House Oversight Democrats are demanding answers about the installation of a “server of unknown nature and origin” at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) that aided the agency in sending buyout offers to federal employees.
The letter asks for a list of employees that installed the equipment, the authority under which they were hired, and whether they faced background investigations — a nod to a Reddit post saying employees outside OPM installed the server.
The installation of the server appears to have been a stepping stone in OPM’s work to assemble a list of federal employee emails ahead of offering the “Fork in the Road” buyout package to nearly all employees — a brainchild of Elon Musk.
But in doing so, OPM may have violated laws dictating how the agency must plan for using databases with personally identifiable information.
“At best, the Trump Administration’s actions at OPM to date demonstrate gross negligence, severe incompetence, and a chaotic disregard for the security of our government data and the countless services it enables our agencies to provide to the public,” said the letter from Rep. Gerry Connolly (Va.), the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee’s top Democrat, and Rep. Shontel Brown (D-Ohio).
“At worst, we fear that Trump Administration officials know full well that their actions threaten to break our government and put our citizens at risk of foreign adversaries like China and Russia gaining access to our sensitive data.”
Posted by John3262005