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Senior career officials at the Department of the Interior were initially placed on administrative leave after reportedly objecting to broad access sought by DOGE-affiliated personnel to Interior’s payroll, human-resources, and credentialing systems. A later Nextgov report, citing two anonymous sources, said four officials were fired.
The dispute centered on the Federal Personnel and Payroll System (FPPS), a shared Interior platform supporting personnel and payroll functions for multiple federal customers. The reporting established concerns about the requested privileges, but not that DOGE received unrestricted “root” access, changed anyone’s pay, or caused a data breach.
What happened at Interior
According to sources cited by WIRED on March 31, 2025, DOGE-affiliated personnel sought “full” or “system-level” access to Interior systems handling payroll, human resources, email accounts, and credentials.
Career officials reportedly questioned the request because it appeared to involve unusually broad administrative powers. The officials included Interior’s chief information officer, chief information security officer, and an associate solicitor. WIRED reported that they were placed on administrative leave on a Friday afternoon and told they were under investigation for workplace behavior.
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The following Saturday, sources told WIRED that access to FPPS was apparently granted. Those sources could not determine the precise privilege level. On April 9, Nextgov reported that four senior officials had been fired: CIO Darren Ash, CISO Stan Lowe, Associate Solicitor Tony Irish, and Interior Business Center human-resources associate director Julie Bednar.
That sequence matters. The original reporting concerned administrative leave; the later reporting described a separate, more final employment action. The available reports do not establish an adjudicated finding that the officials committed misconduct, nor do they conclusively establish that they were fired solely because they objected to DOGE access.
The timeline
| Date or period | Reported development |
|---|---|
| January 20, 2025 | President Donald Trump issued Executive Order 14158, reorganizing the U.S. Digital Service as the U.S. DOGE Service and directing agency heads to provide “full and prompt access” to unclassified agency records, software systems, and IT systems. The Congressional Research Service summarized the order and its DOGE provisions. |
| Several weeks before March 31 | According to WIRED’s sources, DOGE-affiliated personnel sought broad access to Interior’s payroll, HR, and credentialing systems. |
| Thursday before the leave actions | Career technical and legal officials reportedly met with DOGE representatives and asked what authority and functionality were actually needed. |
| Friday afternoon | WIRED reported that Interior’s CIO, CISO, and associate solicitor were placed on administrative leave and told they were under investigation for workplace behavior. |
| Saturday | Sources told WIRED that DOGE received access to FPPS, although the final scope and privilege level remained unclear. |
| April 9, 2025 | Nextgov reported that four senior Interior officials had been fired, adding Julie Bednar to the three officials identified in the initial account. |
What is FPPS?
The Federal Personnel and Payroll System is not simply a small, Interior-only payroll database. It is housed within Interior’s Interior Business Center, which provides shared administrative services to federal customers. Interior’s Interior Business Center customer-support page identifies FPPS among the personnel and payroll services it supports.
WIRED reported that FPPS contained records associated with more than 275,000 federal workers. Nextgov reported that the system connected with more than 40 government customers. The figures describe the scale of the platform, but they should not be read to mean that FPPS literally controls every federal employee’s paycheck.
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The system’s data is nevertheless highly sensitive. Nextgov referenced a 2024 privacy assessment involving information such as Social Security numbers used in payroll processing. Interior also maintains official privacy notices and documentation for systems involving employee, contractor, credentialing, and logical-access records.
This shared-service dimension is important: a decision made at Interior could affect data and operational controls used for numerous government customers, not just Interior employees.
Who reportedly sought access?
WIRED identified three people associated with the request:
- Tyler Hassen, an energy executive and acting assistant secretary of policy, management, and budget at Interior;
- Stephanie Holmes, described as running HR for DOGE and serving as Interior’s acting chief human capital officer; and
- Katrine Trampe, an adviser to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum.
Their labels and authority should not be treated as interchangeable. WIRED’s sources disputed whether all three were formally members of a DOGE team or had authority beyond their ordinary Interior roles. WIRED reported that Holmes had been detailed from the U.S. Digital Service, while Hassen and Trampe were Interior employees rather than clearly designated formal DOGE team members.
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According to WIRED, the request was described as “full” or “system” access. The reported capabilities included creating, pausing, or deleting email accounts and broad access across payroll, human-resources, credentialing, and related systems.
That phrase can conceal several technically different permissions:
- Read access: viewing records without changing them.
- Export access: copying or downloading sensitive records.
- Account administration: creating, disabling, or deleting user accounts.
- Write access: modifying personnel or payroll records.
- Approval authority: authorizing changes initiated by another person.
- System administration: changing configurations, permissions, or potentially application code.
Career staff reportedly concluded that no single Interior employee normally held equivalent root-level access across all of these environments. A risk assessment described potential consequences including exposure of W-2 information, lockout of authorized users, changes to personnel or payroll actions, and modifications to system code.
Those were identified risks, not documented harms. The cited reporting did not establish that DOGE altered payroll, deleted accounts, changed code, or stopped anyone’s pay.
Why did career officials object?
Security and concentration of privilege
An account with broad powers would be a valuable target. If its credentials were stolen or misused, one compromise could provide a path to sensitive information and multiple administrative functions. The larger the system and the more agencies it serves, the greater the potential blast radius.
