Most of us who have ever, you know, worked, have expected to be accountable for the time we spend on the job. Some of us punch a time clock, and some of us fill out a timesheet. In my years as a jacket-and-tie corporate consultant, I often was required to account for the time I billed, usually in one-hour increments, describing what I had been doing. 

It's all about accountability, you see.

But when federal government employees are asked to return some information as to what they spend their time doing, as we have seen, the hue and cry are audible on a small rocky asteroid revolving around a star in the Crab Nebula. Now, a second email has gone out to federal workers, this time from the Office of Personnel Management, asking not only what they did the previous week but also requires submitting a report every Monday.

You know. Accountability.

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is once again asking federal workers to explain what they have accomplished as President Donald Trump and Elon Musk work to root out waste.

This week’s email reportedly came from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) with the subject line "What did you do last week? Part II," referencing the previous DOGE email. The Associated Press reports that this differed from how the email was expected to go out, as the new version was reportedly supposed to be from individual agencies, not OPM.

This time, there's an out for people who deal with sensitive/classified information.

However, unlike the last email, this one reportedly instructed workers to give five bullet points describing their accomplishments each week, according to multiple reports. Replies to the weekly email are due by Mondays at 11:59 p.m. EST.

Another key difference, according to CBS News, was an instruction to not send classified or sensitive information. Additionally, those whose work is entirely sensitive or classified were allegedly told to write "All of my activities are sensitive."

Accounting for your time on the job - what a novel concept.

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There's a lot of humor around government workers, and that's nothing new. Jokes include things like the inevitable image of a dozen men leaning on shovels while one guy digs. But the best jokes have a nugget of truth at their heart, and it's a near certainty that many, maybe all, executive branch agencies are feather-bedded to a fare-thee-well. If anyone taking a paycheck from the taxpayers can't take a few minutes to record and report five things they did the week before - only five things - then we don't need them on the payroll at all. 

Elon Musk described this as a pulse-check, and there may well be some reports coming back stating things like:

1. Made coffee
2. Emptied the trash can
3. Drank coffee
4. Answered an email about the department picnic
5. Cleaned the empty coffee pot

That, hopefully, won't happen, but it's preferable to no answer at all. And yes, federal workers, even more than private sector ones, should expect to be accountable to their employers - we the people.

I mean, honestly - we are paying these folks. They work for us. There's no reason they can't shut up and take a few moments of their time to demonstrate they are doing more than sucking up oxygen and turning food into waste. The DOGE is tasked with cutting away the fat from the executive branch, and this strikes one as a good way to identify some of that adipose tissue.