Department of Government Efficiency head says he wants to test whether federal employees are ‘capable of replying to an email’

Summary

Elon Musk admitted that his mass email to federal employees demanding weekly accomplishment reports sent to him or risk termination was a test to gauge responsiveness.

Musk tried to frame the move as a “pulse check” on bureaucrats.

The email caused confusion, with some agency leaders advising staff to ignore it, while others initially instructed compliance before reversing course.

A rift emerged as top officials at the FBI, Pentagon, State Department, Department of Homeland Security, and Department of Energy openly defied Musk’s directive, highlighting tensions within the administration.

  • stopdropandprole@lemmy.world
    35·
    12 days ago

    federal workers are terrified right now that if they make one wrong step, they’ll be on their asses, with families and mortgages depending on them to be perfect.

    this email alone resulted in thousands of unplanned mandatory meetings with supervisors, checking with coworkers, asking PR and internal communications experts, consulting with division directors, on and on up the chain of command.

    trust me, they spent way more than 10 minutes, more like hours and hours per employee across the whole govt.

    • bean@lemmy.world
      17·
      12 days ago

      I wonder how much money that accounts for. Sounds like this unelected ketamine fueled fuckwit is wasting government money. I hear there is an efficiency department now, someone should report him for excessive waste of public taxpayer funded money.

      • errer@lemmy.worldEnglish
        81·
        12 days ago

        Government discretionary budget is like $2T. Wasting say a quarter of a day (2 hours) of the 250 or so working days in a year is about 1/1000th the total year wasted. So figure $2B wasted, approximately.