The Record, Trump order on information sharing appears to have implications for DOGE and beyond (2025-03-21):
A new executive order from President Donald Trump aims to expand information-sharing across federal agencies as well as between federal and state governments, but civil libertarians and other experts are warning that the main purpose is to help normalize how the Department of Government Efficiency is handling government data.
The order, issued Thursday, directs all federal agency heads to modify or rescind any regulations preventing the sharing of unclassified data and records between federal agencies.
Agency heads also must ensure that the U.S. government has “unfettered access” to comprehensive data from all state programs that receive federal funding. The order extends to all such data even when stored in third-party databases. […]
While the new EO asserts that the removal of data “silos” is designed to eliminate fraud, waste and abuse, disturbing mission creep is very possible, said Elizabeth Laird, director of equity and civic technology at the nonprofit Center for Democracy and Technology.
There are no assurances that the data won’t be used for “targeting people who the administration has separately said are a priority for them,” Laird said. “That can include immigrants, it can include people who are transgender, it can include people that speak up” against the administration. […]
Allowing DOGE to co-mingle agency data also could lead to abuses against the general population, said Cody Venzke, senior policy counsel at the ACLU.
Individuals going through airport security could routinely be checked against a centralized database so that the Transportation Security Administration, for example, could discover they unknowingly haven’t paid back taxes and delay their travel, he said. […]
Court filings in DOGE cases have revealed examples of irregular data sharing. On March 14, a filing said a former worker in the office, Marko Elez, broke Treasury Department rules when he sent an unencrypted database containing personally identifiable information outside of the agency.
- Refers to:
- Trump administration Executive Order 14243: Stopping Waste, Fraud, and Abuse by Eliminating Information Silos (2025-03-20)
- See also: