Feb 27, 2025 08:58 PM IST
DOGE head Elon Musk has asked leaders of US’ NOAA to compile a list of employees who didn’t list the work they did over the past week, Bloomberg reported.
Billionaire Elon Musk, who is currently heading US’ Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), has asked the leaders of the country’s weather and science agency NOAA to compile a list of employees who haven’t listed the work they did, Bloomberg reported.
This comes after all government employees were asked to explain what they did last week in an email. According to both Musk and President Donald Trump, the jobs of employees who didn’t comply with the order were at risk. The employees were asked to list their work in five bullet points.
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Officials of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which oversees the National Weather Service, had until 4:00 pm EST on Wednesday (about 2:30 am IST on Thursday) to submit the names of the defaulting employees.
The directive comes after Trump, earlier on Wednesday, said that employees who didn’t reply were risking their jobs, calling them “on the bubble” and adding that he wasn’t “thrilled” about their lack of response.
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Musk had sent the email on Saturday and had set Monday as the deadline for the employees’ responses, a move which spread confusion across the federal bureaucracy and raised privacy and national security concern.
Leaders of several agencies, like State Department, Defense Department and Homeland Security Department, had asked their employees to not respond to Musk’s email.
The Office of Personnel Management also said that it was optional to reply to the email and that each agency — not Musk — would determine if there are cuts to their workforces.
Yet NOAA’s compilation of the data suggests that there could be repercussions for individuals who didn’t reply to the message. Representatives for the agency did not respond to requests for comment.
As Trump embarks on an aggressive cost-cutting spree, some conservatives are urging him to break up NOAA and turn its functions over to private forecasters, a notion rejected by many in the industry for potentially limiting access to life-saving information.
Data provided by NOAA is free and it’s the foundation upon which the private weather industry is built. Estimates also show that every dollar spent on public forecasting generates savings many times over.
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