Public Comments

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October 19, 2026
Submitted via www.reginfo.gov
Makisha Brown
Acting Deputy Associate Director
Strategic Workforce Planning
Office of Personnel Management
1900 E Street NW
Washington, DC 20415
Re:
30-Day Notice and Request for Comments , 91 Fed.Reg. 58921 (September 17,
2026)
Dear Ms. Brown:
The National Employment Lawyers Association (NELA) respectfully submits the
following comments concerning the Office of Personnel Management (OPM)’s 30-Day Notice
and Request for Comments, as published in the Federal Register at 91 Fed.Reg. 58921 (October
19, 2026).
NELA is the largest professional membership organization in the country comprised of
lawyers who represent employees in labor, employment, wage and hour, and civil rights disputes.
Our mission is to advance workers’ rights and serve lawyers who advocate for equality and justice
in the American workplace. NELA and its 69 circuit, state, and local affiliates have a membership
of over 4,000 attorneys who are committed to working on behalf of those who have faced illegal
treatment in the workplace in both the public and private sector. NELA has filed numerous amicus
curiae briefs before the United States Supreme Court and other federal appellate courts regarding
the proper interpretation of federal civil rights and worker protection laws, and comments regularly
on relevant proposed rules. NELA also engages in legislative advocacy on behalf of workers
throughout the United States. Many NELA members represent federal employees in workplace
claims. NELA, therefore, has an interest in these regulations.
The revisions to the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) survey forms are
designed to implement changes proposed by OPM in a recent Proposed Rule, which was published
in the Federal Register at 91 Fed.Reg. 40435-40444 (July 2, 2026). NELA had opposed 1 the
Proposed Rule’s proposed revisions to 5 C.F.R. § 250.302(a)(2), as inconsistent with statute and
unsound public policy—and thus also opposes the present proposed revisions to the FEVS survey
form itself. Congress’s purpose in mandating the annual viewpoint survey in Pub.L. 108-138 was
to solicit information from employees to rate the quality of their supervision by their relevant
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NELA’s comments on the Proposed Rule were filed on August 3, 2026, and appear in the
electronic docket as Comment OPM-2026-0368-0007. Available at
https://www.regulations.gov/comment/OPM-2026-0368-0007. NELA restates and incorporates
those comments herein by reference.

agency management. See 5 U.S.C. 7101 note (codifying Pub.L. 108-136, Div. A, Title XI, § 1128).
OPM’s proposed revisions eliminate all questions on several of the statutorily-mandated topics,
including “work environment,” “rewards and recognition for professional accomplishment and
personal contributions to achieving organizational mission,” and “opportunity for professional
development and growth.” As Congress has commanded in statute since 2003 that OPM survey
employees on these issues, OPM is not free to exclude them from the survey by regulation. Indeed,
Congress stated in the legislative history for present 5 U.S.C. 7101 note that the OPM’s survey
questions were required to be survey questions to address the exact issues regarding which
Congress wanted federal employees to be queried. See H.R.Rep. 108-106 (May 16, 2003), Part I,
at 367 (discussing then-Section 1110). More generally, the purpose of the mandatory employment
survey was to conduct, at a high-level, a workplace climate survey so that Congress and the public
can monitor the work environment (including general quality of workplace, workload, job
satisfaction and morale, and perceived prospects for upward mobility and professional
development) within the executive branch agencies—a goal well served by the present question
set. The revised version appears instead to repurpose the survey away from what the statute
mandated, and instead to convert it into a tool to verify that employees have received their
employment instructions—and to help higher agency management identify work units where the
supervisors are not pressuring employees strongly enough regarding employee performance
standards. Any desire to try and avoid possible adverse publicity of recent attempts to deliberately
place federal employees ‘in trauma’ is not a valid reason to disobey the Congress. While OPM is
theoretically free to ask additional questions on topics beyond those listed in 5 U.S.C. 7101 note,
subject to other statutory constraints (see, e.g., 5 U.S.C. § 552a(e)(7)), OPM cannot refuse to query
federal employees on the issues that Congress commanded OPM and the agencies to survey in
Pub.L. 108-136. As the present questions adequately implement the statutory requirements for the
viewpoint survey and the proposed revised questions manifestly do not, present 5 C.F.R. § 250.302
should be retained unmodified. Accordingly, NELA had opposed the Proposed Rule, and for
similar reasons now opposes the revisions to the FEVS survey form.
NELA further notes that the Proposed Rule has not been finalized as of the date of this
submission, and so it would be further inappropriate for OPM to revise the FEVS survey form in
a manner inconsistent with the present FEVS regulations.
Iin the 30-Day Notice OPM had indicated that the Office of Management and Budget had
specifically sought comment on four issues concerning the FEVS survey form revisions. NELA
comments on two of those issues as follows:
1. Evaluate whether the proposed collection of information is necessary for the proper
performance of functions of the agency, including whether the information will have
practical utility;
NELA’s Response: For the reasons stated above (restated and incorporated by reference
here for brevity), the revisions to the information collection are not necessary for the proper
performance of OPM’s functions in implementing Pub.L. 108-138, and to the contrary
deviate from statutory requirements for the FEVS survey.
3. Enhance the quality, utility, and clarity of the information to be collected;
NELA’s Response: For the reasons stated above (restated and incorporated by reference
here for brevity), the revisions to the information collection will degrade the quality, utility
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and clarity of the information to be collected through omission of information collection
on a number of material topics regarding which OPM is required to collect information
pursuant to Pub.L. 108-138, such as “work environment,” “rewards and recognition for
professional accomplishment and personal contributions to achieving organizational
mission,” and “opportunity for professional development and growth.”
Thank you for your consideration. If you have questions or wish to discuss these matters,
please contact Ashley Westby at [email protected].
Sincerely yours,

Ashley Westby
Program Director
National Employment Lawyers Association

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