Unpacking Our Conversation With a Former DOGE Staffer

Vittoria Elliott: And you mentioned that everything is about signal. Obviously there are rules for maintaining records on the work of the government if they are a government agent. Has anyone ever talked to you about it: “Hey, you have to archive this news. Hey, you have to save these e -mails. Hey, you can’t delete that.” Has anyone discussed any legal obligations with you for your work at Doge?

Sahil Lavyia: No. No. There was never a dogen or onboarding, right. No communication with Press, not to speak to press, take photos, not take photos, disclose something that they did with anyone. And yes, nothing about archiving and maintaining records. It was only done with a signal and it was never announced: “That is why we use signal, for example.” It was just like this: “Steven will call her on signal”, and that was it.

Vittoria Elliott: And many of the Doge engineers have been assigned several agencies. Have you ever assigned another agency outside the VA and did you have a feeling for why there were so many Doge engineers in several agencies?

Sahil Lavyia: Yes, I wasn’t. I was assigned VA and I was probably the term that other agencies are detailed in detail. I have the feeling that there were simply fewer engineers at Doge than people would think. There were 10 or less. And so I think that they were only incredibly limited how many people they actually could … If they had 500 engineers, they would not have to do that, but I think they had only so few and especially so few that they trusted. I think there was probably this Schisma and the feeling that if you join the infection, you were seen as a volunteer by external participants. And if you have joined the infection, you became a bit more serious, my guess and only had more time to build up with Steve and Elon, etc. I think you only trusted a very small quota of people, so that you only needed the same group of people to only run a lot and go from agency to agency.

Vittoria Elliott: Have it. Were there controlled controls that were set up because they may have touched really sensitive data? Has someone put you and said: “You will touch a few sensitive things. You can do that or not.” Did you get the feeling that, as I think, there was a speech about how to deal with this data, how to ensure that it is securely protected, how to ensure that people return to the private sector, that it is not used for their own advantage?

Sahil Lavyia: Yes. That was nothing -specific, but there was. I think it depends on the agency and the agencies all have their own protocols to follow them. And in our case at VA, there were some data you said: “If you would like to access it, you have to go through this two -hour type of course online, where you go through a number of tests and have to say that you are able to understand the risks.” But with regard to the HR data, I was able to get access to all HR data, all the contracts without no … I didn’t have to sign or say anything that I had agreed not to share it with the public or to do anything. It is somehow implied. However, I was surprised. I mean, I was … I asked her once. I said, “I like how many people have access to the HR data?” And they say “basically everyone in the HR department”. I think: “You know that this data contains all social security numbers. There are 473,000 social security numbers.” And they say: “Yes, thousands of people have access to it.” I said, “It’s kind of strange.” And I think the government could improve these controls and make them better. There was once that I got access to this thing called CDW, where … I think it stands for the company data camp that had all the data in VA in CDW and revoked them a few hours later when they realized that someone had granted me access to this access, and they were basically taken like: “Old access to this access.” And they said: “Well, he is a senior advisor to the head of the staff. That is … and our protocol is to give you access to all data if you have asked about it.” I think there was this feeling at the beginning that Doge had a lot more power than the people thought, and so everyone only did what we asked them, and unnecessary, I would say: “By the way, follow your own process. I ask you not to do anything else.”