U.S. President Donald Trump walks on the day of the annual National Prayer Breakfast at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., February 6, 2025.
Kevin Lamarque | Reuters
The Trump administration on Thursday ordered all federal departments and agencies by March 7 to submit lists of employees who received less than “fully successful” job performance ratings in the past three years.
The order from the acting director of the Office of Personnel Management said that “OPM is developing new performance metrics for evaluating the federal workforce,” and requires agencies to identify any barriers to making “meaningful distinctions” between employees’ job performance relative to one another.
The memo also orders agencies to identify any barriers to an agency having “the ability to swiftly terminate poor performing employees who cannot or will not improve.”
Acting OPM Director Charles Ezell said the new performance metrics will align “with the priorities and standards” in recent executive orders by President Donald Trump.
The order comes as Trump and billionaire tech magnate Elon Musk — who is running Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency — seek to reduce federal spending and workforce headcount.
On Thursday, a federal judge temporarily paused Trump’s planned buyout offer for federal workers, which more than 60,000 people so far have signed up for.
CNBC has requested comment from OPM on the memo.
The memo orders agencies to disclose the name, job title, pay plan, duty station and other details of employees who received a performance rating below “fully successful’ in recent years.
It also asks if that “employee is under or successfully completed a performance improvement plan within the last 12 months,” and whether the agency “has already proposed and issued a decision” on efforts to demote or remove that worker for performance-based reasons.”
The memo additionally asks if such an action “is currently appealed or challenged and under what procedures,” and any outcome of those proceedings.”
The memo instructs agencies to send the requested information to an email address at OPM, “with the subject “Agency Report on Performance Management.”
The order comes amid concerns that the Trump administration will misuse personal information being sought by top officials.
On Tuesday, two separate groups of FBI agents sued the administration over a request for information about FBI employees who worked on criminal investigations of Trump and of people involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
One of those lawsuits says that the survey is designed “to identify agents to be terminated or to suffer adverse employment action.”
On Wednesday, a U.S. official told NBC News that the CIA sent an unclassified list of all recently hired employees of the intelligence agency to comply with Trump’s order to reduce the federal workforce.
Former intelligence officers and members of Congress said they were worried about the emails being exploited by U.S. adversaries.
“Any foreign intelligence service worth its weight could apply research and analytic tools to marry up these names and initials with other public records to identify and target many of them,” a former senior intelligence official told NBC News.
