Federal workers receive another email asking about accomplishments

March 1 (UPI) — Federal employees received a second email from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management asking them to list their accomplishments in the past week.

Late Friday night, they were told to list five bullet points about what they did.

The message also said: “Going forward, please complete the above task each week by Mondays at 11:59pm ET.”

This time, the email said: “Please do not send links, attachments, or any classified/sensitive information. If all of your activities are classified or sensitive, please write ‘All of my activities are sensitive.'”

Federal agencies are giving specific instructions to the employees, according to CNN.

Roughly 1 million of the 2.25 million federal workers responded to the first email.

“I’m just sort of numb to it by now,” an employee of the National Institutes of Health who was granted anonymity because of fears of retaliation told Politico. “It’s been like one long funeral and it never lets up.”

A coalition of labor unions and civic organizations in a lawsuit allege that the first “What did you do last week?” email, sent last weekend, violates federal law.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup found that the Office of Personnel Management likely violated the law by failing to comply with notice and comment rulemaking in issuing memos. The judge also found agencies improperly fired probationary employees. Alsup was appointed by President Bill Clinton.

In a privacy assessment first published Feb. 5 in response to the lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s implementation of the email system, OPM said responding to any mass email was “explicitly voluntary.”

On Friday, OPM updated its privacy assessment to say federal employees could decline to respond, but that “the consequences for failure to provide the requested information will vary depending on the particular email at issue.”

Elon Musk, who oversees the Department of Government Efficiency, said they are “pulse check” as the Trump administration seeks to dismiss thousands of workers.

He posted Saturday on his X platform: “The President has made it clear that this is mandatory for the executive branch. Anyone working on classified or other sensitive matters is still required to respond if they receive the email, but can simply reply that their work is sensitive.”

He linked to a post by Mario Nawfall that the Department of Defense will require staffers to respond to the email.

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.”

They have until 11:59 p.m. ET Monday to submit their bullet points to an internal department email address.

Musk, the world’s richest person with an estimated net worth of $359.4 billion, according to Forbes, said workers face dismissal if they do not respond.

The average federal worker salary was about $106,000 in 2024, PBS Newshour reported.

Trump weighed in on the matter at a press conference on 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.”

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.

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