Becker’s Hospital Review reports that the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) “has access to sensitive information in 19 HHS databases and systems,” according to a court filing obtained by Wired. HHS provided the information during the discovery process in the lawsuit filed by the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations against the federal government, requesting restriction of DOGE’s access to federal systems.
According to Becker’s, DOGE had not previously disclosed nine of the 19 systems, which “contain various protected health information, ranging from email and mailing addresses to Social Security numbers and medical notes.”
Some of the systems included federal employees’ data and access to Medicare recipients’ personal information. For instance, one system listed is the Integrated Data Repository Cloud system, which “stores and integrates Medicare claims data with beneficiary and provider data sources.” Other listed systems include the NIH Workforce Analytics Workbench, which “tracks current and historical data on the NIH workforce, including headcounts and retirement information,” the Office of Human Resources Enterprise Human Capital Management Investment system, which “manages personnel actions and employee benefits at HHS,” and the Business Intelligence Information System, which “stores cloud-based HHS human resources and payroll data for analysis and reporting.”
We will continue to follow courts’ analyses and decisions relating to DOGE’s access to sensitive federal employees and individual data.