White House ends Musk, DOGE demand that federal workers justify their jobs

More federal changes implemented by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are being rolled back, according to a report from Reuters. The Trump administration on Tuesday formally ended a requirement that federal employees send their managers a weekly message highlighting “five things” they had accomplished.

Strain over five things

When the requirement was made official for employees in February, many agencies saw it as an administrative addition to the strain they were already facing due to job cuts across the federal government.

At the time, Musk said that the “bar was very low” for what was submitted as part of the list, and that the weekly submission would only take five minutes. He also declared that failure to respond to the emails would “be taken as a resignation.”

The initiative was reportedly one of the most unpopular things that DOGE implemented.

The Washington Post reported many officials refused to adhere to the new directive. In a meeting just days after the order was emailed to government employees, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) reportedly stated that the list was voluntary and that not abiding would not be understood as a resignation. Officials also stated that when emails were submitted by employees, nothing was being done with them.

It wasn’t long before some government agencies simply axed the emails internally.

An employee of the Securities and Exchange Commission told the Post that they had “zero idea” how the lists were used, and the National Institutes of Health stated that it managed its own performance review process, making the requirement redundant.

In his email announcing the rollback on Tuesday, OPM Director Scott Kupor wrote: “Managers are accountable to staying informed about what their team members are working on and have many other existing tools to do so.”

Why was it implemented?

While many government employees seemed to view the emails as a burden rather than a motivator, it was noted that the emails could be held and reviewed in the future for potential layoffs.

The Post noted that staff Musk brought with him from X defended the practice, stating: “If they were planning to do more layoffs, they would go back and look at those emails for potential layoffs and see what they’re working on. That’s just another data point for why you should lay someone off.”