Full article text because paywall:
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is auditing Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
The probe, which has been ongoing since March, covers DOGE’s handling of data at several cabinet-level agencies, including the Departments of Labor, Education, Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, the Treasury, and the Social Security Administration, as well as the US DOGE Service (USDS) itself, according to sources and records reviewed by WIRED.
Records show that the GAO—an independent auditing, research, and investigative agency for Congress—appears to be requesting comprehensive information from the agencies in question, including incident reports on “potential or actual misuse of agency systems or data” and documentation of policies and procedures relating to systems DOGE operatives have accessed, as well as documentation of policies for the agency’s risk assessments, audit logs, insider threat programs, and more.
Over the last few months, DOGE operatives, many of them with connections to Musk’s companies but little to no government experience, have infiltrated dozens of federal agencies as part of Musk’s plan to push out tens of thousands of government employees. They have also gained initial access to untold amounts of sensitive data, from Treasury payment systems to tax records, and appear to be attempting to connect purposefully disparate data systems.
While a number of Democratic officials have sounded the alarm on DOGE’s activities, this audit is one of the first real signs of possible accountability and oversight.
The GAO’s review is expected to be completed by the end of spring, according to records reviewed by WIRED. Congressional sources say it will yield a report that will be made public.
“GAO has received requests to review actions taken by DOGE across multiple agencies,” Sarah Kaczmarek, a spokesperson for the GAO, tells WIRED. “The first thing GAO does as any work begins is to determine the full scope of what we will cover and the methodology to be used. Until that is done, we cannot provide any additional details or estimates on when the work will be completed.”
The audit, according to records reviewed by WIRED, is broadly centered on DOGE’s adherence to privacy and data protection laws and regulations. More specifically, according to records detailing GAO’s interactions with the Department of Labor (DOL), the agency will conduct a granular review of every system to which DOGE—defined in these records as USDS workers and members of the DOGE teams which an executive order directs every federal agency to establish—has been given access at the agencies it is examining. DOL did not respond to requests for comment.
Notes obtained by WIRED detail a proposed meeting between GAO examiners and DOL representatives to request that DOL officials share records of the system privileges provided to DOGE affiliates, including “any modifications to the accounts,” as well as audit logs showing their activity.
In addition, DOL officials were asked to prepare for an in-person meeting at which GAO officials could observe the security settings on laptops the agency had provided to DOGE operatives and review all the systems that track DOGE’s work at DOL, including a data loss prevention tool and systems used to track cybersecurity and privacy incidents.
15 years ago it was mostly lolcats and rage comics.