OpM Watchdog says that the assessment of doge work is underway

The Office of personnel management’s Acting Inspector General has confirmed that the independent office is investigating whether there have been “emerging threats” for sensitive information as a result of Elon Musk’s Doo Actuals that introduce rapid changes in protected government networks.

“The Opm Oig [office of the inspector general] is committed to giving independent and objective supervision on the programs and activities of OPM, ”writes the acting inspector general, Norbert Vint, in a letter Dated 7 March to Democratic legislators, adding that his office is not only required by law to investigate the protection protocols of OPM, but this does this routinely based on ‘developing risks’. The letter stated that last month the office would fold specific requests issued by democratic legislators in its ‘existing work’, while also initiating a ‘new commitment’ about potential risks at the agency associated with computer systems that are accessible or changed by the United States Doge Service.

VINT, whose predecessor was fired by Trump in January, is one of the half dozen deputy inspectors general insisted by Democrats In the House Committee on Supervision and Government Reform last month to investigate Reports from Wired And Other points of sale About Doge’s efforts to gain access to a wide range of record systems that organize some of the most sensitive data from the government, including personnel files about millions of government employees and their families.

“We are very concerned that unauthorized access to the system could take place through the federal government and a major threat to the personal privacy of all Americans and the national security of our nation,” wrote Gerald Connolly, the ranking of the supervisory committee, in a letter on 6 February.

In addition to the OPM, Democrats have appointed five other authorities on five other agencies, including at the Treasury Department, the General Services Administration, the Small Business Administration, the US Agency for International Development and the Department of Education. VINT, however, is the only watchdog in one of the aforementioned agencies that have responded so far, a committee spokesperson told Wired.

While in the minority in the house and the Senate, Democrats have little power to supervise effective supervision outside of formal hearings, which must be convened by Republicans. During his first term, the Ministry of Justice of Trump issued guidelines those executive authorities informed that they had no obligation to respond to questions from Democrats.

Congress republicans have committed themselves to little or no formal supervision of the work of Doge, instead choosing channel With the billionaire about the consequences of his anti-person cross ride.

The executive order to set up doge, signed by the president on his first day at the office, instructed federal agencies to offer the agents of Musk “full and fast access” to all non-classified register systems to achieve a government-wide purification of “fraud, waste and abuse.” However, it soon became clear that the staff of Doge, many of them Young engineers With direct ties with Musk’s own companies, little attention was paid to important privacy protectors; shun, for example, Compulsory assessments From new technologies installed on protected government networks.

“Several of the concerns that you have expressed in your letter about issues that the OpM OIG evaluates as part of our annual reviews of OPM’s IT and financial systems, and we plan to include those worries in these existing projects,” Vint writes in the letter of 7 March. “We have also just started a involvement in assessing risks related to new and modified information systems at OPM. We believe that our new involvement will ultimately deal with many of your questions regarding the integrity of OPM systems. “