Trump orders full access to agency data for designated officials
Federal agencies must now allow any officials designated by the president or agency leadership to have complete access to unclassified records, data, software systems and IT systems, President Donald Trump declared in an executive order late Thursday night.
Trump’s directive aims to stop waste, fraud and abuse by eliminating information silos, requiring agency heads to “ensure Federal officials designated by the President or Agency Heads (or their designees) have full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, data, software systems, and information technology systems — or their equivalents if providing access to an equivalent dataset does not delay access — for purposes of pursuing Administration priorities related to the identification and elimination of waste, fraud, and abuse.”
“This includes authorizing and facilitating both the intra- and inter-agency sharing and consolidation of unclassified agency records,” the executive order states.
The order requires agency heads to rescind or modify agency guidance that acts as a barrier to any sharing of unclassified data in or across agencies within 30 days. During that same period, agencies must also submit to the Office of Management and Budget a report on regulations governing unclassified data access with suggestions on whether they should be eliminated or modified to achieve the executive order’s goals.
Upon the signing of the order, agency heads must also ensure that the federal government has “unfettered access” to comprehensive data from all state programs that receive federal funding including data generated by such programs that are maintained by third-party databases.
The order also requires the Department of Labor’s secretary and secretary’s designees to receive complete access to unemployment data and related payment records, “including all such data and records currently available to [DOL’s] Office of Inspector General.”
The Thursday order follows one of Trump’s first executive orders in this term that established the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency Service (USDS) to replace the U.S. Digital Service and ordered agencies to allow USDS “full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records, software systems and IT systems.”
While the Thursday directive does not point directly to DOGE as the federal officials gaining access to all unclassified information and systems, the administration points to it in a fact sheet.
“On day one, [Trump] established the [DOGE] to examine how to streamline the federal government, eliminate unnecessary programs and reduce bureaucratic inefficiency,” the sheet states.
Since then, DOGE has infiltrated many federal agencies, gaining access to key IT systems and sensitive data sets, including those at USAID, the Education and Treasury departments, the Social Security Administration, and a number of others.
The order comes after a DOGE associate working at Treasury was called out in an ongoing lawsuit for improperly sharing sensitive personal information outside the agency. It appears this order would open up the possibility for designated officials to circumvent existing agency policies that forbid such sharing.
