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Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) initiative has gained accessed to a sensitive child support database, over the objections of career civil servants.
The Department of Health and Human Services confirmed to The Washington Post that DOGE officials have “read-only” access to the Administration for Children and Families-run Federal Parent Locator System, which contains income and federal benefits data for nearly every U.S. worker.
“ACF supports DOGE’s efforts to improve efficiency and data quality to reduce waste, fraud, and abuse in federal programs,” an official at the department told the paper. “ACF will continue to assist DOGE in efforts to strengthen the programs it runs.”
It was previously reported that career staff members objected to DOGE accessing the data, a pool of sensitive information protected with the same federal privacy laws as Internal Revenue Service tax records.
The group is likely scrutinizing the records as part of its larger efforts to find duplicative or otherwise problematic government payments.
Musk, the father of at least 14 children with four separate women, has also personally been embroiled in custody issues.
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In February, he was ordered to appear in court by a New York judge in a custody and child support dispute with Ashley St. Clair, a right-wing influencer.
Musk was also involved in a protracted custody fight with the singer Grimes, with whom he has three children.
DOGE has faced multiple lawsuits for its fast-moving — and, to critics, unlawful — attempts to access federal payment data in its quest to drastically slash government spending and identify fraud and abuse.
On Friday, in a lawsuit from labor unions and a retirees group, a federal judge declined to limit DOGE access to a Treasury Department payment system, finding that the data had not been compromised.
The ruling had limited effect, however, because a separate federal judge in New York temporarily banned access to the system last month, though they left open the possibility the ban could be dropped if DOGE members were shown to have gotten proper cybersecurity training.
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Also Friday, a group of labor unions asked a federal court in Maryland to stop DOGE from accessing Social Security data, with a former official at the agency writing in an affidavit that DOGE had shown “a disregard for our careful privacy systems and processes.”
The list of DOGE staffers remains highly opaque, though at least one member of the cost-cutting group, a 19-year-old, was previously fired from an internship at a cybersecurity firm after he was accused of leaking company secrets to a competitor, though he has denied any wrongdoing.
Concerns about DOGE extend to its creation and leadership structure.
The Trump administration has insisted that Musk does not lead DOGE, a position that might expose Musk to further scrutiny and ethics requirements, though the president himself said in his joint address to Congress the billionaire does lead the group.
A lawsuit against DOGE, which was created by refashioning an executive office called the United States Digital Service, argues the body violates the transparency requirements of the 1972 Federal Advisory Committee Act.
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Elsewhere, the administration has said Amy Gleason, a former healthcare worker, is acting administrator of DOGE, though a group of two dozen staffers who recently resigned wrote in a letter that even they were not aware of who was running the initiative.
In a February case regarding DOGE access to Department of Labor data, a judge suggested the group was trying to “escape” the “obligations that accompany agencyhood” — including being subject to the Freedom of Information Act, the Privacy Act and the Administrative Procedures Act — “while reaping only its benefits.”
Others argue Musk, who does billions of dollars of business with the federal government, is in a compromised position through his work on DOGE, regardless of whether he’s the symbolic or actual head of the group.
