Akash Bobba

Akash Bobba starts as Expert at OPM.

Akash Bobba is granted elevated access to 2 systems at OPM.

Multiple DOGE staff start working at OPM and are listed as part of the Office of the Director.

IT staff at OPM are pulled into a “911-esque call” requesting that “a political team” of 6 individuals must be given access to OPM systems. These include Charles Ezell, Greg Hogan, and Amanda Scales, as well as unidentified employees OPM-03 (Akash Bobba), OPM-05 (Gavin Kliger) and OPM-07 (Brian Bjelde). These DOGE staffers are granted administrative access to USAJOBS, USA Staffing, and USA Performance systems.

Akash Bobba detailed from OPM to DOGE

Wired Magazine provides an early listing of which Musk-affiliated DOGE staff now have positions at OPM.

Akash Bobba detailed from OPM to Ed.

Akash Bobba detailed from OPM to SSA

Unidentified employee SSA-01 (Akash Bobba) starts working at the SSA with the title of Expert and an annual salary of $90,025.

Mike Russo officially joins the agency as its new CIO. He then immediately requests that Akash Bobba should be rapidly onboarded into the agency (but there are issues with Bobba’s background check).

NBC News reports that Akash Bobba and Ethan Shaotran have admin access to email at the Department of Education and had also accessed the backend admin for the agency website.

Akash Bobba starts as Expert at SSA.

Akash Bobba is granted basic access to NUMIDENT at SSA.

Mike Russo summons his new ally Leland Dudek to his office and asks him to explain data discrepancies identified by Elon Musk. Leland convenes a team of dozens of SSA engineers who review the data from the Treasury department and document fallacies of DOGE’s reasoning in a memo. Mike Russo rejects the memo’s conclusions by declaring that DOGE would not trust career civil servants and demanding that Akash Bobba must do his own analysis.

Mike Russo and the DOGE chief of staff Steve Davis both demand that Akash Bobba be onboarded at Social Security Administration before midnight, bypassing the usual background security checks.

In a FOIA request, Democracy Forward names DOGE staff known to be at OPM at that time.

Frustrated with the questions and concerns raised by Akash Bobba about technical issues with the sandbox NUMIDENT data, Mike Russo complains directly to the Chief CIO in the office of the OMB.

SSA IT staff express concern to Acting Commissioner Michelle King that Akash Bobba is accessing highly sensitive data provided by SSA remotely from an insecure location (the DOGE enclave within OPM). This is in violation of the terms of his signed access agreement.

In a sworn declaration, Florence Felix-Lawson notes “the SSA DOGE Team currently consists of ten SSA employees: four SSA special government employees (Employees 1, 4, 6, and 9) and six detailees to SSA from other government agencies and offices (Employees 2, 3, 5, 7, 8, and 10)”

Wired reports that 10 DOGE staffers are currently visible in the Microsoft Teams directory of all employees at SSA

In a sworn declaration, Leland Dudek justifies access to PII in SSA records for SSA-01 (Akash Bobba), SSA-05 (Cole Killian), SSA-08 (Nikhil Rajpal) and SSA-09 (Payton Rehling) on the DOGE team. This access is granted through the SSA’s Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) system. He asserts that DOGE staff are being granted only the minimum levels of schema access required.

A partial copy of the GSA’s A-Suite access list includes multiple DOGE personnel who are listed as based in GSA.

Akash Bobba detailed from SSA to USDA

In a response to a FOIA request made by American Oversight, SBA provides a list of all people who have been identified as communicating on agency head Kelly Loefler’s behalf. It includes a number of people known to be DOGE and others with the title Senior Advisor who might also be doge.gov

OPM-03 (Akash Bobba) reaches the Not-To-Exceed (NTE) date for the special government employee status and is removed from access at the agency.

Akash Bobba has elevated access revoked for USA Performance at OPM.

In a report about DOGE’s continued work on OPM’s Online Retirement Application (ORA) continuing to move ahead, Politico identifies DOGE staff that are working on the project under Joe Gebbia.

Akash Bobba converted to permanent position at OPM

Special government employee OPM-03 (Akash Bobba) is converted to a permanent position within the agency, still unpaid.

Seeking to further bolster support for its proposed new voter registration tool that would be integrated with DHS databases, the Election Assistance Commission hosts a call with the National Association of Secretaries of State. Akash Bobba speaks on the call as a developer and reports it will be created by the National Design Studio and integrate with the revamped SAVE database from DHS. When asked for details about data retention and security, Bobba could only state that “clear data retention policies” would be provided to states in advance.

A legal filing from the government states that only 5 DOGE staffers – OPM-02 (Riccardo Biasini), OPM-03 (Akash Bobba), OPM-05 (Gavin Kliger), OPM-10 (Austin Raynor) and OPM-18 (Noah Peters) – are still working at the agency. OPM-02 (Riccardo Biasini) is reporting directly to Scott Kupor.

Akash Bobba leaves role at OPM