The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) occupies a striking concrete and glass building located just a few blocks from the White House. While the agency’s title might conjure images of routine governmental functions, it actually plays a crucial role as one of the most significant human resources entities in the United States. OPM oversees extensive records for around 2.1 million federal employees, in addition to millions of individuals who have applied for federal jobs. Notably, the agency also holds the email addresses of nearly all federal employees.
In recent weeks, tensions have escalated as President Trump and Elon Musk have targeted the federal workforce and the expenditures mandated by Congress. A significant portion of their emphasis has been on Musk and his associates utilizing government data in unprecedented—and potentially legally questionable—ways. The executive offices on the fifth floor of OPM’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. are at the heart of these efforts.
For OPM’s career officials, concerns began to surface during transition meetings with incoming personnel from the Trump administration. These meetings are typically designed to transfer essential information from the outgoing administration about critical projects, organizational structures, and the onboarding of new staff members.
However, according to a current OPM official, Trump’s team showed an unusual fixation on OPM’s IT systems. During those initial discussions, Greg Hogan, who would later be appointed as OPM’s chief information officer, spent an excessive amount of time questioning the agency’s computer systems, their access protocols, existing security measures, and the processes for implementing security updates. “I had a gut feeling that something was off,” recalls the OPM official, who has briefed previous presidential transition teams. “All the questions were IT-related.”
Federal employees soon understood the scope of changes at OPM on January 28, when they received an email from a newly established government-wide email system linked to the agency. This message offered eight months of salary in exchange for their resignation. Following the dissemination of these emails, staff members at agencies like the USDA and NOAA reported being overwhelmed with spam. The buyout initiative is currently paused after a U.S. district judge issued a temporary injunction in response to a lawsuit filed by labor unions.
The broad call for resignations was only the most visible sign of how the new administration is leveraging OPM’s resources to advance Trump’s agenda. Over the past two weeks, administration officials have started placing Trump appointees in key technical roles within OPM—positions that Congress originally intended for career officials, whose expertise spans multiple administrations. Musk’s associates are working to transform this dynamic across nearly every agency, exploiting OPM’s central role in federal hiring practices.
Read more: Inside Elon Musk’s War on Washington
This week, Trump’s political appointees dismissed OPM’s chief financial officer, Erica Roach, a long-serving official charged with managing $1 trillion in deposits associated with the Earned Benefits Trust Funds, covering retirement and health benefits for most federal employees. After being notified of her demotion, Roach chose to resign, according to an OPM official. Neither the White House nor OPM has responded to requests for comments.
Just days earlier, the agency’s leading technology officer, Melvin Brown, was reassigned to another office, allowing Hogan, a Trump ally, to step into a role traditionally held by career civil servants. Charles Ezell, OPM’s acting director, plans to extend this strategy across federal agencies. On Tuesday, Ezell sent a memo to all cabinet departments and agencies, potentially initiating a significant transformation in how the federal government appoints its top technology officers, known as chief information officers (CIOs).
Currently, CIO positions in most agencies are classified as “career reserved,” meaning they can only be filled by existing members of the federal senior executive service. This hiring practice has been upheld by multiple administrations, reflecting the legal requirement that career appointees are essential to uphold impartiality and public trust in the government.
However, the new leadership at OPM contends that CIO roles should not be limited to career government officials, as their decisions have a substantial impact on policy. “A modern agency CIO is not merely an engineer, scientist, or technocrat,” Ezell asserted in his memo. “Their role encompasses shaping and implementing policy, as well as budget management, informed by the priorities of their Administration.” Ezell has set a deadline of February 14 for agencies to request OPM to eliminate the career federal service requirement for the CIO role. This administrative change would permit political appointees in Trump’s administration to seek candidates from outside the career federal service for these positions.
Placing chosen individuals in these essential IT roles throughout the government will provide Trump and his allies centralized access to extensive data regarding the federal workforce and government expenditures. This strategy appears deliberate. Nonetheless, it raises alarms that the administration may neglect established protections designed to prioritize employee privacy and safeguard against foreign intelligence threats.
Recently, OPM’s upper management has been filled with associates of Musk, including senior advisor Brian Bjelde, a former SpaceX human resources vice president; chief of staff Amanda Scales, who previously worked at Musk’s xAI; and senior advisor Anthony Armstrong, involved in Musk’s 2022 acquisition of Twitter. Another key figure advocating for these changes is Andrew Kloster, OPM’s new general counsel, who worked in the White House during Trump’s first term and previously served as Matt Gaetz’s general counsel.
Some senior career officials at OPM have already reported being excluded from critical databases. Concerns have been raised about political appointees accessing systems, such as the Enterprise Human Resources Integration, without the usual safeguards meant to protect information confidentiality. This system contains sensitive data, including pay scales, service duration, Social Security numbers, birth dates, and home addresses.
On January 31, Bjelde informed career supervisors at OPM that the goal was to reduce the agency’s workforce by 70%. A current OPM official warned that this drastic measure could significantly undermine the teams responsible for managing healthcare benefits and retirement planning for federal employees.
