The email instructed employees to list their recent accomplishments.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) told employees on March 3 that they were required to respond to an email from the Trump administration demanding they summarize their recent accomplishments, in a reversal from the HHS’s earlier position.
The administration sent out a second round of emails on the evening of Feb. 28 in a renewed push by Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team to assess the performance of government employees and overhaul federal agencies.
The email asked workers to share five bullet points summarizing their accomplishments over the past week.
Employees at HHS, which includes the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, had previously been told that they did not have to respond to DOGE’s emails and there would be “no impact to your employment with the agency if you choose not to respond.”
In Monday’s email, though, HHS told employees to respond to DOGE’s email by midnight without revealing sensitive information, including the names of drugs and devices they are working on.
The agency’s work includes analyzing applications for vaccines and medicines.
HHS previously warned employees that responses to DOGE’s request may “be read by malign foreign actors.” The department sent two versions of its email on Monday, the second of which removed that reference.
HHS did not respond to a request for comment by publication time.
The National Treasury Employees Union, which represents HHS workers, told members in an email that they must comply with the agency’s choice to proceed with the “ill-advised exercise.” The union was not immediately available for comment.
Employees were told in HHS’s email to follow supervisor guidance on how to reply and respond in a way that would not identify grants, grantees, contracts, or contractors, nor information that would identify the precise nature of scientific experiments, research, or reviews.
Employees on leave, out of the office due to work schedules, or who have signed a deferred resignation agreement are not required to respond, according to the email. Some 75,000 federal workers accepted buyouts before the deferred resignation program ended.
Multiple other U.S. agencies, including the FBI and State Department, had also advised employees not to respond immediately to DOGE’s demand.
The first missive was sent in mid-February. The email titled “What did you do last week?” said workers should reply with five bullet points detailing what they‘d recently accomplished, with their manager cc’d.
The White House said the email, sent from the Office of Personnel Management, was crafted with the assistance of DOGE.
Musk wrote on social media that the effort was aimed at rooting out people who are either not working or are working so little that they do not check their email.
He warned that people who did not reply would be terminated.
Musk later shifted his position, saying workers would have to not respond to two emails before being fired.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Feb. 25 that about 1 million of the approximately 2.3 million workforce had responded. She said that workers should respond unless their agency heads said otherwise.
Some agencies, such as the Drug Enforcement Administration, have instructed their workers to respond. Others, such as the FBI, have advised against responding.
In the second email, sent on Feb. 28, workers were told to describe their recent accomplishments and to plan on doing so on a weekly basis moving forward.
“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 reads.
Musk said over the weekend that all federal agencies are “cooperating with DOGE.” He said that some agencies were opting to respond on behalf of their employees to the inquiries, which he has referred to as pulse checks.
Jack Phillips and Tom Ozimek contributed to this report.