‘What did you do last week?’: US federal officials asked to detail their achievements – but agency responses differ
US federal officials received an email asking them to set out their five major accomplishments in their working week in an escalation of efforts by the Trump administration to reduce the size of the federal bureaucracy.
The email – which was received by federal officials on 22 February, asking them to “reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager” – was sent from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), and promoted by Elon Musk as part of his work at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
However, the email has been met with contradictory agency responses, union opposition, and differing responses from the White House on whether officials would need to reply to the missive or risk losing their jobs.
Read more: Trump administration to cull 6,700 IRS jobs as part of federal layoffs
Directive sparks confusion and resistance
Discussing the email on X, Musk said that it was consistent with president Trump’s instructions to help government “understand what they got done last week”. Writing on X, he added: “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
However, some government organisations told staff not to respond to the email, while federal trade unions said the email was unlawful.
In a response to the email, the government’s director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told staff that “given the inherently sensitive and classified nature of our work, intelligence community employees should not respond to the OPM email”.
The Justice Department, State Department, Pentagon, FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and Department of Energy followed suit, advising their staff not to comply, citing security concerns and internal procedures.
The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) union sent a letter to OPM, calling the order “plainly unlawful”. It said the move was “actively pulling federal employees away from their critical duties without regard for the consequences”.
However, some federal departments — including the Treasury and Transportation Department — instructed employees to comply with the directive, while others offered cautious or alternative approaches. The Department of Commerce, for example, asked its staff to send responses directly to their supervisors rather than reply to Musk’s email.
Trump endorses plan before the White House makes responses voluntary
Speaking to reporters at the White House on 24 February, president Trump defended the directive.
“I thought it was great. There was a lot of genius in sending it,” he said.
He suggested that the email check-in could help expose ghost employees collecting government paychecks and said “A lot of people aren’t answering [the email] because they don’t even exist”.
At the same time, Musk reinforced his stance, writing on X, “The email request was utterly trivial… Yet so many failed even that inane test, urged on in some cases by their managers. Have you ever witnessed such INCOMPETENCE and CONTEMPT for how YOUR TAXES are being spent?”
Just hours later, the OPM then told agencies that responding to the email was voluntary and that non-responses would not be treated as resignations.
By midnight that day, Musk slightly adjusted his position as well, stating that non-responders would have another opportunity to comply.
“Subject to the discretion of the president, federal workers who did not respond will get another opportunity. Failure to respond a second time will result in termination.”
‘What did you do?’ email receives more than a million responses
The White House has said that the email has received more than a million replies, though press secretary Karoline Leavitt also said that Trump supported agency heads who had chosen not to comply.
“The president defers to his Cabinet secretaries… And for some agencies that have said, ‘Please don’t send these emails,’ it’s in their best interest, and the president supports that,” she said.
“Let me be very clear: the president, Elon, and his entire Cabinet are working as one unified team.”
Move the latest action from DOGE
The Department of Government Efficiency was created by president Trump when he returned to the White House with an ambition to modernise federal technology as well as to reduce the size of the federal bureaucracy.
This has led to plans to cut the federal workforce, including reducing the workforce of USAID and the IRS, while newly-hired staff in their probationary period are also being let go across the federal government. DOGE also offered civil servants buyout packages in the latest of a series of moves to overhaul the US government since Trump returned to office – and both this and the achievements email mirrored approaches Musk implemented when he took over social media platform X, where he asked software engineers to share their code with him for review, and urged staff to commit to being “extremely hardcore” at work or resign.
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