DOGE employee had “read-only access” to two Federal Student Aid systems, Education Department says

An Education Department official told Senate Democrats that Department of Government Efficiency employees are reviewing the agency’s Federal Student Aid contracts, which included providing one staffer with limited access to several of its systems. 

The Feb. 18-dated letter came in response to a written request earlier this month from 18 lawmakers — including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. — for the department to disclose additional details about the cost-cutting unit’s work following news reports that DOGE employees could potentially access sensitive federal student loan data.

The department’s missive was sent before a federal court on Monday temporarily blocked DOGE from accessing sensitive information collected by the Education Department and the Office of Personnel Management.

In its letter, the Education Department said DOGE personnel are reviewing “Federal Student Aid contracts to identify possible efficiencies” and that, to support this work, “one employee had read-only access to two of FSA’s internal systems.”

This included the Financial Management System — which is described on the official federal student aid website as “a centralized system for all FSA financial transactions” — and the Partner Connect portal, which is designed “for individuals involved in the administration of Title IV financial aid for postsecondary education.”

The Education Department’s response came from Steve Warzoha, a White House liaison to the agency who wrote that he was delegated the duties of the assistant secretary for legislation and congressional affairs.

“FSA maintains rigorous access controls and procedures to secure our systems and data,” Warzoha wrote. “FSA managed the employee’s access according to these controls and procedures. The employee’s access to the FMS and Partner Connect systems has since been revoked.”

Concerns have also been publicly raised about the ways in which DOGE is using artificial intelligence tools to process and review sensitive Education Department data. A Feb. 6 report published in The Washington Post said that DOGE personnel were feeding department data into an AI tool to review the agency’s programs and spending. 

Warzoha wrote that “all borrower data remain inside the Department’s network and are not being fed through any Artificial Intelligence system.”

Warren released the Education Department’s letter on Thursday, along with a Feb. 26-dated response to the agency signed by her and 14 Senate colleagues. 

In their new missive to the department, the Democrat lawmakers said Education’s disclosure that a DOGE employee had access to several FSA systems was “frustratingly vague” and did not provide full insights as to which DOGE or department personnel “had access to which datasets and what they were doing with that access.”

The lawmakers also expressed concern that the department specified that “borrower data” was not being fed into AI tools, but that this assurance was not extended to the FSA systems accessed by the DOGE employee. They also cited the department’s statement that the staffer’s access had been revoked, saying that it raised additional questions “about what happened and why the employee was no longer allowed to view the data.”

The release of the Education Department’s letter and the senators’ follow-up missive came the same day that Warren and a coalition of Democrat lawmakers announced they had opened an investigation into DOGE’s access to sensitive national security information.