The dozens of USDS cuts last week hit teams such as product management, design and purchases. Kamens and other sources told Wired that he was the only person of the USDS engineering team who had been dismissed. He and others speculate that he was targeted because he had been publicly critical of Doge in the weeks preceding the Cups of the USDS. DOGE did not return a request for comments on his dismissal.
While all major computer systems must be protected against piracy of threats, Kamens says that the most urgent projects on which he worked in the AV concerned containing sensitive personal data from veterans so that he can only be stored In the most kept parts of the system and the deployment of stronger controls to limit that could access the information. Understanding how data circulates in a system and limiting access to reduce the risks of network intrusion and initiate threats have become key safety priorities for any organization.
“My biggest concern that I was trying to attack my stay in the will linked to personal health data and personal information, Phi and Pii, finding themselves in places that they were not supposed to be”, said Kamens. “And, in my opinion, our access control, when it was ok, was not as strong as it should have been, which means that I do not think that we had enough granularity to be controlled who had access to which data. ” He adds that projects he was spearhead to respond to these concerns now run at high risk of blocking.
The impacts of the Cups in Va, as well as the Cups of the USDS which will also affect the Agency of Veterans Combators, are still in sight. But in addition to potentially embarrassing initiatives to improve digital security, reductions can affect the efficiency and reliability of digital protections currently in place.
Senator Patty Murray, Washington Democrat and vice-president of the Senate credits committee, welcomed a Virtual press conference Wednesday with former federal workers by his state who were recently dismissed. One, Raphael Garcia, is a veteran of the disabled army who worked as a management analyst for the VA.
“I coordinated the system access so that each member of the team has the appropriate tools,” said Garcia at the event. “I managed compliance and essential operational controls while maintaining constant communication with stakeholders nationwide.” He added that if his dismissal is a personal difficulty, it is also a “brutal reminder that our federal government dismisses its central support system for veterans and vulnerable communities. “”
For his part, Kamens, who spent his career before the USD in the private sector, said that he came to love the work of the government, and it will be difficult to find another job as a gratifying.
“There were these interviews that we all have to do with the Doges the day after the inauguration,” he said. “In mine, one of them asked me to describe what I was doing in VA and then said something like:” If you do all this work, why don’t you work in the private sector where Could you do twice as a lot of money? And I said, “Because I don’t care about money. I care about serving veterans.
“I think the fact that someone asked me this question is really revealing.”
