Elon Musk is on a campaign to convince skeptics his plan for increasing federal productivity is a good idea. 

After rolling out a policy where government employees are required to write up a weekly email report on what they accomplished during the previous seven days or else resign, Musk, who heads President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, faced pushback from several federal departments, including the FBI. 

FEDERAL AGENCY HEADS PUSH BACK ON MUSK’S DEMAND FOR JUSTIFICATION OF THEIR JOBS

But while FBI Director Kash Patel and other agency heads have expressed disagreement with Musk’s directive, the DOGE leader has remained unphased, taking to social media to outline why he believes his new accountability measure should be implemented. 

In a series of posts to X, Musk said that, among other reasons, the email report was targeted toward federal employees who are shirking their duties, as well as fraudsters who are using “non-existent” people to collect government paychecks. The check-in system is a “very basic pulse check” and “a trivial task,” Trump’s DOGE chief said. 

“The reason this matters is that a significant number of people who are supposed to be working for the government are doing so little work that they are not checking their email at all!” Musk said. “In some cases, we believe non-existent people or the identities of dead people are being used to collect paychecks. In other words, there is outright fraud.”

Patel told FBI employees on Saturday to disregard an email from the Office of Personnel Management that followed up on Musk’s directive by instructing workers to list “5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and CC your manager.” The State Department, NOAA, and NSA employees have reportedly taken similar actions to the FBI, as well as the American Federation of Government Employees and the National Treasury Employees Union, which are two of the largest unions representing federal workers.

WHAT IS DOGE? WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT THE DEPARTMENT OF GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY 

The email summary of workplace accomplishments should take under five minutes to write and include only a few bullet points, Musk said, defending the standard as a “very low” bar. 

“The passing grade is literally just ‘Can you send an email with words that make any sense at all?’” the DOGE leader said.

Musk issued the new standard on Saturday afternoon. In an update on Sunday morning, he revealed that “a large number of good responses have been received” and that respondees should be considered for promotion.

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President Donald Trump created DOGE to cut down on government waste, slash the size of the federal government, and save taxpayer dollars.

Vivek Ramaswamy originally was set to assist Musk with running the initiative, before stepping down to focus on making a career in Ohio politics.