Michael Lynch, deputy administrator for the General Services Administration, will be leaving his role and returning to the private sector, according to an email sent to staff Wednesday morning by GSA Administrator Ed Forst.
“Mike has been a part of the Administration since January 20, 2025, and I want to thank him for his service to the agency and the American people,” Forst wrote in the email. “During this time, Mike has led initiatives to advance our strategic priorities, strengthen oversight of internal operations, and support effective delivery of our mission. Mike has also helped accelerate GSA’s efforts to increase technology adoption across the agency and the federal government, supporting our customers, workforce and efforts to streamline how we operate.”
GSA did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Lynch’s departure date is unclear.
Prior to his government service, Lynch was the chief executive officer at UK-based medical technology firm Zedsen. After joining GSA, he quickly became the public face of the agency’s increased role in AI and technology adoption and driving efficiencies across the federal government.
Lynch championed GSA’s OneGov program, through which GSA negotiated substantial discounts on artificial intelligence and other software on behalf of the entire federal government, with accumulated savings to agencies now exceeding $1.62 billion. Several of those discounts have been extended in recent weeks, including deals with Google, OpenAI and Anthropic.
Meanwhile, more than two dozen agencies are using GSA’s USAi platform to access commercial models produced by frontier AI firms.
Within GSA, Lynch led the execution against two core efforts that are now making a dent in challenges faced by other agencies. In early 2026, the agency launched a “million hours challenge” to save and automate one million hours of workload across the agency. Insights and lessons learned in attempting to accomplish the feat later served as the backbone for its Eliminate, Optimize and Automate, or EOA Playbook. GSA released the playbook publicly to all agencies in June to serve as a step-by-step guide to cut, automate and streamline work.
Lynch, who said the Trump administration “has looked to GSA to lead” on approaches to make government more efficient and responsive, evangelized the agency’s internal efforts through a governmentwide Emerging Technology Showcase attended in-person and online by thousands of federal employees on July 30.
“That’s really a core to GSA’s mission and a convening function that we’ve heard: a lot of demand and interest throughout government to expand what we were doing internally and offer it up more broadly,” Lynch said during GovExec’s Government Efficiency Summit on July 16.
This story is breaking and will be updated.
