Office of Personnel Management
One of the ways in which DOGE surprised everybody was how it turned a relatively sleepy agency into a weapon against the entire government bureaucracy. Created by law in 1978, OPM’s main role before now was to standardize government policies around personnel and to offer shared services for human capital like the federal health plans. It also tracks all the paperwork around hiring, promotions, changes and retirement. And so, for most federal staff, their main interactions with OPM were receiving paperwork they were hired, fired or retired; or picking a health plan; or looking at the rules around various practices. But, all the other aspects of human resources were handled by their own agencies. Federal staff are hired to their specific agencies, their performance rankings are defined by their agency, they’re promoted by their agencies, they’re paid by their agencies, they follow the HR policies of their agencies. OPM provides the guidance, but it’s the agencies that implement it.
This is why OPM’s turn towards the dark side has been so confounding. Very early on, DOGE concentrated a large number of staff within OPM to capture control of the centralized databases and install a new email server to send/receive messages from every federal worker. The acting director was forced out and replaced by Charles Ezell, who then let DOGE wall off an area and keep out permanent agency staff. DOGE also brought in a slew of HR executives from startups who seemingly expected the agency to work for the entire federal government in the same way that HR operates within a single company. And so, they started acting like OPM had more centralized authority: ordering workers to the “five things” email; blasting commands to human capital officers at other agencies; asking for lists of workers so they could command agencies to fire probationary workers and short-cut established procedures for reductions in force. OPM used to be deliberative and formal with its rulemaking - the new OPM was fond of sending out memos to all agencies on Wednesdays demanding a response by Friday. None of this was normal; some of it was probably illegal. And the breach in trust has been irrevocable.
Positions
| Position | Date | Person |
|---|---|---|
|
OPM
1/20-c.4/30
|
appointed Expert, Office of the Director (ED-00, excepted) «reportedly left OPM in April, but as at FDIC on 4/10, so maybe end of month» | |
|
OPM
1/20
|
[as OPM-02] appointed Expert, Office of the Director (NTE 2025-07-18, ED-00, excepted, volunteer) «info for alias SSA-2, who I’ve identified as him» | |
|
OPM
1/20-1/31
|
[as OPM-07] appointed Expert, Office of the Director (NTE 2025-07-18, ED-00, excepted, volunteer) «likely Schedule C» | |
|
OPM
1/20-7/18
resigned
|
[as OPM-03] appointed Expert, Office of the Director (NTE 2025-07-18, ED-00, excepted, volunteer) «Testimony reports plan to convert position to permanent» | |
|
OPM
1/20
|
appointed Deputy General Counsel, Office of the Director (Senior Exec Perm, ES-00, supervisory) | |
|
OPM
1/20-7/09
|
promoted to Acting Director «Replaced by Scott Kupor’s appointment» | |
|
OPM
1/20-1/20
|
appointed Senior Advisor to the Director for Technology and Delivery, Office of the Director (SES Noncareer, ES-00, supervisory, $195,200) «ended by promotion to CIO» | |
|
OPM
1/20-2/18
|
[as OPM-05] appointed Senior Advisor to the Director for Information Technology, Office of the Director (Schedule C, NTE 2025-05-20, GS-15, supervisory, excepted, $195,200) «hired at maximum salary for GS federal employee in DC» | |
|
OPM
1/20
|
appointed Senior Advisor, Office of the Director (Schedule C, GS-15, excepted, $167,603 - $195,200) «Salary range for GS-15 in DC» | |
|
OPM
1/20-3/28
|
appointed Chief of Staff, Office of the Director (55-Noncareer (Senior Exec Perm), ES-00, supervisory) | |
