The Department of Defense said that non-compliance with the directive ‘may lead to further review.’
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Sunday that he has directed the Department of Defense’s (DOD) civilian workforce to respond to an email from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) asking them to provide a recap of their accomplishments over the past week.
Hegseth acknowledged that the DOD had initially instructed employees to pause any response to the first OPM email sent on Feb. 22, which asked them to list what they did in the past week in five bullet points.
He said the pause was put in place to review Pentagon procedures and consult with OPM, given the DOD’s work in national security and sensitive matters. The pause has now been lifted following the review’s completion.
“I am now directing each member of the department’s civilian workforce, just civilian, to provide those five bullets on what they accomplished in their specific jobs last week, to reply to that email and CC their immediate supervisor,” he said in a video message posted on the social media platform X.
Hegseth added that civilian workers would soon receive another email outlining the next steps “they need to take in order to comply with this initiative,” and the department will consolidate the reports internally.
In a March 2 statement, the DOD said the Pentagon chief had signed a memorandum calling on all civilian employees to respond to that email within 48 hours after receiving it.
“That email will come Monday, and responses to it should not include classified or sensitive information,” the DOD stated, adding that non-compliance with the directive “may lead to further review.”
Elon Musk, who is leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), later shared Hegseth’s video on X and thanked him for supporting the initiative.
According to the department’s career webpage, the DOD employs about 950,000 civilians in nearly 650 different positions worldwide to support the Armed Forces across all branches, including the Marines, Navy, Air Force, and other DOD agencies. These roles span various fields such as administrative management, medical care, legal affairs, and more.
Hegseth’s announcement came as federal workers from various agencies received a second round of the OPM email on Feb. 28. A government source shared a copy of the email with The Epoch Times. Unlike the first round of messages, the email indicates that employees are now expected to engage in this type of reporting every week.
“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’,” the email states.
Before the first OPM email, Musk stated in a Feb. 23 post that failure to respond to the email would be taken as resignation.
Some departments issued follow-up directives that contradicted his comments about the OPM email. Employees were later informed that OPM had clarified that any response to the email is voluntary and not responding to it “will not be considered a resignation.”
Speaking to reporters on Feb. 25, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that roughly 1 million of the 2.3 million federal workers responded to the first email. Leavitt confirmed that DOGE helped OPM craft the email.
Musk had previously said that the justification from workers is important because “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.”
“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,” he stated.
The OPM updated its privacy assessment on Feb. 28 to indicate that federal employees can decline to respond to the emails, but that “the consequences for failure to provide the requested information will vary depending on the particular email at issue.”
Tom Ozimek contributed to this report.