Following final regulations published Thursday, Oct. 29, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has formally moved forward with ending its distribution of the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS), which it had overseen for more than 20 years. The final rule makes official a change OPM proposed in July.

Starting with the 2026 survey cycle, agencies are responsible for administering their own employee surveys to assess engagement and organizational climate. The rule requires agencies to submit their survey results to OPM and the Office of Management and Budget. An OPM memo gives agencies 90 days after finishing a survey to provide those results. Agencies may add their own items on engagement, satisfaction, workload and morale, and may run additional “pulse” surveys during the year.

The rule also changes the required content, prescribing ten government-wide questions for annual employee surveys. The previous regulation set a core group of 16 required questions. OPM made no revisions to the 10 questions it first proposed in July.

OPM said it concluded the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) had become a box-checking exercise that did not produce actionable insights sufficient to justify its cost and burden. It pointed to NASA, the Department of Veterans Affairs and the Securities and Exchange Commission, which had already stopped using FEVS, as evidence that the survey needed to be individualized. OPM Director Scott Kupor has said decentralizing the survey will give agencies more detailed results and more useful workforce insights. On confidentiality, OPM said it outlined anonymity guidance in its employee survey playbook and will continue requiring agencies to set confidentiality expectations in their surveys.

The Partnership for Public Service warned that the changes will reduce the ability to compare results across agencies, which it said undermines Congress’s purpose when it created the survey requirement in 2004. Some commenters also objected to dropping long-used questions that fed the government’s engagement and satisfaction indexes. They argued that the law requires comparability. OPM responded that the law does not require OPM itself to administer the survey, and that the remaining questions satisfy the statute’s topic requirements.

OPM fully canceled the 2025 survey in August 2025. The 2024 survey had recorded a governmentwide engagement score of 73 percent, an all-time high. Agencies have about two months to complete this year’s required assessment. OPM is now offering fee-for-service help to agencies that need assistance distributing their own surveys.

Partnership for Public Service Releases a FEVS Alternative

The Partnership for Public Service is administering the Public Service Viewpoint Survey this year again to provide current federal employees with a confidential opportunity to share their perspectives on topics such as workforce disruptions, performance management, barriers to service delivery, perceptions of leadership and the experiences of new talent.

We have been advised by the Partnership that a technical error may have barred respondents from taking the survey in some situations. That issue has now been resolved. If you experienced any issues completing the survey, please attempt to complete it a second time using this survey link. Please reach out to psvs@ourpublicservice.org if you continue to experience issues.”

Please use the link below to access the survey:

https://surveys.ourpublicservice.org/s3/854fb90d64d8-UA

The Partnership is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization with the mission of building a better government and a stronger democracy. As the organization that has produced the Best Places to Work in the Federal Government® rankings for over 20 years, the Partnership has long-standing experience analyzing federal employee surveys. They intend to use the survey data to understand the experience of federal employees across government and demonstrate how current management practices are affecting the workforce.

All survey responses will be collected and analyzed directly by the Partnership. You can trust that your responses will be kept confidential. The Partnership will only share findings in a way that will prevent you or your responses from being identified. Your participation is voluntary. To avoid conflicting with official duties, we ask that you complete this survey outside of your normal working hours.