Washington — The office that asked federal workers to document five things they accomplished over the past week told executive branch officials on Monday that individual agencies can decide how to respond, despite a threat from Elon Musk that employees who refused could lose their jobs.
Two officials said that the Office of Personnel Management, or OPM, held a call with the heads of human capital at federal agencies and said it’s up to each entity to determine how they want to handle the directive employees received Saturday.
Federal employees received an email from OPM with the subject line “What did you do last week?” The message instructed recipients to reply with five examples of what they did over the past seven days, without revealing any classified information. Musk, who is leading the Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE, said that employees’ failure to respond would be taken as a resignation.
The email set a deadline of 11:59 p.m. Monday to respond. President Trump publicly backed the effort at the White House earlier in the day.
The directive sparked confusion, and several agencies told workers to ignore the request, including the Justice Department, the FBI, the State Department, the Pentagon, the Department of Energy, the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Others, including the Transportation Department, the Education Department and the Department of Commerce and the National Transportation Safety Board, told their workers they should comply.
During the call Monday with agencies, OPM was asked what would be done with any information already provided from employees who responded to the email, according to a source familiar with the matter. OPM said there were no plans to do anything with the information, the source said.
Later Monday night, an OPM memo was sent to agency heads with further guidance on the original “What did you do last week?” email, saying, “Agencies should review responses and evaluate nonresponses,” by taking into account whether employees were on leave or otherwise unable to access their email before the Monday night deadline.
“Furthermore, agencies should consider any appropriate actions regarding employees who fail to respond to activity/accomplishment requests,” the memo said. “It is agency leadership’s decision as to what actions are taken.”
The memo did not acknowledge that several agency heads had directed employees not to respond to the email.
