How to Respond to the Five Bullets

This is not legal advice. This comes from personal experience as someone who has gone through similar events.

As you know, last week, Musk posted on twitter that he was going to require all federal workers to list five things they did last week at work or face termination. Shortly thereafter, an email went out from hr@opm.gov asking federal workers to list five things they did the week before, but left out the termination language.

Chaos ensued, with some agencies telling their employees to ignore the email, and other agencies telling their employees to respond. Then on Sunday, a lawyer representing seven government employees and contractors over privacy violations sent a rule 11 sanctions motion to the DoJ lawyers working on the case, reminding them that their own OPM privacy assessment submitted to the court as part of that lawsuit said that any responses to OPM emails were voluntary.

The next day, OPM walked back their position and told the agencies that responses were voluntary, but then filed a new privacy assessment that had removed the language about responses being voluntary.

And now, it seems as though OPM has gotten some of the agency heads to agree to order their agency employees to respond to the five bullets email weekly - due every Monday by 11:59 PM. It would appear that they instructed the agency heads to make this demand because of the legal issues surrounding OPM ordering it or taking personnel action based on non-compliance.

So here’s what I would do. I would write up a plan to complete this weekly assignment and get your supervisor’s buy-in to create a layer of insulation for yourself. If things go sideways, and the agency wants to fire you for your answers being insufficient, you can point to the fact that your supervisor agreed to the plan and that you were complying with their instructions.

I’ll give you an example of an email I’d write to my supervisor:

Dear supervisor,

In order to comply with the new directive requiring me to compose five things I did the previous week every Monday by 11:59 PM local time, I intend to develop my response by integrating five tasks I completed last week with the agency mission and vision, my performance plan, and my job description. My response this week will be:

1. In accordance with the VA mission of taking care of veterans, their widows and their orphans, and our agency vision to provide veterans with the benefits they have earned, I scheduled veterans for timely medical appointments comporting with the agency guidelines in VISTA.

2. In accordance with section II(B)(i) of my performance plan that directs me to engage with stakeholders in my unit to advance the VA mission, I attended all required meetings, took notes, and provided input when called upon.

3. In accordance with part III(A)(iii) of my job description which says I am required to work with third party administrators to ensure claims are processed for VA care provided to active duty service members, I worked with WPS to close 36 outstanding claims related to supplemental care provided to DoD beneficiaries at VA facilities.

4. In accordance with section I(C)(i) of my performance plan, I was on time and present at work during my tour of duty each day last week.

5. In accordance with section IV(A)(ii) of my job description, and the VA mission, I set up four clinics for scheduling timely medical appointments in specialty clinics in the VISTA system

You’ll note that each response incorporates either the mission/vision, my job description, or my performance plan (or a combination of those three.) Please affirm that I’m on the right track with this response plan, and let me know if I need to enter administrative leave to complete this task weekly in the VATAS system. If you can, let me know by 2 PM today so that I have time to respond to this task in a timely manner.

v/r

//signed//

Once you have your supervisor’s approval, save that email, or send it to yourself and print out a hardcopy so that you have proof that your supervisor signed off. That way, if OPM directs the agency to fire you based on your response, you will have an email that says your response plan was approved by the person you answer to directly. That will help insulate you from running afoul of the assignment.

Further, it’s always a good idea to keep a work diary. I kept logs of everything I did every day in case someone tried to come back and say I wasn’t doing my job. Save all your emails, your job description, your performance evals, your last three pay stubs, your eOPF file, and your SF-50s.

Again, this isn’t legal advice. I’m not a lawyer. I’ve just personally been going through this myself since 2019.

~AG

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