Billionaire Elon Musk remains focused on the technology that runs the federal government even as his associates’ access to key government systems and data has drawn legal challenges and criticism.
“We have to fix the computers,” Musk said during an interview with several Department of Government Efficiency associates Thursday on Fox News, which the New York Times described as a “charm offensive” for DOGE.
Federal agencies have indeed often struggled with aged technology, data systems that don’t connect and user experiences that leave Americans with headaches. The IRS, for example, has been trying to get off its 1960s-era system for individual tax account administration for years.
“If the computers can’t talk to each other, you can’t get research done. If the computers can’t stay online, people won’t receive their Social Security,” said Musk. “So what we have here are a bunch of failing computer systems that are preventing people from receiving their benefits, that are preventing research from happening, that are extremely vulnerable to fraud, and we’re fixing it.”
Musk said that eliminating fraud is a way to reduce government spending overall.
“The government is not efficient, and there’s a lot of waste and fraud, so we feel confident that a 15% reduction [in federal spending] can be done without affecting any of the critical government services,” he said, noting that he’d be done with “most of the work” within the 130-day timeframe tied to his government position.
Throughout the interview, the billionaire assured viewers that the work of his team would help people get government benefits they are owed and ultimately be good for the government itself.
“This is a revolution,” he said. “At the end of the day, America is going to be in much better shape.”
On their face, some of DOGE’s tech-focused goals may normally garner bipartisan support. The top oversight Democrat in the House, for example, previously told Nextgov/FCW he was open to collaborating with DOGE on government IT.
More recently, though, Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., has expressed alarm over DOGE’s access to government data and use of artificial intelligence, arguing that the use of third-party AI software may run afoul of laws governing how agencies use cloud software.
DOGE has been sued many times over its access to sensitive government data. Asked about judges handing down temporary holds, Musk blamed a “far-left bias” in the D.C. Circuit.
In terms of the focus on fraud, one anti-fraud expert has noted that DOGE’s definition of fraud appears to be expansive enough to include policies that the Trump administration is opposed to that aren’t actually fraudulent.
“The exclusive focus on fraud is undermining customer service,” Donald Moynihan, a public policy professor at the University of Michigan who studies administrative burdens in government services, told Nextgov/FCW. “DOGE is using fraud as a justification for cutting employees, which is mechanically worsening service.”
At the State Department, staffing and funding shortages are the top threats to its work to modernize passport processing, according to recent findings from the Government Accountability Office.
Although the passport team has gotten an exemption from a government-wide hiring freeze, it still lost staff when the General Services Administration shuttered 18F, a tech team brought in to assist the State Department after previous modernization efforts had failed, according to one source familiar. GSA told Nextgov/FCW that it is “in the process of reconciling active projects in the 18F portfolio,” including State’s passport work.
Other government tech efforts, like the modernization of a key public health system, are also in limbo as a result of recent staffing cuts.
An ‘Apple store’ experience
“The two improvements that we’re trying to make to Social Security are helping people that legitimately get benefits, protect them from fraud that they experience every day on a routine basis, and also make the experience better,” said Aram Moghaddassi, a DOGE engineer.
Recently, however, there have been several system outages at SSA preventing employees from accessing some programs internally in addition to preventing the public from logging into accounts with the agency online.
At least two brief outages this week were caused by new identity proofing checks now being run in the background as SSA’s acting leadership pursues controversial new policies the agency says are meant to tamp down on fraud and identity theft in its programs. SSA didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Financial fraud at SSA accounted for approximately $88 million in fiscal year 2023, though that only represents a tiny sliver of the agency’s expenditures.
Moghadassi went on to say that 40% of phone calls made to SSA to change direct deposit information come from fraudsters — which is false, according to SSA itself. The agency said this week that 40% of direct deposit fraud at the agency is associated with phone calls, not that 40% of all calls regarding changes to bank information are made by fraudsters.
“We’re going to make sure that the website stays online,” Musk said when asked about news reports of website outages.
Steve Davis, a longtime Musk ally who is now part of DOGE, said that the outages aren’t a result of Musk’s efficiency efforts and then pivoted to talking about people listed with birthdays way over 100 being on Social Security’s payrolls.
The agency’s acting commissioner, Leland Dudek, has refuted this claim, noting that those files are a system quirk that happens when someone doesn’t have a death date in their record, and these people aren’t necessarily getting benefits.
“What you’re seeing is taking the best of Silicon Valley and the business world and bringing it into the government,” said Joe Gebbia, Airbnb co-founder and DOGE associate who has been working on moving the government’s retirement processing online with the aim of completing retirements within days.
“We really believe that the government can have an Apple store-like experience,” he said. “Beautifully designed, great user experience, modern systems.”
Musk said he learned about the reliance on paper for government retirements as he was pushing for federal employees to opt into voluntary retirements, part of the efforts of the Trump administration and DOGE to shrink the workforce.
“We actually want to be careful in the cuts,” said Musk. “If we were to approach this with the standard of making no mistakes at all, that would be like saying someone in baseball’s got to bat 1,000. That’s impossible. So when we do make mistakes, we correct them quickly and we move on.”
