The Committee has received concerning reports about DOGE’s flawed attempts to amalgamate sensitive data from the SSA, IRS, HHS, and other agencies into a unified, cross-agency master database. While enhancing data sharing between federal agencies to improve outcomes and customer service has long been a bipartisan goal in Congress, it’s evident that DOGE is proceeding in a way that overlooks crucial cybersecurity and privacy measures, potentially violating legal requirements.
The Committee has discovered that, in what appears to be an attempt to bypass network security protocols, DOGE engineers have sought to build specialized computers that provide full access to networks and databases across various agencies. Such a system poses serious operational security threats and jeopardizes the zero-trust cybersecurity architecture that prevents breaches at one agency from affecting the entire government system. Additionally, the Committee has learned that DOGE associates have assembled backpacks containing laptops, each granting access to different agency systems, which DOGE staff are using to integrate databases currently managed independently by several federal agencies.
