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 requesting that they summarize their recent accomplishments, a reversal from the HHS’s earlier position.
The email asked workers to write five bullet points summarizing their accomplishments over the previous week.
Employees at the 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 that there would be “no impact” to their employment with the agency if they chose not to respond.
However, in the March 3 email, the HHS told employees to respond to DOGE’s email by midnight without revealing sensitive information, including the names of drugs and devices that they are working on.
The department’s work includes analyzing applications for vaccines and medicines.
It had 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 March 3; the second version removed that reference.
The 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 the HHS’s email to follow supervisor guidance on how to reply 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 because of 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 the 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 managers 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.
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 to do 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.
