In a video statement released Sunday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegses made sure that Department of Defense (DOD) civilian employees respond to emails from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), requesting that they list five achievements since last week.
He said the response informs efforts to streamline the private workforce. Earlier this month, he announcement DOD was cutting the first tranche of 5,400 private employees on probation out of about 50,000 Trial version Employees and a total of approximately 250,000 private workers.
He said in a statement: “On February 22 of this year, OPM sent emails to all federal civilians and asked them to provide. I remember about five bullets they did last week. Now, Department of Defense employees were initially given the direction of suspending response to this request to the OPM. We had to be careful about that aspect as we are working on the topic of national security, sensitivity and classification.”
He added: “I'm now instructing each civilian member, a private worker in the sector, to provide five bullets on what I accomplished in a particular job last week, and to respond to that email and direct supervisors to the CC.”
He said it was “pulse checks,” reflecting what Elon Musk led the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and was behind the email.
President Donald Trump said before the cabinet meeting last week that the job was to see employees appear at work and see if they were still working for the government. “A lot of people don't even have answers because they don't even exist,” he said.
Hegseth added to his video:
As Elon said, it's really a simple job, as the president admitted at our first cabinet meeting, “Are you there?” Now we're out to DoD civilians.
All these DOD civilians will receive an email outlining the next steps needed to comply with this initiative, and then the report will be integrated internally within the department and comply with the OPM Directive.
It's really simple and easy. An order to civilian employees is to email, CC reply to your supervisor and provide it without any classified or confidential information about what you did last week.
In his release, Heggs recognized the contribution of the DOD workforce, but added, “It's a really big workforce.”
“While working here at the Department of Defense, there are a lot of civilian patriots who are dedicated to protecting this country. And a lot of them, many of them, most of them, are important to our national security. And when we work to focus on our core war mission under President Trump's leadership, we recognize that we cannot achieve that mission without the strong and important contribution of the civilian workforce, but that's a really big workforce and we recognize now,” Hegses said.
Musk posted to X to Hegzes.Very welcome @secdef Heggs! ”
Follow Kristina Wong on Breitbart News “x”, The true societyor on Facebook.
