The new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is making a lot of waves with the changes they are attempting to implement. While the aim of the organization may make sense, many are deeply unhappy with the seemingly haphazard way they are choosing to go about things, and the last straw for many has been their gaining access to the federal payroll systems.
Considering the delicate nature of the data, concerns have been raised about having the employment information of 276,000 federal employees accessible to non government employees, as well as their access to Social Security numbers and the ability to hire and fire workers a lot more easily. Sources privy to the issues have stated unequivocally that DOGE’s access to these systems could compromise cybersecurity of sensitive government information and that any IT personnel that complained or resisted the access was put on administrative leave and is now under investigation for “workplace behavior.”
The Federal Personnel Payroll System (the official name of the system) is one of the most important features of the federal government as it processes pay for the Air Force, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, as well as the departments of Homeland Security, Treasury, and Justice.
The pushback on DOGE’s access to the Federal Personnel Payroll System
An Interior Department (ministry where the payroll system is housed) spokesperson gave a statement confirming compliance with the access order “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.”
However, experts are warning the public about the consequences that DOGE’s acquisition of private information will likely have. One such expert, Elizabeth Laird, the director of equity in civic technology at technology policy nonprofit the Center for Democracy and Technology, told Fortune “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,”
DOGE’s CEO Elon Musk justified the need for the access as a necessary part of identifying and eliminating waste and fraud. “These databases don’t talk to each other. 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.”
This is not the only system containing sensitive federal information that DOGE has accessed, they have also gained access to the Internal Revenue Service and attempted to breach the Social Security Administration, although that was stopped by a court order temporarily. According to statements from DOGE the main goals are to use AI to streamline administrative tasks and privatize Social Security, despite insisting that the goals are to eliminate fraud and waste.
Cary Coglianese, an administrative law professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School analyzed the situation “[It’s] never really been clear what the long game is. 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.”
Laird concurs with the analysis and takes it one step further, linking it to Trump’s first term’s decisions “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. Except instead of using that information for fraud use, they wanted to use it for immigration purposes.”
The increased availability of private information has sparked significant legal challenges. Over a dozen lawsuits claim that DOGE’s access to sensitive federal data violates the Privacy Act of 1974, a law enacted after Watergate to prevent agencies from sharing personal information without citizen consent.
But beyond legal and cybersecurity concerns, Laird warned that granting DOGE access to government data raises broader questions about the long-term role of AI in federal operations and the actual effectiveness of large-scale workforce reductions. “Something can be private, and something can be secure, and it can be legal,” Laird said. “And it can still be a bad idea.”