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Musk Team Blocks Senior Staff from Federal Personnel Database
David Rodriguez 10 2024
By David Rodriguez
Published 8 months ago on
January 31, 2025

Musk-backed officials curb federal workers’ access, raising transparency and security concerns inside OPM. (AP/Kevin Lamarque)

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According to two agency officials, aides to Elon Musk have barred senior career employees at the federal Office of Personnel Management from accessing critical computer systems holding millions of federal workers’ personal data.

Access has been revoked to a vast database called Enterprise Human Resources Integration, containing birthdates, Social Security numbers, addresses, pay grades, and more.

“We have no visibility into what they are doing with the computer and data systems,” one of the officials said. “That is creating great concern. There is no oversight. It creates real cybersecurity and hacking implications.”

Veteran OPM staff also report new appointees moving themselves onto the fifth floor with sofa beds. Some top career employees have been shifted to other floors, while memos encouraging buyouts and extended vacations arrive unannounced.

“No one here knew that the memos were coming out,” the official stated. “We are finding out about these memos the same time as the rest of the world.”

Don Moynihan, a public policy professor at the University of Michigan, cautioned, “This makes it much harder for anyone outside Musk’s inner circle at OPM to know what’s going on.”

Read more at Reuters.

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