- The Elon-Musk led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) gained access over the weekend to the payroll system overseeing the information of 276,000 federal workers. DOGE’s continued access to sensitive data has raised concerns about privacy and cybersecurity, but also about the long-term goal of the advisory group, which has continued to espouse eliminating government waste and fraud.
The Department of Government Efficiency has continued its charge to obtain sensitive government information, gaining access over the weekend to federal payroll systems, raising concerns about the long-term goals of the advisory’s efforts to overhaul U.S. bureaucracy.
The Elon Musk–led advisory now has entry into the employment information of 276,000 federal employees and is able to view Social Security numbers and more easily hire and fire workers, two anonymous sources told the New York Times. The system, known as the Federal Personnel Payroll System, is inside the Department of the Interior, which processes pay for the Air Force, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, as well as the departments of Homeland Security, Treasury, and Justice.
DOGE’s access to these systems could compromise cybersecurity of sensitive government information, the sources said. When senior IT personnel pushed back against the move, they were reportedly put on administrative leave; they are now reportedly under investigation for “workplace behavior.”
“We are working to execute the President’s directive to cut costs and make the government more efficient for the American people and have taken actions to implement President [Donald] Trump’s Executive Orders,” an Interior Department spokesperson told Fortune in a statement.
Musk recently doubled down on justifying DOGE’s access to government data, claiming it was a necessary part of identifying and eliminating waste and fraud.
“These databases don’t talk to each other,” Musk said in a Fox News interview last week. “And that’s really the source of, that’s the biggest vulnerability for fraud, is the fact that these databases don’t talk to each other. So we need to reconcile the databases. It’s a, frankly, painful homework, but it has to be done, and will greatly improve the efficiency of the government systems.”
However, policy and transparency experts warn DOGE’s acquisition of private information will have reverberating consequences that have yet to be determined.
“Being able to amass all of that information will give the federal government unprecedented power and control to do with that information a number of things that we just haven’t experienced as a country before,” Elizabeth Laird, the director of equity in civic technology at technology policy nonprofit the Center for Democracy and Technology, told Fortune.
What’s the long game?
Over the past two and a half months, Musk’s DOGE team has also gained access to the Internal Revenue Service, which stores bank account information and purchase itemizations, and the Social Security Administration, which houses individuals’ lifetime wages and disability and citizenship status.
While one of DOGE’s more immediate goals appears to be leveraging AI to streamline administrative tasks, as well as eventually privatizing Social Security, Musk’s ultimate goal of eliminating fraud and waste remains mysterious to some.
“[It’s] never really been clear what the long game is,” Cary Coglianese, an administrative law professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, told Fortune. “Ostensibly, we’ve been told it’s to try to improve the efficiency, maybe to identify where there are people who are getting paid who are not really living, or methods for auditing payroll systems.
“This doesn’t seem to be following any of those conventions, as far as anybody can tell from the outside,” he added. “And there isn’t really a clear articulation of an overarching vision.”
DOGE did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.
Trump’s first-term playbook could offer a hint at the administration’s intentions. During his first term, the administration moved to ensure more information was shared among federal agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to make it easier to identify biological data and immigration status.
Last month, Trump signed a similar executive order to “eliminate information silos,” claiming to give federal officials speedy and full access to unclassified records, data, software, and information systems.
“If you look at the data environment that DOGE is attempting to create, it looks pretty similar to the data environment that the Trump administration indicated they wanted to create in their first term,” Laird said. “Except instead of using that information for fraud use, they wanted to use it for immigration purposes.”
Easier access to private information has raised serious legal questions. More than a dozen lawsuits have alleged DOGE’s access to sensitive federal data is a violation of the Privacy Act of 1974, a post-Watergate law restricting agencies’ sharing of private information with unauthorized entities without the consent of citizens.
Even if cybersecurity and legal concerns were assuaged, Laird argued, DOGE’s access to sensitive government data still presents unknowns about the government’s future use of AI, as well as the true efficacy of massive workforce eliminations.
“Something can be private, and something can be secure, and it can be legal,” Laird said. “And it can still be a bad idea.”