|
OPM
1/20
|
[as OPM-08] appointed Senior Advisor to the Director (SES Noncareer, ES-00, $195,200) | |
|
OPM
1/20
|
appointed Senior Advisor to the Director, Office of the Director (Schedule C, GS-15, excepted, $167,603 - $195,200) «Salary range for GS-15 in DC; LinkedIn says she is working for OMB “Made in America” initiative since March 2025» | |
|
OPM
1/20-2/11
|
promoted to Acting Chief Information Officer (ES-00, supervisory, $195,200) «testified he started as Senior Advisor but was made Acting CIO same day. Made permanent CIO on 2/11» | |
|
GSA OPM
1/24
|
likely detailed «no MOU to confirm and SF-50 is for GSA, but I think he was detailed from GSA to OPM on this date based on appointment affadavit» | |
|
OPM
1/24-7/02
resigned
|
[as OPM-06] appointed Expert, Office of the Director (ED-00, excepted, volunteer) | |
|
OPM
c.1/24
|
unknown «Start date guessed from system access» | |
|
OPM
1/28
|
appointed Expert, Office of the Director (ED-00, excepted) | |
|
OPM
1/28
|
appointed Expert, Office of the Director (ED-00, excepted) | |
|
OPM
1/30
|
appointed Senior Advisor, Office of the Director (NTE 2025-07-22, GS-15, excepted, $167,603 - $195,200) «Salary range for GS-15 in DC» | |
|
OPM
1/24
|
[as OPM-16] appointed Senior Advisor to the Director, Office of the Director (Schedule C, GS-15, excepted, $167,603 - $195,200) «Salary range is for a GS-15 in DC» | |
|
OPM
1/31
|
[as OPM-07] converted to permanent position Expert, Office of the Director (ED-00) «permanent position approved» | |
|
OPM
c.1/31
|
unknown «Start date guessed from system access» | |
|
OPM
c.1/31
|
unknown «Start date guessed from system access» | |
|
OPM
c.1/31
|
unknown «Start date guessed from system access» | |
|
OPM
c.1/31
|
unknown «Start date guessed from system access» | |
|
OPM
2/03
|
appointed Expert, Office of the Director (ED-00, excepted) | |
|
OPM
2/03
|
appointed Expert, Office of the Director (ED-00, excepted) | |
|
OPM
2/03
|
appointed Expert, Office of the Director (ED-00, excepted) | |
|
OPM
1/30
|
[as OPM-14] appointed Expert, Office of the Director (ED-00, excepted) «Start date guessed from system access» | |
|
OPM
c.2/07
|
unknown «Start date guessed from system access» | |
|
OPM
c.2/07
|
unknown «Start date guessed from system access» | |
|
OPM
c.2/07
|
unknown «Start date guessed from system access» | |
|
OPM
2/11-c.9/02
Left DOGE
|
promoted to Chief Information Officer, Office of the Director (SES Noncareer, ES-00, supervisory, $195,200) | |
|
OPM
2/18
|
appointed Expert, Office of the Director (ED-00, excepted) | |
|
OPM
2/18
|
[as OPM-05] converted to permanent position Senior Advisor to the Director for Information Technology, Office of the Director (Schedule C, GS-15, supervisory, excepted, $195,200) | |
|
OPM
2/28
|
appointed Senior Advisor | |
|
OPM
3/XX-6/XX
Left DOGE
|
appointed Senior Advisor | |
|
OPM
3/28-3/29
|
demoted to Senior Advisor, Office of the Director (55-Noncareer (Senior Exec Perm), ES-00) «Her LinkedIn profile says she left OPM in March. Assuming it followed her demotion/replacement» | |
|
OPM
3/28
|
promoted to Chief of Staff, Office of the Director (55-Noncareer (Senior Exec Perm), ES-00) | |
|
OPM
6/XX
|
consultant «a Canadian working on temp visa which would disqualify for federal role» | |
|
OPM
7/09
|
appointed Director | |
| No Start Date Known | ||
| OPM | Andrew Vilcsak | |
Systems
| System | Dates | Access |
|---|---|---|
| website |
This is a stand-in for whatever website platform an agency is using
|
|
| Databricks |
A hosted or self-hosted service that simplifies systems for processing big Data
|
|
| EHRI |
The Enterprise Human Resources Integration Data Warehouse (“EHRI”) collects human resources, payroll, and training data from several dozen sources outside of OPM, including other federal agencies.
