A senior official of the General Services Administration since the start of the Trump administration left his current post, according to an email he sent to the staff.
Stephen Ehikian, the former GSA theater chief, who was then his second commander, told employees on Tuesday evening that he “came out of this role”.
“It was an honor and a privilege to serve as an assistant administrator. While I left this role, I wanted to highlight certain successes,” wrote Ehikian in an email. “I can’t wait to serve as an advisor to the management team during this transition and continue to rely on these successes.”
Ehikian was the senior GSA official until July, when Michael Rigas, the deputy secretary of state for management and resources, took over as an acting GSA administrator. Trump appointed Ed Forst, a banking and real estate executive, to permanently direct GSA.
Shortly after Rigas took office as an acting administrator from the GSA, the commissioner of public buildings, Michael Peters, also resigned, just before the start of a reorganization of the agency.
The GSA did not specify if Ehikian has a new position aligned as a result of its transition outside the role of assistant administrator. In a statement, Rigas said: “I would like to thank Stephen Ehikian for his service and wish him good luck in his next steps.”
At the start of the Trump administration, the GSA became a focal point for the Trump administration plans to rationalize government operations. Officials from the Government Ministry of Efficiency have set up a camp at the GSA headquarters.
“From the first day, the Trump administration demanded a more efficient and responsible government. GSA is proud to be a central engine of this effort,” wrote Ehikian.
The Federal News Network reported in April for the first time that Doge officials have dominated a limited list of personnel authorized the security prior to the sixth floor of the GSA headquarters, where the administrator’s office is located.
Despite the presence of Doge in the building, Ehikian told employees at a meeting of the town hall in April that “there is no one working for Doge here.”
Wired reported in July that Doge began to leave GSA headquarters, leaving behind mattresses and children’s games.
Under the direction of Ehikian, the GSA reduced its workforce, closed its 18F technology store and launched plans to reduce the real estate portfolio of the federal government.
Ehikian has written that the federal occupation of buildings has approached around 33%, or almost half of a minimum occupation standard at the level of the government.
The USE IT law, signed by former President Joe Biden in January, obliges agencies to reduce or consolidate the office space if the use rates of federal buildings fall below an average of 60%.
“It is time that we ask the difficult question: why do taxpayers finance empty buildings?” He wrote.
At Doge’s Insive, GSA has accelerated plans to sell underused federal buildings and has mass termination leases for offices.
The GSA under the mandate of Ehikian also concluded agreements at lower cost for government -scale services from several companies, including Microsoft, Oracle, Amazon AWS, Box, Openai, Anthropic, Google, Salesforce, Adobe, Docusign, Uber and Elastic. Tuesday, the GSA also concluded an agreement with ServiceNow to provide artificial intelligence tools to agencies at a lower rate.
The GSA, as part of its ONEGOV strategy, has also resumed the contract work of several other agencies.
“Too often, agencies buy silos – duplication of contracts, lacking volume discounts and stretching their budgets and our partners in the industry,” Ehikian told employees.
In March, GSA launched Fedramp 20x, an initiative to reduce the process of verification of cloud service providers to be used in federal networks in weeks, rather than spending more than one year to obtain authorization.
In July, Fedramp reached a record of 114 authorizations for the year 2025, more than double the number ended the previous year.
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