'Poor solution': Former head of OPM debunks Elon Musk’s 'absurd claim' about federal workers

24 February

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk's ultimatum to federal workers asking them to justify their jobs is now being met with criticism by the former head of the agency overseeing the federal government's human resources-related functions.

During a Monday interview with CNN host Omar Jimenez, Rob Shriver — the former acting director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) — called Musk's email an "ill-conceived, poorly executed stunt to torment federal employees." He particularly took issue with Musk's argument that a "significant number of people" are "doing so little work that they are not checking their email at all."

"It's an absurd claim, and it's why this email system that they've set up is such a poor solution," Shriver said. "The agencies have all of that information. It's the agency email systems that are up-to-date. Maybe this new government-wide system put together — apparently by some of these tech folks — maybe it's not as good as what was already in place at the agencies, if they're having those kind of problems."

There was also a significant amount of confusion about whether employees were required to respond to Musk's email at all, despite the South African centibillionaire giving workers an ultimatum of 11:59 PM ET on Monday to reply. Some agencies have told workers to not respond, while others, like the Social Security Administration, have told employees that they can even stop their current work to respond to the email.

"They're just so confused and so stressed out by all of this," Shriver said. "It's a normal thing for somebody's supervisor to ask them, 'hey, let me know what you worked on last week. I'd like to see how you're doing, how it matches up with my performance expectations.' That's actually a good management practice. But to have this be announced on X and then have this email come out through this government-wide email system, and then you have multiple agency heads telling their workforce, 'don't respond, we don't want you to respond to that.' It's just creating so much stress and confusion for everybody."

Shriver, who now works at the nonprofit Democracy Forward after four years at the helm of OPM, said that aside from the poor execution, it's also virtually impossible for OPM to meaningfully supervise the work of all 2.2 million federal employees around the world. He emphasized that OPM's role is mainly clerical, not managerial.

"It would be hard even at the agency level, to track with specificity an individual employee's performance," he said. "It's just not feasible for OPM — an agency of some 3000 people, most of whom process retirement benefits — to track performance for 2.2 million people."

Watch Shriver's segment below, or by clicking this link.

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