|
|
| github |
A service owned by Microsoft for developers to run version control on their applications and back them up to shared repositories that can be used by other developers. Github is provided as both a hosted service (at github.com) or via versions that can be installed with agency data centers (aka GitHub Enterprise or GHE). Access to Github would be expected for developers, but doesn't necessarily mean the person is a coder.
|
|
| GWES |
A new system developed by DOGE for sending out email to all federal employees and collecting responses. It was most famously used for the Fork in The Road email.
|
|
| STAMP |
This is a system at OPM that I do not have information about yet
|
|
| USA Performance |
System tracking job performance of federal employees
|
|
| USA Staffing |
A platform for federal agencies to recruit and onboard employees.
|
|
| USA Jobs |
Official hiring site for the federal government
|
Events
| Agency | Date | Event |
|---|---|---|
|
c.1/16
|
Action:
Noah Peters starts drafting two memos for OPM. One concerns temporary authorities for Schedule C and the other is on how to handle both probationary employees and admininstrative leave. These are to be issued on January 20th.
(fuzz: Date is approximate in deposition)
|
|
|
c.1/16
|
Action:
According to his later sworn testimony, Noah Peters meets with Keenan Kmiec to outline his plan on how to use administrative leave to sideline federal employees from being able to do their work and counter or monitor DOGE’s activities at their agencies.
(fuzz: Date is approximate in deposition)
|
|
|
c.1/16
|
Action:
Noah Peters receives a formal job offer to work at OPM. He describes it in a court disposition as being very general and vague.
(fuzz: Date is approximate in deposition)
|
|
|
1/17
|
Action:
Noah Peters recalls that he met with Amanda Scales and Brian Bjelde on this day to plan for their upcoming first day at OPM.
|
|
|
1/20
|
||
|
1/20
|
||
|
1/20
|
||
|
1/20
|
Access:
IT staff at OPM are pulled into a “911-esque call” requesting that “a political team” of 6 individuals must be given access to OPM systems. These include Charles Ezell, Greg Hogan, and Amanda Scales, as well as unidentified employees OPM-03 (Akash Bobba), OPM-05 (Gavin Kliger) and OPM-07 (Brian Bjelde). These DOGE staffers are granted administrative access to USAJOBS, USA Staffing, and USA Performance systems.
|
|
|
1/20
|
Disruption:
Acting OPM Director Charles Ezell replaces existing CIO Melvin Brown with DOGE ally Greg Hogan, who will serve as the Acting CIO.
|
|
|
1/20
|
||
|
1/23
|
||
|
1/24
|
||
|
1/26
|
||
|
1/27
|
Access:
Charles Ezell sends an email to OPM IT staff stating that OPM-02 (Riccardo Biasini), OPM-04 (Edward Coristine), and OPM-06 (Nikhil Rajpal) “urgently” need access to several sensitive systems within the agency.
|
|
|
1/27
|
||
|
1/27
|
||
|
1/28
|
Onboard:
Justin Monroe and Christopher Stanley start working at OPM as a volunteers with the job title of Expert.
|
|
|
1/28
|
Access:
OPM grants OPM-02 (Riccardo Biasini), OPM-04 (Edward Coristine), and OPM-06 (Nikhil Rajpal) full administrative access to the systems USAJOBS, USA Staffing, USA Performance, eOPF, and EHRI. This access included “[c]ode read and write permissions.”
|
|
|
1/28
|
||
|
1/28
|
||
|
1/30
|
||
|
1/31
|
||
| February 2025 | ||
|
c.2/26
|
Interagency:
During a call of human capital officers led by OPM, a representative for the GSA announces they are working on a “new federal daily check-in tool.” A test email was sent out on the same day. They announce plans to debut the tool by the first week in March.