Separation of duties
Payroll and personnel systems commonly separate the person who initiates an action from the person who reviews or approves it. That arrangement makes unauthorized changes harder to conceal and reduces the risk of a single mistake affecting an employee’s records or pay.
Granting one user the ability to create an action and approve it could weaken that control. The concern is not that every administrator is untrustworthy; it is that system design should not depend on one person’s judgment alone.
Privacy
Unclassified does not mean harmless or public. Payroll and personnel systems can contain Social Security numbers, tax documents, salary information, employment records, credentialing details, and other personally identifiable information. Interior’s EACS system-of-record notice illustrates the department’s use of logical-access and credential-related records.
Authority and scope
The officials reportedly questioned whether the broad language in the executive order resolved all of the practical and legal questions surrounding the request. Among the issues were who could receive the permissions, which functions were necessary, whether access extended across FPPS customers, and how privacy and security controls would be maintained.
That is a distinction between policy direction and technical authorization. A presidential directive can order agencies to provide access to unclassified systems, but it does not automatically answer every question about least privilege, approval controls, data minimization, statutory privacy duties, or the authority of a particular individual.
What Executive Order 14158 said—and what it did not settle
The Congressional Research Service’s summary says Executive Order 14158 reorganized the U.S. Digital Service as the U.S. DOGE Service, created agency DOGE teams, directed a software-modernization initiative, and required agencies to provide “full and prompt access” to unclassified records, software systems, and IT systems.
The order’s language is broad. But the available sources do not show that it definitively authorized:
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- the ability to modify or approve payroll actions without separation-of-duties controls;
- access by individuals who were not formally assigned to an agency DOGE team;
- government-wide access to a shared platform based solely on an Interior role; or
- the bypassing of applicable privacy, security, training, logging, and accountability requirements.
In practice, “full and prompt access” still requires an agency to determine what account, data, and administrative permissions are appropriate for the stated purpose. Access to an unclassified system, access to its data, and authority to change records are not the same thing.
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Were the officials on leave or fired?
Both descriptions apply to different stages of the reported episode.
WIRED’s March 31 account described the officials as being placed on administrative leave. Administrative leave is an employment status, not a finding that an employee committed wrongdoing.
Nextgov’s April 9 follow-up, citing two anonymous sources, said four senior officials had been fired: Darren Ash, Stan Lowe, Tony Irish, and Julie Bednar. The report also said other technology leaders, including Chief Data Officer Tod Dabolt and Chief Technology Officer Andrew Havely, were taking a renewed deferred-resignation offer.
Those additional departures provide context about Interior’s technology leadership, but they do not by themselves prove that every departure was retaliation for the FPPS dispute.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.Was DOGE actually given access?
The most defensible answer is: apparently some access was granted, but the final privilege level was not established by the cited reporting.
Sources told WIRED that FPPS access was granted after the officials were removed, but they could not determine whether DOGE received the full access originally requested. The reports also did not establish that anyone changed a federal employee’s pay, interrupted payroll, deleted personnel records, or caused a security breach.
Some coverage highlighted the theoretical possibility that powerful access could affect the pay of high-profile government officials, including Supreme Court justices. That is a description of what certain permissions might theoretically enable—not evidence that anyone attempted to stop a particular justice’s paycheck.
What a controlled access arrangement would normally require
Without claiming that these controls were used in this incident, a defensible arrangement for sensitive shared systems would generally include:
- least-privilege permissions tied to a specific task;
- read-only access where write access is unnecessary;
- named individual accounts rather than shared credentials;
- multifactor authentication;
- separate administrator and approver roles;
- time-limited or just-in-time elevated access;
- complete audit logs reviewed independently;
- controls on bulk exports and downloads;
- written authorization identifying the systems, functions, customers, and purpose involved; and
- a documented process for immediately revoking access.
These safeguards do not prevent modernization. They make it possible to pursue modernization while preserving accountability for every sensitive action.
What remains unknown
The cited reports leave several important questions unanswered:
- What exact permissions were ultimately granted to DOGE-affiliated personnel?
- Was access read-only, administrative, time-limited, or capable of changing payroll and personnel records?
- Were any records, accounts, payments, or system settings changed?
- Was a formal workplace-behavior investigation conducted, and what was its outcome?
- What specific legal justification did the administration use for the requested access?
- Did the affected officials challenge their firings?
- Did Interior conduct a subsequent privacy, security, or access review?
Until those questions are answered through official records, audits, litigation, congressional oversight, or additional reliable reporting, claims about “root access,” unlawful retaliation, or actual payroll interference should remain qualified.
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Why the episode matters
For federal employees, the immediate concern is the integrity and privacy of payroll and personnel information. For taxpayers and the public, the broader issue is who is accountable when political appointees, temporary personnel, contractors, or newly created teams seek powerful access to shared government infrastructure.
The episode also illustrates why headlines about “access” need technical precision. Viewing data is different from exporting it. Exporting data is different from changing it. Changing a record is different from approving one’s own change. And access to an Interior-operated shared service is not automatically the same as authority over every agency that uses that service.
The available reporting supports a clear account of a serious dispute: Interior career officials reportedly resisted unusually broad DOGE access to a sensitive, cross-agency payroll and personnel platform; they were initially placed on leave; and four were later reported fired. It does not, on the evidence cited here, prove that payroll was manipulated or that a breach occurred.
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