15 million price of the dwellings to help Los Angelenos who misplaced their houses within the fires of final month.