The Defense Department revised its guidance on requiring employees to provide feedback on what they accomplished during their work week.
The Pentagon’s Office of Personnel and Readiness initially directed workers to ignore an accountability measure the Trump administration launched last month at the recommendation of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency.
However, on Sunday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stated that “following a review of Pentagon procedures and consultation with the Office of Personnel Management,” DOD civilian employees will be required to email OPM and supervisors a five-point productivity report on what they worked on during the prior week in keeping with Musk’s recommendation.
“The Department of Defense employees received direction to, at first, just initially pause responding to this request to OPM … because we do, we work on topics of national security, of sensitivity, of classification,” Hegseth said in a video announcing updated guidance. “We needed to be careful on that front.”
Hegseth said that after further review, the Pentagon is authorizing its civilian workforce to “provide, without any classified or sensitive information, basic topics of what you did last week.”
“We will take that into consideration as we make sure we’re being as focused and as tailored as possible in looking at how we streamline our workforce to both meet the fiscal demands of the moment but also ensure we have the strongest, most viable fighting force in the world,” the defense secretary continued. “It’s a simple task, really, as Elon said, as the president recognized in our first Cabinet meeting, just a pulse check, ‘are you there’ out to DOD civilians.”
Musk praised Hegseth’s announcement in a social media post over the weekend.
“Much appreciated @SecDef Hegseth!” the DOGE leader said.
FBI Director Kash Patel has been among the agency heads who have attracted attention for ordering employees to ignore OPM’s directive.
Hegseth’s comments as to why the Pentagon instructed employees to initially disregard OPM’s directive confirmed President Donald Trump’s remarks last month that federal agencies such as the FBI and State Department directed employees to ignore the email report directive “in a friendly manner” to keep sensitive information private.
MUSK DEFENDS WORK PRODUCTIVITY REPORT REQUIREMENT AMID COLD SHOULDER FROM FBI’S PATEL
“They don’t mean that in any way combatively with Elon,” the president told reporters in the Oval Office. “They’re just saying there are some people that you don’t want to really have them tell you what they’re working on last week. But other than that, I think everyone thought it was a pretty ingenious idea.”
Federal employees who fail to provide a work-productivity report could lose their jobs, Musk has said.
