A little over a year ago, the Elon Musk-guided Department of Government Efficiency asked federal workers to explain their jobs. A new document dump offers a peek into their answers.
Back in February 2025, DOGE asked federal workers to send five bullet points answering one simple question: “What did you do last week?” Musk said ahead of formally announcing the emails that “failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
Now, we know how workers in the Office of Personnel Management responded, thanks to a document release of around 200 replies to that request in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit from activist nonprofit Citizens for Constitutional Integrity.
Some federal workers took the emails as an opportunity to express their frustration with the assignment. One worker said that the federal workforce is “already undermanned and should not be wasting our time with these trivia political stunts.”
“If you do not have anything that is positive, then please do not waste my time with these emails,” the worker said. “I am here to serve the people and not anyone else who has nothing better to do then to cause chaos. As far as firing me, I am already retiring so it is a moot point.”
And while another worker took the time to write out legitimate tasks in the bullets, they also wrote: “I understand that there is a mission to accomplish and that soft skills may not always be a priority, but to what end will efforts to humiliate federal employees—including those of us who agree that change is necessary—serve?”
Others detailed the minutiae of their days. One worker broke down their schedule by hourly and thirty-minute chunks, including their lunch breaks. Another employee said, “Believe it, I check my email every 5 minutes, yes I do.” A worker in HR described their role in coordinating restructuring programs in the wake of the Deferred Resignation program and creating plans to terminate the Presidential Management Fellows program.
Most emails, however, were simple breakdowns of the work employees accomplished that week; some were brief, others more in-depth about their roles.
The emails only skim the surface of what workers across the government sent. Citizens for Constitutional Integrity told Business Insider that they estimated there were about 2.9 million outstanding emails from their request, which covered the entire federal government, including about 3,000 more from OPM. Currently, a judge has ordered OPM to produce around 250 of its emails monthly.
Shortly after the email directive was introduced, some federal agencies told their employees they were not required to respond. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for example, said in an email to employees in May 2025 that it would “pause” the requirement while continuing with other types of performance monitoring. The Internal Revenue Service took a similar approach, saying that the agency’s supervisors would observe employee performance regularly.
DOGE’s efforts have since been wound down, and Musk stepped back from the role in April 2025. Its cuts, however, have had a lasting impact. While some agencies have rehired staff who were cut, many are still out of work, and others have voluntarily resigned and have not returned. Business Insider previously spoke to former federal workers who described how the cuts upended their lives. Rachel Brittin, a former employee at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, was fired, reinstated, and then fired again. She said it “was more than a career setback — it was emotionally exhausting and deeply disorienting.”
OPM did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
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