(fuzz: Date is just given as “Late February”)
|
|
|
2/03
|
Onboard:
Several more DOGE staffers (Stephen Duarte, Christina Hanna, Bryanne-Michelle Mlodzianowski) start working at OPM. All of them come from HR backgrounds in Musk-affiliated companies.
|
|
|
2/03
|
Report:
Brian Bjelde holds a meeting with senior staff at OPM, directing them to prepare plans to eliminate 70% of the agency’s workforce at some unspecified point in the future. They are also told to identify 30% of staff that could be eliminated in the near term.
|
|
|
2/05
|
||
|
2/05
|
||
|
2/06
|
Access:
Career IT staff in the Office of the CIO at OPM have their database access restored by order of the CIO Greg Hogan. It is unclear who ordered the original revocation of access and what changes have happened in the interim.
|
|
|
2/06
|
Legal:
The judge in Jane Does 1-2 v. Office of Personnel Management (D.D.C.) dismisses the motion for a temporary restraining order against the OPM email system since there is now a Privacy Impact Assessment available for it.
|
|
|
2/06
|
Legal:
DOGE member and lawyer Jacob Altik joins the legal defense team for the administration in Jane Does 1-2 v. Office of Personnel Management (D.D.C.) without revealing he is an DOGE staffer who is working for OPM.
|
|
|
2/12
|
Directory:
In a FOIA request, Democracy Forward names DOGE staff known to be at OPM at that time.
Austin Raynor, Brian Bjelde, Bryanne-Michelle Mlodzianowski, Christina Hanna, Joanna Wischer, Noah Peters, Riccardo Biasini, Stephen Duarte
|
|
|
2/13
|
Interagency:
Representing DOGE and OPM, Noah Peters finalizes mass layoffs at the USDA just before Secretary Rollins is to be sworn in that evening. When asked later by Congress about the layoffs, she deflects and says it happened before she started.
|
|
|
2/18
|
Onboard:
Former AirBnb executive Joe Gebbia starts working at OPM as a volunteer with the job title of Expert.
|
|
|
2/18
|
Disruption:
A CNN reporter shares that his FOIA request to OPM was replied to with the message “they just fired the whole privacy team.”
|
|
|
2/24
|
Official:
After Elon Musk threatens on X that employees must complete a list of 5 accomplishments every week and send it to OPM or risk termination, OPM hastily sends out an email to all federal staff requesting that list (without the threat) to every government employee. Widespread confusion occurs at many agencies about the legality and wisdom of this exercise.
|
|
|
2/25
|
Report:
DOGE engineer Ricardo Biasini is reported to be working on updating an “AutoRIF” software package sourced from the Department of Defense that can be used to automate Reduction-in-Force (RIF) processes at federal agencies.
|
|
|
2/27
|
Official:
Joe Gebbia announces on his social media account that he will be working on a project at OPM to modernize retirement processing and move it away from paper records currently stored at a cave in Pennsylvania.
|
|
|
2/28
|
||
|
2/28
|
||
|
2/XX
|
||
| March 2025 | ||
|
3/01
|
Official:
All government employees receive a second email telling them they must list their accomplishments every Monday by 11:59pm. This does not contain a threat of termination, but it is also no longer reported as an optional exercise. Staff working on confidential or classified activities are supposed to reply to the email but redact their work.
|
|
|
3/01
|
Report:
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) starts an audit of how DOGE has handled data at several agencies.
|
|
|
3/04
|
Official:
In response to recent court rulings that determined that OPM exceeded its authority, OPM quietly revises its initial memo that required all federal agencies to send lists of probationary employees to the agency. It also downplays suggestions that the lists should be used for deciding staffing levels.
|
|
|
3/10
|
||
|
3/18
|
Legal:
A lawyer for the plaintiffs accuses the Department of Justice of deliberately misrepresenting Jacob Altik’s participation in the defense “perhaps to preserve the illusion that OPM’s counsel were ignorant of what OPM was doing with the Government-Wide Email System, or perhaps to obscure the role of DOGE and the White House in this case.”
|
|
|
3/20
|
Official:
President Trump issues an executive order that orders OPM to redefine regulations so that it would give them more power to directly terminate employees at other agencies.
|
|
|
3/24
|
Legal:
Ruling in American Federation of Teachers et al v. Bessent et al, Judge Boardman issues a preliminary injunction against access by DOGE staff to internal systems at OPM by DOGE. However, he still allows access for DOGE-affiliated leadership at the agency including Charles Ezell, Amanda Scales and Greg Hogan.
|
|
|
3/28
|
Action:
For reasons that aren’t entirely clear, Amanda Scales is replaced as the Chief of Staff at OPM by James Sullivan. Amanda changes to a Senior Advisor position at the agency.
