DOGE Seeks Access to IRS System Amid IT Modernization Effort
The Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is reportedly seeking access to an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) system that is usually not available to political appointees.
The Integrated Data Retrieval System (IDRS), which enables employees to access IRS accounts and bank information, is traditionally not available to even the IRS commissioner or the national taxpayer advocate, the Washington Post reported Sunday (Feb. 16).
The access is part of a project in which a DOGE software engineer is set to provide engineering assistance and IT modernization consulting, according to the report. The engineer is required to keep any tax information confidential and destroy information that is shared with him at the end of his 120-day deployment.
White House spokesman Harrison Fields told the Washington Post, per the report: “Waste, fraud, and abuse have been deeply entrenched in our broken system for far too long. It takes direct access to the system to identify and fix it.”
Critics of the agreement allowing the DOGE engineer access to the system told the Washington Post that access to IDRS is normally extremely limited and that taxpayers whose information is wrongly inspected are entitled to monetary damages.
“The information that the IRS has is incredibly personal,” Nina Olson, who served as the national taxpayer advocate from 2001 to 2019, said, per the report. “Someone with access to it could use it and make it public in a way, or do something with it, or share it with someone else who shares it with someone else, and your rights get violated.”
DOGE was created in January by President Donald Trump in an executive order and tasked with updating federal software and technology to boost efficiency and productivity within the federal government.
The Democratic membership of the Senate Banking Committee said in a Friday (Feb. 14) press release that the Treasury Inspector General and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) are investigating the reported decision by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to allow DOGE to access government payment systems.
Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Ron Wyden, D-Ore., had requested an investigation, according to the press release.
On Feb. 10, five former Democratic Treasury secretaries wrote in an opinion piece in the New York Times that the efforts of DOGE to gain access to the federal payment systems are a “cause for concern.”
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