‘What did you do last week?’ Feds get mixed signals on whether to respond

Over the weekend, federal employees received emails asking them to send bullet points of what they accomplished last week by midnight Monday. 

Responses are meant to be voluntary under the privacy assessment associated with the system used to send the mass email out, although billionaire Elon Musk posted to X on Saturday that “failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”   

Federal employees across different agencies have gotten varying directions on whether to respond to the email, sent from the same governmentwide email address set up to offer feds a controversial deferred resignation offer about a week into the new administration. The privacy assessment for the system is at the center of a lawsuit against the HR agency.

That privacy impact assessment for that email system states that all responses are "explicitly voluntary" in order to preserve employees' ability to consent to the information being collected. PIA’s are required by the E-Government Act of 2002 to analyze how agencies collect and protect personally identifiable information in federal systems.

That same assessment says that in order to mitigate the risk of feds not knowing that responses are voluntary, emails sent using the system should explicitly note that fact.

The weekend email didn’t state that responses were optional or include Musk’s threat of resignation. On Monday, the Office of Personnel Management told agencies that responses from feds are voluntary, the New York Times reported and a source familiar confirmed with Nextgov/FCW.

“We need everyone to be able to trust government data systems and protecting that information is absolutely essential. That's what PIAs are all about,” Nick Hart, president and CEO of the nonpartisan Data Foundation, told Nextgov/FCW. “Once a PIA has been established, an agency is obligated to operate accordingly and consistently with it,” although the document can be modified.  

He also offered a "crude estimate" that the latest mass email likely cost over $30 million, based on his expertise.

The difference between the privacy document and Musk’s statements isn’t the only lingering open question. Resignations have to be voluntary by law, as GovExec has reported, meaning that it isn’t clear how the government could make employees resign here.

Already, the privacy impact assessment has raised questions because it was signed by a political appointee at the HR agency, as opposed to the usual privacy official.

OPM’s latest email via this system has sparked various responses across the government. Several agencies, including the Departments of Homeland Security and State, told their employees over the weekend not to respond to the email, per internal guidance obtained by GovExec. That’s even as Musk posted Monday that “those who do not take this email seriously will soon be furthering their career elsewhere.”

The acting head of the General Services Administration, Stephen Ehikian, meanwhile, told feds on Monday that “all GSA employees” should respond by the Monday night deadline — even as OPM said that responses were voluntary.

IRS employees were also directed to respond in an agency-wide email on Monday signed by John York, a senior counselor at the Treasury Department, and in an additional email from the agency’s acting commissioner, Doug O'Donnell, according to internal emails viewed by Nextgov/FCW. Still, some managers are telling their staff to hold off on replying, according to two IRS employees. 

GSA reminded feds not to share sensitive or classified information, and the IRS told employees not to send confidential information. 

“I thought it was great because we have people that don't show up to work and nobody even knows if they work for the government,” President Donald Trump said of the email on Monday, suggesting that the government is paying people that “are not answering because they don't even exist." There is no evidence that fake people are on government payrolls.

“If you don't answer like you're sort of semi-fired or you're fired,” he said.