Unpacking the DOGE Team’s Role in Federal Government Systems

This post was originally published on February 25, 2025 by Grants Works for its Federal Grant Insights newsletter on LinkedIn.

As the country learns more about the DOGE team's access to government systems, we may find ourselves faced with three questions:

1. Who is in control of the US federal government payment systems of the agencies that Elon Musk and his DOGE team accessed?
2. If Musk is looking for fraud at various government agencies, does his DOGE team include forensic auditors or forensic accountants as well as software engineers?
3. What does it mean for the US if court orders from various judges are not honored by the administration?

Two perspectives

Many of us have seen media reports about the DOGE team’s access to multiple federal agencies payment and other systems. It’s introduced a lot of questions and a lot of angst for those worried about the DOGE team accessing sensitive government data--who, reportedly, may or may not have the requisite security clearance needed to access such information.

Foreign Policy has called it the “most consequential security breach of the US government” while those who support this action report it as the DOGE team’s effort to “slash government waste.” Fox reporter Laura Ingraham said “it’s critical DOGE scour every inch of our government.”

Relevance to Federal Grants

But, what does this have to do with federal grants?

Federal grantees (state and local government agencies, nonprofits, school systems, and others) enter their payment information (bank account information) into Automated Standard Application for Payments (ASAP), a Treasury administered system, in order to facilitate electronic payments for reimbursements or advance payments to their organizations.

ASAP is a system overseen by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service. How much ASAP data the DOGE team has access to (full or read only) is unknown. How much grantee information the DOGE team may have accessed (full or read only) is also unknown. To quote Donald Rumsfeld, there are a lot of unknown unknowns.

ASAP is not the only payment system accessed by federal grantees. The system a grantee uses to facilitate payments depends on the agency(ies) that awarded its grants.

Why Focus on the Treasury Department?

One of the primary roles of the Treasury Department is to ensure the “financial security of the United States.” The Treasury department manages trillions of dollars in payments including Social Security, tax refunds, veterans benefits, and federal grantees’ reimbursements from certain federal agencies.

The Bureau of the Fiscal Service's website says it collected nearly $5.47 trillion in revenue through fiscal 2023 and disbursed 87.9% of all federal payments.

The $80 Million FEMA Clawback

FEMA’s sensitive data systems has also been accessed and, according to media reports, the information accessed includes private information about disaster survivors. This access is having consequences including New York City being accused of misusing one of its federal grants.

In the video, I shed light on who authorized the much-reported claw back, the reason for the clawback, and some of the other consequences.

Watch now on YouTube