March 3 (UPI) — U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has directed all department civilian employees to respond to emails from the Office of Personnel Management asking them to list their achievements in the past week.
There are 950,000 civilian employees working in the Department of Defense with a total workforce of 2.1 million, including service members. The Pentagon is largest agency in the federal government, which has 2.3 million workers.
OPM has sent two emails to all federal workers on “What Did You Do Last Week.” The second email, which was sent Friday, gave an 11:59 p.m. ET Monday deadline to submit five bullet points to an internal department email address.
Initially, the Pentagon instructed employees not to respond to the first OPM email sent Feb. 22. Hegseth said the temporary pause would allow for “a review of Pentagon procedures and consultation with the Office of Personnel Management.”
“I am directing each member of the Department’s civilian workforce to provide five bullets on what they accomplished in their specific jobs last week to their immediate supervisors,” Hegseth said in a news release Monday.
“All DoD civilians will receive an email outlying the next steps to be taken to comply with this initiative. These reports will be consolidated internally within the Department to comply with the OPM directive.”
On Monday, Hegseth said an email from the Defense Department will request that same information. Within 48 hours, they are expected to reply to that email, with their accomplishments included and their supervisors also as recipients.
In a video statement, Hegseth said the information would be consolidated internally within the department to satisfy related directives from OPM.
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is seeking to cut expenses, including salaries.
“It’s a simple task, really, as Elon [Musk] said, as the president recognized in our first Cabinet meeting, just a pulse check — ‘Are you there out?’ — to DOD civilians,” he said in the video.
He said the department deals with sensitive issues and with matters of national security, so “we needed to be careful on that front.”
Hegseth said the responses should not include that type of information.
Hegseth said in his memorandum that non-compliance may lead to further review.
Musk, the world’s richest person with an estimated net worth of $359.4 billion, according to Forbes, initially said workers face dismissal if they do not respond.
“Subject to the discretion of the president, they will be given another chance. Failure to respond a second time will result in termination,” Musk posted on his X platform on Feb. 24.
President Donald Trump weighed in on the matter at a press conference Wednesday.
“You’ve got a lot of people who have not responded,” he said. “So we’re trying to figure out, do they exist, who are they, and it’s possible that a lot of people will be actually fired.”
After the first email, OPM deleted the email response was “explicitly voluntary” and instead wrote: “Individual federal government employees can decline to provide information by not responding to the email. The consequences for failure to provide the requested information will vary depending on the particular email at issue,” the document states.
CNN has obtained emails sent from two other agencies about what they are to do.
At the State Department, “leadership will continue to respond on the behalf of our workforce and employees until otherwise rescinded,” the department’s acting undersecretary for management, Tibor P. Nagy, wrote in the email.
Department of Homeland Security leadership sent out this email: “We are implementing a structured process for employees to submit a brief summary of their key accomplishments from the previous week. This exercise aligns with and supplements the intent of the Office of Personnel Management’s (OPM) recent guidance while remaining internal to DHS, given our national security responsibilities.”
On Monday, Health and Human Services workers were told to respond to the email but “assume that what you write will be read by malign foreign actors and tailor your response accordingly.”
A coalition of labor unions and civic organizations in a lawsuit allege that the first email violates federal law.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup found that OPM likely violated the law by failing to comply with notice and comment rulemaking in issuing memos. The judge, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton, also found agencies improperly fired probationary employees.
Since Trump took office on Jan. 20, an unclosed number of probationary employees have been dismissed and about 75,000 veteran workers have accepted buyouts.
About 220,000 federal employees had less than a year on the job as of March 2024, according to government data maintained by OPM. Some of these positions have been exempted, and others who were terminated have since had the notice rescinded.
Civil service workers, as opposed to political ones, have certain job protections.
The defense secretary said submitting five bullet points will support the importance of civilian employees’ work.
“Our Civilian patriots who dedicate themselves to defending this nation working for the Department of Defense are critical to our national security,” he wrote. “As we work to restore focus on DoD’s core warfighting mission under President Trump’s leadership, we recognize that we cannot accomplish that mission without the strong and important contributions of our civilian workforce.”
Hegseth has ordered senior military and civilian Pentagon officials to cut 8% from the Defense budget over each of the next five years.
