A new Trump administration plan to send an alert to the federal government’s roughly 2.3 million employees from a single email address launched this week and confused at least some of the rank and file, who were concerned it looked suspicious.
The Office of Personnel Management “is testing a new capability allowing them to send important communications to ALL Federal employees from a single mail address, [hr-at-opm-.gov] If you receive an email from this address, it can be considered trusted,” according to the message sent Friday.
CBS News obtained a screengrab of the message and confirmed its authenticity with multiple federal employees and officials.
OPM, which serves as the federal government’s human resources and employee benefits department, sent the government-wide message overnight, two agency officials confirmed to CBS News.
“This is a new effort under this administration,” one of the officials said.
White House officials didn’t immediately respond to questions about what the new email alert system might be used for or why the new system was being implemented this week.
The Washington Post also reported on Friday that similar messages went out at other agencies and departments starting on Thursday. Several people who claim to be government employees reported the email as spam or phishing in two Reddit threads for federal employees. One person in these Reddit threads said the Food and Drug Administration had sent out an email Friday asking employees to stop reporting it, since the message is legitimate.
The email seen by CBS News came with a warning from respective departments’ information technology offices that the message “originated from outside the Department” and its content might not be safe.
“Everyone thought it was spam,” said the tipster, who asked that the screengrab not be published. “There was a flurry of messages, ‘Is this spam?'”
Waking up to a suspicious-looking email on Friday morning did little to calm nerves amid a wave of big personnel changes across the federal government this week. President Trump, as promised during his presidential campaign, issued new executive actions and executive orders this week freezing some hiring; temporarily halting the publication of government public health reports; calling for the end of federal diversity, equity and inclusion programs; and reviving a proposed civil service hiring plan from his first administration that critics warn could politicize the historically nonpartisan federal workforce.
And the new administration is seeking ways to root out waste, fraud, abuse and Biden-era policies with a new government efficiency program led by billionaire businessman Elon Musk.
“They had to send this this week, of all weeks? Really?” said the person who flagged the email.
OPM officials said leaders of other agencies and departments received advance notice on Thursday of plans to test a new “Federal Government-Wide Email Communication Test,” which was also posted on the OPM web site. In some cases, the rank-and-file didn’t learn about plans for the email until it arrived, leading to Friday morning’s confusion, one of the officials said.
Representatives of the American Federation of Government Employees, one of the largest labor unions representing civilian federal workers, had no immediate comment on the new email system.
contributed to this report.
