The dozens of USDS cuts last week hit teams like product management, design, and procurement. Kamens and other sources told WIRED that he is the only person from the USDS engineering team who was fired. He and others speculate that he was targeted because he had been publicly critical of DOGE in the weeks before the USDS cuts. DOGE did not return a request for comment about his removal.
While all large IT systems need to be protected from hacking threats, Kamens says that the most urgent projects he was working on at the VA involved containing veterans’ sensitive personal data so it could only be stored in the most guarded parts of the system and deploying stronger controls to limit who could access what information. Both understanding how data flows through a system and limiting access to reduce risk from network intrusion and insider threats have emerged as key security priorities for any organization.
“My biggest concern that I was trying to address in my time at the VA related to personal health data and personal information, PHI and PII, ending up in places they weren’t supposed to be,” Kamens says. “And, in my opinion, our access control, while it was OK, was not as strong as it should have been, meaning I don’t think we had enough granularity over controlling who had access to what data.” He adds that projects he was spearheading to address these concerns are now at high risk of stalling out.
The impacts of the cuts at VA, as well as the USDS cuts that will also affect the veterans’ agency, are still coming into view. But in addition to potentially hampering initiatives to improve digital security, the reductions may affect the efficacy and reliability of the digital protections that are currently in place.
Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington and the vice chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, hosted a virtual press conference on Wednesday with former federal workers from her state who were recently terminated. One, Raphael Garcia, is a disabled Army veteran who had been working as a management analyst for the VA.
“I coordinated IT system access so that every team member had the proper tools,” Garcia said during the event. “I managed critical compliance and operational controls while maintaining constant communication with stakeholders nationwide.” He added that while his termination is a personal hardship, it is also a “stark reminder that our federal government is dismantling its central support system for veterans and vulnerable communities.”
For his part, Kamens, who spent his career prior to USDS in the private sector, says that he came to love government work, and it will be difficult to find another job as rewarding.
“There were these interviews we all had to do with the DOGE people the day after the inauguration,” he says. “In mine, one of them asked me to describe what I was doing at VA and then said something like, ‘If you’re doing all that work, why aren’t you working in the private sector where you could be making twice as much money?’ And I said, ‘Because I don’t care about the money. I care about serving veterans.’
“I think the fact that someone asked me that question at all is really telling.”
