Federal workers will receive weekly emails demanding they report what they accomplished the week prior.
A person briefed on the Office of Personnel Management’s decisions, as well as documents reviewed by the Washington Post, showed that emails asking for a bullet-pointed description of what work each employee did in the past week will become a weekly occurrence. Unlike the previous email from Saturday, which caused chaos throughout the federal government, employees may be compelled to respond to the new one within 48 hours of receipt, the outlet reported.
According to documents and the person briefed on the matter, the new emails are primarily intended to gauge agencies’ alignment with Trump’s agenda and their ability to carry out his orders rather than a performance review. This new strategy came after widespread backlash to the last email, which Department of Government Efficiency leader Elon Musk argued Wednesday was “misinterpreted as a performance review” when it was designed to be a “pulse-check review.”
The person briefed on the matter said the eventual plan is to develop a Microsoft form to receive the five-bullet responses from employees.
The new emails are also intended to allow supervisors to get a better understanding of underlings’ work and help align different agencies. While not pitched as a performance review, the new emails were portrayed as an accountability measure to push federal workers to work harder.
The first performance review emails sent to all federal workers Saturday sparked a heated internal debate between administrative officials. The heads of sensitive agencies, such as FBI Director Kash Patel and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, instructed their employees not to respond over fears of divulging national security information.
Musk posted on X that if employees did not respond to the email with a five-point list of what they accomplished in the last week, it would “be taken as resignation.”
However, the White House sided against Musk by telling agency heads that the order wasn’t binding.
TRUMP ADMINISTRATION STANDS BY MUSK AFTER WIDESPREAD BACKLASH TO FEDERAL EMAIL
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed any fears that the disagreement showcased a schism within the administration.
“The president sent out a truth last weekend to Elon Musk saying he loves everything Elon is doing, and he wants him to be even more aggressive because DOGE, thus far, has proven incredibly successful in making our government more efficient,” she said at a Tuesday press conference.