Trump Team Moves to Help Musk Tighten Grip Over Federal Data

(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump’s administration is moving chief information officers at federal agencies — who often hold career positions that protect them from firing — into the ranks of political appointees.

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The move would exert even more White House control over federal data at a time when Tesla Inc. CEO Elon Musk is gaining access to government information technology systems in an attempt to root out what he calls government waste.

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A memo from the Office of Personnel Management on Tuesday recommended agencies reassign CIO positions out of the ranks of career employees by Feb. 14.

OPM’s acting director, Charles Ezell, said the change would help the president “make government more responsive, transparent, efficient, and accessible to the public, and to make using and understanding government programs easier.”

Ezell said CIOs often exercise authority over “significant political issues,” including cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and even diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

“No longer the station of impartial and apolitical technocrats, the modern agency CIO role demands policy-making and policy-determining capabilities across a range of controversial political topics,” he said.

It wasn’t immediately clear how many CIOs would be affected by the move and if OPM has the power to force agencies to make the change.

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While the memo didn’t explicitly mention either Schedule F or the Department of Government Efficiency, it put agency CIOs at the center of two of Trump’s executive orders.

Schedule F, which Trump has renamed “Policy/Career,” is a new classification of federal worker that puts some senior officials outside the civil service regulations that usually govern career federal employees. The new category would give Trump more power to hire and fire those positions on the grounds that their duties are of “confidential, policy-determining, policy-making, or policy-advocating character.”

The Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, is a Musk-led initiative to modernize federal information technology. But Musk’s DOGE teams have also gained at least partial control of payment systems at the Treasury Department and personnel records at OPM, and have shut down federal contracts from the US Agency for International Development.

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