20 Questions About That OPM Request

Keith’s note: There are ~2 million Federal Government employees. This means that [email protected] will get 2 million replies within a very, very short period of time. 20+ questions below:

• Is responding to this memo considered to be one of the tasks?
• Is responding to Executive Order requirements considered to be one of the tasks?
• Is there an established legal precedent wherein a civil servant can be terminated for not responding to an email sent after work hours, with a short reply deadline, and no local management guidance?
• Is there a OPM budget for the personnel and equipment needed to process these responses in a timely and verifiable fashion?
• How will OPM sort through these 2 million replies? AI?
• How will OPM respond to each of the 2 million emails – confirm receipt, etc.
• How long is a “bullet” – how many words? a sentence? more than a sentence?
• Will people be penalized for offering too little or too much information?
• Will firewalls or other security features block or censor wording in emails?
• What if emails bounce or are not delivered due to no fault on the part of employees?
• When and how will employees be deemed to have been non-responsive? Is there an appeal process?
• What weighing factors, key words, etc will the OPM review process seek out?
• Will truncated grammar, typos, and intra-agency acronyms (talking about you NASA) be translated properly?
• Will these things be fact-checked, reviewed, and verified by OPM?
• Will employees be asked to revise or correct any errors or unclear statements?
• Will managers forward everything to their managers – and so on – all the way up the management chain?
• How will individual employee responses be cross-referenced to specific managers and agencies?
• Do agency heads then forward all employee responses to OPM?
• Is this a one time only thing – or will OPM ask for this every week?
• What if a person’s job is pure legal, contracting, medical, or security related?