(fuzz: Amanda Scales reports on her LinkedIn that she left DOGE in March, so this might have been the cause)
|
|
| April 2025 | ||
|
4/03
|
Oversight:
Scott Kupor, the nominee to lead OPM, assured senators in a confirmation hearing that he believes strongly in data privacy and respecting the humanity and dignity of the federal workforce.
|
|
|
4/07
|
Legal:
In a 2-1 vote, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals lifted a stay against DOGE data access at the Treasury, OPM and Department of Education imposed in the case American Federation of Teachers v. Bessent et al.
|
|
|
4/10
|
Interagency:
AmeriCorps’ acting director submits a plan to the OPM and OMB proposing a 50% cut in the agency workforce.
|
|
|
4/11
|
Legal:
The plaintiffs in AFGE, AFL-CIO, et. al vs. OPM file a motion asking for the testimony of Noah Peters to be disregarded because they argue it is misleading and possibly fabricated in certain parts.
|
|
|
4/16
|
Interagency:
Noah Peters at OPM denies the CFPB request made by Adam Martinez as well as Jeremy Lewin and Gavin Kliger to conduct an “emergency” RIF at the CFPB which would only give employees 30 days before their termination.
|
|
| May 2025 | ||
|
5/09
|
Disruption:
OPM is reportedly poised to launch a rebranded version of the formerly-named AutoRIF software for automating the process of designating staff for mass layoffs. It was modernized and given a web interface by DOGE engineer Riccardo Biasini.
|
|
|
5/09
|
Official:
OPM reports it will rolling out a Online Retirement Application (ORA) system which replaces the paper-based system for federal departments served by the National Finance Center and Interior Business Center. This was a program originally started in the Biden Administration that is being accelerated without pilot programs.
|
|
|
5/30
|
Legal:
The judge in AFL-CIO vs. OPM examines Greg Hogan on the stand and asks if he had followed the principle of least privilege in providing system access to DOGE. The judge’s questions indicated that she seemed to be leaning towards a issuing a preliminary injunction against DOGE’s “chaotic” access to systems at OPM.
|
|
| June 2025 | ||
|
6/09
|
||
| July 2025 | ||
|
7/09
|
Onboard:
Scott Kupor is confirmed by the Senate to be the new Director of OPM, replacing Charles Ezell who had been serving in an acting capacity since January 20th.
|
|
|
7/21
|
Disruption:
Scott Kupor states that he expects to eliminate roughly 1000 positions at OPM (or about a third of its staff) by the end of the year.
|
|
| August 2025 | ||
|
8/04
|
Directory:
In a report about DOGE’s continued work on OPM’s Online Retirement Application (ORA) continuing to move ahead, Politico identifies DOGE staff that are working on the project under Joe Gebbia.
|
|
|
8/06
|
Disruption:
OPM announces the end of the requirement that all federal workers must send in a weekly “Five Things” email describing their work the prior work. OPM director Scott Kupor announced the change in a meeting with all human capital officials across the government.
|
|
|
8/12
|
Legal:
Citing a Supreme Court shadow docket ruling as precedent, a DC Appeals Court overturned a stay from February and ordered that DOGE should be allowed to access sensitive data at the Treasury Department, OPM and Department of Education.
|
|
| September 2025 | ||
|
c.9/02
|
Offboard:
Greg Hogan has reportedly departed from his role as Chief Information Officer at OPM. He had held it from the first day of the Trump Administration when the acting CIO was demoted by Charles Ezell.
|
|
|
9/03
|
Report:
In an interview with Axios, Scott Kupor claims that he was not involved with any of DOGE’s actions at OPM before he was appointed (indeed, he says he was locked out of the agency until he was appointed). Despite being an employee of Andreesen Horowitz, he states only March Andreesen and Ben Horowitz were in communication with Elon Musk.
|