As Trump targets fraud, the government’s identity focus reaches a new peak

As part of its effort to root out the waste and abuse of government resources, the Trump administration has recently placed fraud squarely in its crosshairs. With that, senior government officials and other policymakers have pointed to the need for stronger and more prevalent identity verification to combat fraud. An expert in digital identity verification, Jordan Burris, former chief of staff to the federal CIO during the first Trump administration and part of President Biden’s term and now head of public sector at Socure, joins the Daily Scoop to discuss the ongoing issues around identity fraud, the U.S.’s journey to a national digital identity verification system and why Washington has struggled so much to get identity right. The Department of Energy is piloting Grok, the generative AI tool from Elon Musk’s xAI, within its Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, according to the agency’s AI use case inventory. The pilot began at the end of June 2025 and has been used to find general answers to questions, summarize information and create documents. The Grok pilot comes at a time when the Energy Department is pursuing ambitious AI goals as part of its role in leading the Trump administration’s Genesis Mission. Energy Secretary Chris Wright has repeatedly characterized the AI effort as “the Manhattan Project of our time.” Grok has been a controversial addition to the federal government’s workflows since the start, following its posting of racist and antisemitic comments last July. A group of more than 30 advocacy organizations called on the Office of Management and Budget to prohibit the use of Grok across the federal government just a month after xAI launched “Grok for Government” last summer. Grok has continued to dominate headlines in the months since. The chatbot has generated biased or misleading claims, garnering the attention of foreign governments and domestic watchdogs. The Department of Veterans Affairs has tapped former government technology leader Zack Schwartz to serve as the next principal deputy assistant secretary for the agency’s Office of Information and Technology. In this role, Schwartz will “oversee technology strategy, daily IT operations, cybersecurity, systems modernization, and service delivery across the department,” VA Deputy Secretary Paul Lawrence wrote in a LinkedIn post Monday. Schwartz will work under Lawrence, who also serves as the agency’s acting chief information officer and assistant secretary for OIT. Schwartz joins the VA with more than a decade of government IT experience, having previously served at the Department of Commerce and the Census Bureau. These roles involved work on modernization and agency-wide transformation initiatives, Lawrence said. Schwartz announced the move on LinkedIn Sunday evening, writing that he appreciates “the many colleagues across VA who supported my transition and welcomed me into the role.” Schwartz most recently served as the chief information and technology officer at Events DC, an events hosting company, according to his LinkedIn profile.