Federal workers will get another email asking them to detail accomplishments

WASHINGTON — Federal workers are expected to receive another email as soon as Saturday asking them to describe what they achieved this past week, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The email will come directly from agencies’ human resources divisions this time, instead of from the Office of Personnel Management, the person said. The decision comes after Office of Personnel Management leaders met with agency representatives Thursday and advised them to send out the emails, according to the person. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

It was not clear as of Friday afternoon how widely the plans had been communicated across the federal workforce, however. It was also unclear what consequences, if any, there would be if employees fail to comply.

Civilian workers at the Department of Defense received a heads-up Friday afternoon that they would receive the email Monday, and that a response was expected.

“Reply to that email and cc your supervisor within 48 hours,” the notice said. “Submissions must exclude classified or sensitive information and will be incorporated into weekly situation reports by supervisors. Noncompliance may lead to further review.”

That amounts to significantly more guidance than federal employees received last weekend, when they were surprised by a mass email from the Office of Personnel Management that instructed them to reply with a list of five accomplishments from their previous workweek.

The blast came shortly after billionaire Elon Musk, whom President Donald Trump has tasked with overseeing a major downsizing of the federal workforce, said on social media that it would be coming — and that failure to respond would be “taken as a resignation.”

“Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager. Please do not send any classified information, links, or attachments,” that first email read. The deadline to respond was 11:59 p.m. last Monday.

Although Musk said he was acting at the encouragement of Trump, the directive sowed chaos and led to mass confusion across the federal government.

In some cases, federal employees do not have access to their government email when they are not working. Some managers instructed employees to respond, while others told them not to. Privately, some agency leaders worried that complying with Musk’s orders could result in employees revealing national security secrets and other sensitive information. By Monday afternoon, the Office of Personnel Management informed agencies that they did not have to require employees to respond.

It is possible that more employees will be expected to respond to an email with such instructions if it comes from their agency, and not the Office of Personnel Management.

The decision to send out another round of emails was first reported by The Washington Post.

Recent legal challenges have tested the limits of power that the Office of Personnel Management, the government’s human resources arm, wields over the federal civilian workforce, which is made up of roughly 2.3 million people. On Thursday night, a federal judge ruled that the agency had exceeded its authority when it issued memos outlining steps to fire most federal workers on probation.

“Congress has given the authority to hire and fire to the agencies themselves,” said Judge William Alsup of the Northern District of California. “The Office of Personnel Management does not have any authority whatsoever, under any statute — in the history of the universe — to hire and fire employees within another agency.”

Earlier this week, Musk explained why he wanted federal employees to respond to the email.

“What we are trying to get to the bottom of is, we think there are a number of people on the government payroll who are dead, which is probably why they can’t respond,” Musk said during a Cabinet meeting Wednesday. “So, we’re just literally trying to figure out are these people real, are they alive and can they write an email, which I think is a reasonable expectation.”

In a memo published Monday, the Office of Personnel Management urged agencies to consider whether they should require employees to submit bullets about their achievements as part of weekly activity reports.

The memo also directed agencies to “consider any appropriate actions regarding employees who fail to respond” and that it was up to their leadership to determine what actions should be taken.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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