On July 2, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) proposed a new rulemaking that would end the current Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) as a centrally administered survey tool and instead issue guidance for individual agencies to conduct their own surveys. Although required by statute, OPM did not conduct the FEVS in 2025.

In a blog post outlining the proposed changes, OPM Director Scott Kupor wrote the guidance to agencies includes “a common set of core questions that every agency will ask – ensuring we preserve the ability to track government-wide trends and maintain a coherent thread of data across the federal workforce. The goal isn’t fragmentation; it’s better ownership. Agencies will have the flexibility to go deeper where their missions demand it, while OPM retains the visibility to understand the broader landscape and identify where systemic challenges require government-wide attention.”

Kupor also expressed a belief that a once-a-year survey, as the FEVS has historically been administered, is “sub-optimal.”

“Employee engagement surveys should therefore be designed, administered, and acted upon by the agencies that understand their own missions, structures, workforces, and management challenges – not administered by OPM as a government-wide ritual,” Kupor wrote. “Done right, surveys become a management tool for agency leaders to measure what matters, identify where alignment is breaking down, and take responsibility for improving the employee experience.”

Under the proposed rulemaking, individual agencies will have flexibility and significant discretion as to how to publish their results.

“Although the operative statute requires that survey results be posted publicly on the agency’s website (unless doing so would jeopardize or negatively impact national security), these specific requirements are not spelled out in the statute requiring annual employee surveys,” the proposed rule says. “Instead, OPM proposes to note simply that each agency may determine the specific content of its public disclosure of its annual survey results."

The revised survey core questions would be reduced by more than one third, from 16 to 10.

OPM’s proposed rule was released shortly after a group of 23 members of Congress, from both the House and Senate, requested OPM detail its plans on the FEVS, given it was not conducted last year.

“In 2025, the federal workforce experienced dramatic, and, in many cases, illegal changes,” the letter said. “According to OPM’s own data, approximately 317,000 employees left the federal government in 2025. The Pew Research Center noted that the federal workforce decreased by 10.3% in 2025. While the FEVS is critical in any year to fulfill statutory requirements and help improve the civil service, it is deeply concerning that in a year of significant change that this survey was cancelled.”

Comments to OPM’s proposed rule are due by August 3, 2026.