The dozens of USDs cuts hit teams such as product management, design and acquisition last week. Kamens and other sources told Wired that he was the only person of the USDS engineering team fired. He and others speculate that he was targeted because he was critical in the weeks before the USDs were publicly critical of Doge. Doge did not return a request for comment on his removal.

Although all large IT systems should be protected from threats, Kamens says that the most urgent projects it has worked on at the VA containing the veterans’ sensitive personal data so that it could only be stored and deployed in the most guarded parts of the system can become stronger controls to limit who can access what information can get. Both to understand how data flow through a system and limiting access to reduce the risk of networking and threats to insider has emerged as important security priorities for any organization.

“My biggest concern I tried to address at the VA in my time was related to personal health data and personal information, Phi and PII, and ended in places where they were not supposed to be,” says Kamens. “And in my opinion, our access control, although in order, was not as strong as it should have been, which meant I didn’t think we had enough granularness over controlling access to which data.” He was the point of addressing these problems, is now at a great risk of keeping out.

The effects of the cuts at VA, as well as the USDs cuts that will also affect the veterans agency, are still in sight. But in addition to the possible impediment of initiatives to improve digital security, the reduction can affect the effectiveness and reliability of the digital protection that currently exists.

Senator Patty Murray, a Democrat of Washington and the Vice Chairman of the Senate Awareness Committee, hosted a virtual press conference on Wednesday with former federal workers from her state who was recently terminated. One, Raphael Garcia, is a veteran of disabled army who worked as a management analyst for the VA.

“I coordinated access to IT system so that each team member had the right tools,” Garcia said during the event. “I managed critical compliance and operational controls, while constantly maintaining stakeholders nationwide.” He added that although his termination is a personal hardship, it is also a “clear reminder that our federal government dissolves its central support system for veterans and vulnerable communities. “

Kamens, who spent his career before USDS in the private sector, says he liked the government’s work, and it will be difficult to find a job other than rewarding.

“There were these interviews that we all had to deal with the day after the inauguration with the Doge people,” he says. “In mine, one of them asked me to describe what I was doing at VA and then said something like, ‘If you do all the work, why don’t you work in the private sector where you could make twice? “And I said,” Because I don’t care about the money. I care about serving veterans. ‘

“I think the fact that someone asked me the question was really told.”