Get the latest tech news

GitHub reveals how software engineers are purging federal databases


A project called "Remove-DEI" shows the tweaks used to remove "forbidden words" from a database about childhood school readiness.

Code updates to a government database that helps track whether a federal program to get children ready for school at age five is actually working show software engineers are purging it of references to "forbidden words" related to DEI. At HHS, a recent GitHub commit details a project called “Remove-DEI” which removes the ability to search or filter in this HeadStart for information on how well programs that target “families affected by systemic discrimination/bias/exclusion” are actually working. I ask also that you scan the website for other places where we need to remove the forbidden words.” The code was written by employees at a company called Ad Hoc LLC, a government contractor that works with HHS on the database.

Get the Android app

Or read this on r/technology

Read more on:

Photo of GitHub

GitHub

Photo of software engineers

software engineers

Photo of federal databases

federal databases

Related news:

News photo

Musk/Dodge Given Access to Federal Databases

News photo

Microsoft catapults DeepSeek R1 into Azure AI Foundry, GitHub

News photo

Major GitHub outage affects pull requests and other services