DOGE Accesses Federal Payroll System Over Objections of Career Staff

Members of Elon Musk’s cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency gained access over the weekend to a payroll system that processes salaries for about 276,000 federal employees across dozens of agencies, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The move overruled objections from senior IT staff who feared it could compromise highly sensitive government personnel information, including by making it more vulnerable to terrorist cyberattacks, these people said.

By accessing the system, which is housed at the Interior Department, the DOGE workers now have visibility into sensitive employee information, such as Social Security numbers, and the ability to more easily hire and fire workers, according to the two people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared retribution.

In an interview with Fox News last week, Mr. Musk defended his team’s efforts to gain access to government and personnel information, saying that it was part of a broader effort at “reconciling all of the government databases to eliminate the waste and fraud.”

He added, “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.”

The Interior Department is one of a handful of large agencies, including the Pentagon and the Agriculture Department, that house payroll hubs through which flow the salaries of thousands of federal workers at dozens of other agencies. The Interior Department hub processes payrolls for the Justice, Treasury and Homeland Security departments, as well as the Air Force, Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, among other federal agencies.

It was not clear Sunday if DOGE has sought or gained access to payroll systems housed at other large agencies that cover some 2 million additional federal workers.