Veterans Affairs loses cybersecurity migration project lead after DOGE layoffs

The Department of Veterans Affairs was in the middle of a major cloud security migration project when the Department of Government Efficiency fired a key U.S. DOGE Service official tasked with co-leading the work to make the VA.gov platform more digitally secure and compliant with federal cybersecurity standards.

Jonathan Kamens co-led the project with a second USDS employee, who also resigned from the service on Tuesday alongside 20 other legacy employees of USDS rather than work for the rebranded U.S. DOGE Service, according to a person familiar with the matter. 

The project, which was already expected to take a year, could face significant delays without USDS involvement and curtail VA’s ability to defend against hacking threats, said Kamens and the person familiar. Kamens also told the AP on Tuesday that veterans’ sensitive data is at risk of compromise following his layoff.

The IT work could be ...