Trump Admin’s Latest Addition Wants To Keep DOGE Alive — Here’s How

WASHINGTON, D.C. – One week after being sworn in as director of the Office of Personnel and Management, Scott Kupor is laying out his plans for the agency and specifically, his vision for keeping the spirit of DOGE alive.

Before taking over as director of OPM, Kupor was working in the private sector, most recently at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Kupor told the Daily Caller and other reporters on Monday that he plans on using his experience in the private sector to reform OPM. The new director also plans on building on the progress made by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency — five months after the agency he now helms sent out a famous email asking federal employees to list five things they accomplished in a week.

“There’s no such thing as a one-time look at stuff, and then you just never look at it again … a lot of what [DOGE] did was obviously create the catalyst for a lot of these things,” Kupor told the Caller of how he would continue to seek efficiency in his department.

“What I want to do now is we’ve got to operationalize everything and embed in the culture this idea that operational efficiency is a core prerogative and a core cultural objective for the organization,” he continued.

In the federal government, OPM serves as the as the chief human resources agency, overseeing personnel policy for the different agencies. In the early days of Musk’s DOGE, OPM was critical in helping it execute its mission. The agency sent an email in February to officials across the federal government, asking them to list five things they accomplished from the previous week, or face termination.

While the email campaign began before Kupor’s tenure, the new director acknowledged that it currently needs to be optimized to provide more value across the federal government. Overall, Kupor told reporters, the intent behind the practice is to enforce a “culture of accountability.”

Since Musk departed the federal government just after Trump’s 100 days in office, the future of DOGE and its mission has remained in limbo. Beyond the emails, Kupor has other ideas to implement the work of DOGE, which aimed to cut down on “waste, fraud and abuse” within the federal government. (RELATED: ‘It’s Really Difficult’: Elon Musk Reflects On Successes, Challenges Of DOGE At 100 Days)

“We’ve got to operationalize all this stuff,” Kupor told the Caller and other reporters. “So it’s everything from performance reviews to [an incentive system].”

NEWS: The Office of Personnel and Management will see roughly 1/3 of its work force go, which is about a 1,000 federal bureaucrats, an official shares with @DailyCaller. Most departures were voluntary and 129 positions were eliminated through a reduction of force.

— Reagan Reese (@reaganreese_) July 21, 2025

Kupor said that in addition to making sure performance reviews are actually utilized, he envisions OPM implementing a bonus structure. Right now, a majority of agency employees are being awarded a top ranking at the end of the year, and only a small fraction of employees are receiving a poor review. Kupor noted that the grading system seemed “off” to him.

OPM is also the latest agency to cut down on the size of its workforce. By the end of the year, OPM will lose roughly one-third of its officials, with 80% being voluntary separations, an official shared with the Caller. Some terminations, about 129, were made due to a reduction in force. Those cuts were made to “carefully to streamline operations and increase efficiency,” the official added.

Tackling the inside of OPM is one task, but implementing widespread change across the federal government is another.

While Kupor can’t tell the other agencies what to do, his goal is to make OPM a role model for the rest of the government.

“At the end of the day, we gotta recognize that we don’t control budgets and other agencies. We don’t control their systems. At the end of the day, our ideas will win because of power persuasion, which we can demonstrate to other agencies that, ‘Hey, look operational issues are important. We can be a helping hand to that, if you want help on thinking through what the organization should look like,’” Kupor told reporters. 

“That’s the kind of posture in motion that I wanted to put forward,” he finished.