Pentagon formally ends DOGE-inspired What You Did Last Week exercise

The Pentagon on Wednesday scrapped a controversial initiative spearheaded by Elon Musk that required Department of Defense employees to send weekly emails detailing their activities — a move that coincides with the billionaire entrepreneur’s reduced role in the Trump administration. “On May 23, 2025, the Official Performing the Duties of Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, Mr.Jules W.

Hurst III, informed the DoD civilian workforce via email that the Department would conclude the weekly ‘What You Did Last Week’ initiative on Wednesday, May 28, 2025, and asked employees to share in their final submission one concrete idea to enhance efficiency or root out waste,” Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement. He noted that the Department of Defense “remains committed to driving meaningful change in support of the mission” to cut government waste. Civilian DoD employees had been submitting emails detailing their top five accomplishments of the week since late February, in response to a directive from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the Office of Personnel Management. “This initiative provided leaders and supervisors with additional insights into their employees’ contributions, fostered accountability, and helped to identify opportunities for greater efficiency and effectiveness throughout the Department,” Parnell said of the experiment. Pentagon officials initially balked at the idea of having DoD employees list their accomplishments over email, instructing them not to respond to the Feb.22 “What did you do last week?” email, over apparent concerns that classified information would be shared. The Department of Health and Human Services, FBI, Office of the Director of National Intelligence and National Security Agency also initially told workers to hold off on any responses. Hegseth and other federal agency heads reversed course days later and instructed civilian personnel to respond to the OPM missive...