Charles Borges, the chief data officer at the Social Security Administration (SSA), resigned on Friday — just days after filing a whistleblower complaint about Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) employees working at the agency.
In his complaint, Borges said DOGE employees had uploaded a copy of the nation’s Social Security information to a “vulnerable cloud environment.” His resignation was confirmed by the Government Accountability Project (GAP), which is representing him legally.
The SSA disputed his claim. A spokesperson said the data was “walled off” from the internet and that the agency is “not aware of any compromise to this environment.”
“The data referenced in the complaint is stored in a long-standing environment used by SSA and walled off from the internet,” the spokesperson explained.
The issue goes back to June, when the Supreme Court temporarily lifted a lower court’s injunction, allowing DOGE access to sensitive Social Security information. Two labor unions and an advocacy group had argued that such access violated the Privacy Act and other federal law. A lower court agreed and issued an injunction, which was upheld by an appellate court. Solicitor General D. John Sauer then appealed to the Supreme Court, saying the injunction was preventing the executive branch from letting federal employees modernize government systems with the data they needed.
In his resignation letter to SSA Commissioner Frank Bisignano, Borges said he was leaving involuntarily because SSA’s actions made it “impossible to perform legally and ethically.” He described his resignation as a “constructive discharge.”
Borges also said he had faced retaliation since first reporting his concerns internally and later filing the whistleblower complaint. “I have suffered exclusion, isolation, internal strife, and a culture of fear, creating a hostile work environment and making work conditions intolerable,” he wrote.
He further alleged that new leaders in SSA’s IT and executive offices had “created a culture of panic and dread, with minimal information sharing and frequent discussions on employee termination.” He said his repeated requests for information about questionable activities were “rebuffed or ignored by agency leadership.”
Andrea Meza, a GAP attorney representing Borges, said in a statement that he felt he could no longer work at SSA “in good conscience given what he had witnessed.” She added that Borges will continue to work with oversight bodies.
Borges had been SSA’s chief data officer since January. Before that, he worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and was a White House Presidential Innovation Fellow during the Biden administration, according to LinkedIn. He also held data roles at the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division and the Naval Air Systems Command.
On LinkedIn Friday, Borges wrote, “It is never wrong to be morally and ethically right with yourself.”
An SSA spokesperson declined to comment on personnel matters.
