OPM Ends FEVS, Highlights Strong Accountability in Quarterly Survey
The federal government's longtime employee survey is being replaced by a more decentralized approach that will put agencies in charge of surveying their own workforces.
In a blog post, Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Director Scott Kupor said the agency is shelving the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) because he believes agencies should survey employees more than once a year to capture more useful metrics. He also said FEVS was failing to accomplish its goals and was instead “becoming public fodder for the award of vanity metrics, such as ‘Best Places to Work.’”
In addition, OPM said data needs to be “actionable” and that requires agencies to own the surveys themselves. OPM ordered agencies to design, administer, and act on their own surveys “not administered as a government-wide ritual.”
OPM Quarterly Survey Results
To that end OPM released the results of its own quarterly survey with results from June 2026– the third such survey OPM has conducted.
According to the results, the OPM workforce scored high on questions like “understand work alignment with agency goals” and “supervisor holds me accountable.”
OPM scored lower on “opportunities for growth and advancement” and “recommend my agency as a good place to work” but OPM noted that both numbers are still high for workplaces overall.
Director Kupor noted that the accountability is “interesting as employees say that their manager holds them accountable, but not others.” He said, “it leads to the same conclusion – employees want to be in an environment where everyone is contributing meaningfully to the organizational outcomes.”
FEVS Supporters Push Back
Critics are pushing back on the changes, saying FEVS provided critical insight into agency performance through its “consistent questions” across agencies.
The Partnership for Public Service, for example, called FEVS a critical transparency and accountability tool that is now “gone.”
The Partnership also conducted its own Public Service Viewpoint Survey in 2025 after the cancellation of FEVS, providing an alternative source of governmentwide employee data.
