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A new Department of Government Efficiency team arrived at the IRS in February 2025, demanding access to taxpayer systems, while chief privacy officer Kathleen Walters worked to protect sensitive data and respond to a mass federal email.
A new Department of Government Efficiency team arrived at the Internal Revenue Service in February 2025, demanding access to taxpayer systems and prompting senior officials to protect sensitive data.
Doge Team Arrives at IRS
The first Doge representative, Gavin Kliger, appeared unannounced in the IRS lobby on Thursday 13 February. Security called Traci DiMartini, who ran the IRS human capital department. Traci called her counterpart at the Treasury department, since the IRS sits inside Treasury. Treasury had no record of anyone named Gavin Kliger.
She then called Tim Curry at the Office of Personnel Management, but he had no idea what was going on. Finally, she asked security to escort the young man to her office. Gavin Kliger came with a chip on his shoulder, it seemed to Traci. He offered not even the faintest smile or the most glancing eye contact.
Dressed in black from hoodie to sneaker, he was brusque to the point of rudeness. He looked, and was, just a few years out of college. Eyes on the floor, he explained to Traci that he had come to sort out the problems inside the IRS and to root out the fraud. That is a big job, she said.
Anyone who worked at the IRS knew that it had its problems. Fraud was not likely one of them. Its technology infrastructure was a case study in government dysfunction, but its ethical infrastructure was sound. Like all federal employees, IRS staff was not allowed to accept more than a free cup of coffee from anyone who might want something from their agency.
Access Demands Raise IRS Concerns
Gavin Kliger, in contrast, struck Traci as problematic. He had somehow laid his hands on badges granting him access to some crazy number of government buildings. His backpack was stuffed with government-issue phones and at least four laptops. He was now insisting that Traci supply him with an IRS phone and laptop.
He also demanded his own IRS email address, access to computer systems with all the taxpayer information, and a meeting with the acting IRS commissioner, Doug ODonnell. As Gavin sat there, Traci called Treasury again. That guy you said did not exist is now here sitting in my office, she said. What do y all want me to do with him.
The Treasury guy went away, then came back and said that Gavin Kliger had been hired three weeks earlier by the Office of Personnel Management and was attached to Doge, whatever that meant. In her nine years running human capital departments at various federal agencies, Traci had never seen a new political appointee just turn up in the lobby and demand access to the computer systems.
None of this is normal, she said, but we are still trying to be nice. She explained to Gavin the IRS rules: before anyone was allowed to work inside the building, he needed to pass a tax audit. They went back and forth like that a bit until finally Gavin relented. Traci then explained that after he passed the audit, he would need to be given the mandatory presentations about ethics and taxpayer information.
Gavin thought that the IRS should just let him in. He wanted access to our systems immediately, said Traci. Tracis next call, at 6.30pm that Thursday evening, was to Kathleen Walters. She arranged for Kathleen to brief Gavin on data privacy laws and warned her that the experience might not be entirely pleasant.
If I had a kid who behaved the way he does, I would slap the shit out of him, Traci said. Traci was from Philadelphia. She was always telling Kathleen that she should try a bit less hard to see the best in others. By then word of Doge arrival at the IRS had spread, and Kathleen had read about them.
Federal Workers Receive Reporting Email
Nine days later, in the early hours of Saturday 22 February 2025, an email landed in the inboxes of the entire US federal workforce. Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager. Please do not send any classified information, links, or attachments. Deadline is this Monday at 11:59 p.m. EST.
When she noticed the email that Saturday night, Kathleen Walters already had far too much going on in her life. Number one was figuring out if the lump in her breast that her doctor had just detected was a tumour. Half of her known blood relatives had died of cancer, and she was now 52. The lump needed understanding.
For a start, the specifics of her job at any given moment, as she would have been the first to point out, could not legally be described to others. She was the chief privacy officer at the IRS.
She ran a staff of 650 people tasked with preventing any of the 100,000 IRS employees from losing or leaking or even so much as peeking at, unless they had the authority to peek, any of the 266m tax returns they were just then processing from the previous year. One hundred thousand people is a big-sized town, said Kathleen. In any big-sized town, you have some crazy people. I could easily see someone writing, This weekend I audited Beyonce.
Privacy Risks Spread Across IRS
Whoever had sent this email asking her to list five things she had done at work was now demanding that all these people inside the IRS share information that, in many cases, should never be shared. She thought it was nuts. She responded quickly, and vaguely, with five things she had done the previous week, all the while feeling sure no one would ever read what she wrote.
Her phone was already exploding with questions from her subordinates, a few of whom were saying that their replies were bouncing back with a mailbox is full notice. Now she had to sit and think about how to minimise the damage. A meaningful percentage risked being tossed in jail if they described what they did in an email.
It was a crime for an IRS employee even to acknowledge that some specific person had or had not filed a tax return. People do not understand what the IRS does, said Kathleen. The email came as a surprise, but then the IRS was suddenly full of surprises.
Kathleen Walters Gavin Kliger Taxpayer Data Privacy Federal Workforce Email
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