Chuck Borges has had quite the year.
In January, Borges started a new job as the Social Security Administration’s chief data officer, overseeing some of the most sensitive data systems in the federal government—including databases containing Social Security numbers, addresses, citizenship status, and benefits records of nearly every American.
Or at least that was the job description. Instead, he spent seven months struggling to get basic visibility into the systems he was statutorily responsible for, at times learning about how Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was operating at the agency in press reports rather than internal discussions. By this summer, he filed a whistleblower complaint alleging that DOGE had copied and moved sensitive American data to an unsecure cloud environment. Borges was quickly forced to resign.
Now, Borges is launching his campaign for Maryland state senator.
In his first interview since the campaign began on Tuesday, Borges describes his clashes with DOGE, being sidelined at his own agency, and why he thinks technologists are needed to help steer this new era of government.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
WIRED: Why did you decide to run for office? And how did working under DOGE influence your decision to run?
Chuck Borges: I left SSA in late August, and the next month was very trying, both personally and professionally. There was a lot of congressional interaction. There was some media outreach. We had a lot of documentation to work on. I started to express to various local groups that they should be concerned about data privacy. This is not a partisan issue. It’s a nonpartisan issue that your data privacy should be concerning to you and that there’s risk involved.
In early October, the local Democratic Party reached out to me and asked if I would be interested in running for office. The reason I’m running is pretty simple—I worked at the highest levels of federal government and through that process I saw a lot of interactions with Congress. There’s a lot of concerns in the country today around government dysfunction and a lot of things just aren’t working.
DOGE didn’t influence my decision, but the dysfunction I experienced this year in general continued to motivate me to find ways to serve the public better.
When you first heard about DOGE involving itself at SSA, what did you expect would happen?
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