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As part of its drive to reduce headcount across the federal government, the Trump administration’s DOGE department has made significant cuts to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) that tracks hiring and firing.
The federal workforce data operation, once relied upon by agencies and lawmakers alike, has been dismantled as part of the Trump administration’s broader push to reduce the size of government.
Nearly all of the analysts and statisticians responsible for compiling and maintaining detailed HR data for more than two million federal workers have been laid off or accepted resignation incentives, according to staff familiar with the matter.
The cuts at the OPM eliminate the team that managed FedScope, a database that tracked employment metrics such as location, grade level, job classification, and union status.
For decades, FedScope informed decisions on staffing, funding, and policymaking across government, supporting everything from military planning to infrastructure development.
One former HR executive at OPM, Peter Bonner, warned that the loss of this capability would leave agencies “flying blind.”
OPM remade as tool for government downsizing
The staffing reductions follow a broader transformation of OPM under Trump, with the agency becoming a central hub for executing his administration’s ambition to downsize the federal workforce.
Since the start of his second term, OPM has been overseen by appointees linked to Elon Musk’s companies and Silicon Valley, following the administration’s decision to fold personnel management under a new Department of Government Efficiency.
As part of the changes, OPM issued a series of sweeping memos that included directives to Cabinet agencies to halt new hiring and guidance to employees to report peers viewed as non-compliant. The orders have created significant disruption within federal HR operations.
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A public website, created by Musk’s department to report savings from staff cuts, has faced criticism for lacking transparency and containing inaccuracies. While the administration has not detailed how it is tracking its downsizing efforts, agencies have reported job losses piecemeal, with no single, verifiable source of truth.
Requests for comment from OPM’s acting director, Chuck Ezell, were declined.
Loss of HR data risks long-term workforce planning
The dismantling of the data team also ends a capability created under the Clinton administration, when OPM was given authority to aggregate HR records across all agencies.
The FedScope platform, developed in-house, allowed OPM staff to check submissions for accuracy, correct discrepancies, and maintain a reliable database used by other government departments and external stakeholders.
Christine Harada, who worked on clean energy infrastructure planning during the Biden administration, said the database played a crucial role in determining workforce availability for projects such as transmission lines in New Mexico and Arizona.
“Every time the government wants to do anything big, we’d constantly have to do data calls to agencies” without FedScope, she said.
The database has also helped sectors such as education to plan future capacity. Bernie Kluger, a former OPM official, noted that veterinary schools rely on FedScope data to understand federal demand for graduates. “There’s no other source” for that level of workforce detail, he said.
Despite the cuts, current acting director Ezell is no stranger to FedScope. Before assuming the interim leadership role, he managed IT services at OPM’s Georgia data center and had direct experience with the system. His predecessor, Rob Shriver, said the agency’s recent interventions in agency HR practices were “highly questionable” and went far beyond its traditional role.
Ezell is holding the position while the Senate considers the appointment of venture capitalist Scott Kupor to permanently lead the OPM.
