Secrecy is becoming a defining trait of Elon Musk's DOGE
www.nbcnews.com

... DOGE officials have been active at USAID, Veterans Affairs, Treasury and elsewhere, but little is publicly known about their work.

On Monday, a team at IBM that is contracted to manage human resources data for more than 500,000 federal employees received an unusual request to provide "read-only" access for the HR records for all 14,000 employees of the General Services Administration, according to a source familiar with the contract.

The email was from IBM's regular contact at the GSA, the agency that manages federal property. But the request was odd since the agency already had "read and write" access to the data.

The request and the questions it raised were one example of the suspicion and speculation in Washington as President Donald Trump and Elon Musk conduct an unprecedented effort to shrink the federal workforce and slash federal programs that is shrouded in secrecy.

Democrats have criticized Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency for failing to disclose the names of its staff members, its criteria for laying off certain government workers and its rationale for cutting programs. Which government data they are accessing remains not fully known.

As of Wednesday, NBC News has confirmed that DOGE officials have been active at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees health care for more than 139 million people; the U.S. Agency for International Development; the Department of Veterans Affairs; and the U.S. Treasury.

A White House spokesperson did not directly answer a question about whether DOGE requested the human resources records of the 14,000 GSA employees from IBM. ...