There's zero reason to do all this for read only access, I strongly feel he's pushing for the CA keys behind the system that would allow write access to the ledgers.
(Who am I kidding? FOIA offices are probably going to be slashed; independent Inspector Generals have been forced out.)
Naively it seems corrupt.
It gives him the ability to excise unwise spending. He can figure out where the money is going, and if it's being spent badly, he can stop it (possibly directly, possibly through pre-existing channels). It avoids getting caught up in the bureaucracy, which cannot fix itself but needs to be replaced from outside.
I'm fairly certain that this is not in fact what is going to happen, and that the real goal is to gather data on his enemies and harass them. But we'll see who's right soon enough.
So either this official got the worlds fastest processing of a retirement application through their HR department and through OPM, or he was already retiring on Jan 31 anyway and the timing is just a coincidence.
It is common in federal service to retire on the last day of the month because retirement pensions are paid on the first day of each month, so one has the smallest 'gap' in payments by doing so.
What I'm really really curious about, is who's playing who ? Elon is playing Trump or the other way around ?
As it says on the SPS website, the they use PKI! ... Wait a tick, is that what Elon wants access to? So he can read/write the federal account ledgers? Or perhaps Elon wants to control the CA behind it. The article mentions very select few personnel have access, which sounds like this... Yeah that might be enough of a reason for a long time, very senior federal employee to call it quits all of sudden, so as to not be the stooge that gives away the keys to Elon (particularly the CA keys). (Pure uneducated speculation)
I'm going to guess the explainer for the office(s) in question: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bureau_of_the_Fiscal_Service https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Fiscal_Service
Sounds like Wyden is at least asking questions, now that someone at Treasury has fallen on their sword: https://www.finance.senate.gov/chairmans-news/wyden-demands-...
