The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is situated within a concrete and glass structure just three blocks from the White House. Despite the agency’s name often evoking images of mundane governmental operations, it actually serves as one of the most influential human resources bodies in the nation. OPM maintains comprehensive records for approximately 2.1 million federal employees, in addition to millions of Americans who have sought federal employment. Remarkably, the agency also possesses the email addresses of nearly all federal workers.
In recent weeks, a conflict has emerged as President Trump and Elon Musk have taken aim at the federal workforce and congressionally mandated expenditures. Much of their focus has centered on Musk and his associates leveraging government data in unprecedented—and possibly legally dubious—ways. The executive offices on the fifth floor of OPM’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. are pivotal to these efforts.
For OPM’s career officials, alarms started ringing during transition meetings with incoming Trump administration personnel. These meetings typically involve passing on vital information from the outgoing administration about major projects, the organizational structure, and the onboarding of new staff.
However, Trump’s team displayed an unusual preoccupation with OPM’s computer systems, according to a current OPM official. During those early discussions, Greg Hogan, who has since been appointed as OPM’s chief information officer, spent an inordinate amount of time inquiring about the computer systems, their access protocols, existing security measures, and the procedures for installing security updates. “I had a gut feeling that something was off,” reflects the OPM official, who has briefed previous presidential transition teams. “All the questions were IT-related.”
Federal employees quickly grasped the extent of OPM’s changes on January 28, when they received an email from a new government-wide email system linked to the agency. This communication offered eight months’ salary in exchange for their resignation. Shortly after these emails circulated, staff at agencies like the USDA and NOAA reported being inundated with spam. The buyout proposal is currently on hold, following a U.S. district judge’s temporary injunction in response to a lawsuit filed by labor unions.
The sweeping call for resignations was merely the most visible manifestation of how the new administration is utilizing OPM’s resources to further Trump’s agenda. Over the past two weeks, administration officials have begun placing Trump appointees in crucial technical positions within OPM—roles that Congress intended for career officials, whose expertise spans multiple administrations. Musk’s allies are working to reshape this dynamic across nearly every agency, capitalizing on OPM’s role as the central hub for federal hiring practices.
Read more: Inside Elon Musk’s War on Washington
This week, Trump’s political appointees removed OPM’s chief financial officer, Erica Roach, a long-serving official responsible for managing $1 trillion in deposits linked to the Earned Benefits Trust Funds, which encompasses retirement and health benefits for the majority of the federal workforce. After being informed of her demotion, Roach opted to resign, according to an OPM official. Neither the White House nor OPM responded to requests for comments.
Days prior, the agency’s top technology officer, Melvin Brown, was reassigned to another office, allowing Hogan, a Trump ally, to assume a role typically reserved for career civil servants. Charles Ezell, OPM’s acting director, plans to replicate this pattern across the federal machinery. On Tuesday, a memo from Ezell to all cabinet departments and agencies triggered what could become a significant shift in how the federal government appoints its top technology officers, known as chief information officers (CIOs).
Currently, CIO positions in most agencies are designated 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 stipulation that career appointees are necessary to maintain impartiality and public confidence in the government.
However, the new leadership at OPM argues that CIO roles should not be restricted to career government officials, as their decisions significantly influence policy. “A modern agency CIO is not merely an engineer, scientist, or technocrat,” Ezell stated in his memo. “Their role involves shaping and implementing policy, as well as managing budgets, informed by the priorities of their Administration.” Ezell has set a deadline of February 14 for agencies to request OPM to remove the career federal service requirement from the CIO role. This administrative adjustment would enable political appointees in Trump’s administration to seek candidates from outside the career federal service for these positions.
Placing handpicked individuals in these critical IT roles throughout the government will grant Trump and his allies centralized access to vast amounts of data regarding the federal workforce and government expenditures. This strategy is intentional. However, it raises concerns that the administration may overlook standard protections established to prioritize employee privacy and guard against foreign intelligence threats.
Recently, OPM’s upper management has been filled with Musk associates, 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, who played a role in Musk’s 2022 Twitter acquisition. Another key figure in pushing these changes is Andrew Kloster, OPM’s new general counsel, who served in the White House during Trump’s first term and was formerly Matt Gaetz’s general counsel.
Some senior career officials at OPM have already found themselves shut out of critical databases. Concerns have been raised about political appointees accessing systems, such as the Enterprise Human Resources Integration, without the standard safeguards meant to maintain 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 objective was to reduce the agency’s workforce by 70%. A current OPM official warned that this move could severely cripple the teams responsible for managing healthcare benefits and retirement planning for federal employees.
