Social Security’s chief data officer blows the whistle on DOGE; Adele Merrit resigns as NIH’s CIO

Department of Government Efficiency members stored a copy of a massive Social Security Administration database in a “vulnerable” custom cloud environment, putting more than 300 million people’s personal information at risk, the agency’s chief data officer said in a new whistleblower complaint. The complaint, filed with Congress on Tuesday, revealed new concerns from CDO Charles Borges about “serious data security lapses” allegedly involving DOGE officials working at the SSA. According to the complaint, those officials, under the direction of SSA Chief Information Officer Aram Moghaddassi, granted themselves permission to copy Americans’ Social Security information onto a cloud server with no verified oversight, violating agency protocols. The Government Accountability Project wrote on behalf of Borges in the complaint that the “vulnerable cloud environment is effectively a live copy of the entire country’s Social Security information from the Numerical Identification System (NUMIDENT) database, that apparently lacks any security oversight from SSA or tracking to determine who is accessing or has accessed the copy of this data.” The NUMIDENT data includes all the information applicants use for a Social Security card, including their name, phone number, address, place and date of birth, parents’ names and Social Security numbers along with other personal information. The complaint warned: “Should bad actors gain access to this cloud environment, Americans may be susceptible to widespread identity theft, may lose vital healthcare and food benefits, and the government may be responsible for re-issuing every American a new Social Security Number at great cost.”

Adele Merritt is out as the top IT official at the National Institutes of Health after roughly eight months in the role, again changing up the leadership in the position. Merritt was first announced as the new chief information officer in December after most recently serving as CIO of the intelligence community. At the time she took on the position, the role hadn’t had a permanent official in roughly two years. Merritt’s departure comes as the Trump administration has sought to reduce the federal workforce and reshape federal agencies, including HHS. In March, Secretary Robert F. Kennedy announced plans to cut 10,000 workers from the agency on top of 10,000 who had already left via incentivized resignation and retirement offers from the administration. A recent ProPublica analysis of HHS’s public directory found that the health agency has lost roughly 18% of its workforce since January.

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