When Silicon Valley investment titan Scott Kupor is sworn-in Monday as the 27th Director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), his will be one of the most thankless jobs in the federal government, reforming the 2.3-million-member career civil service workforce to be more efficient, accountable, and responsive to voters.

Kupor expressed optimism during an April confirmation hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee (HSGAC) for his prospects to execute a ground-up redesign of the workforce. Kupor was confirmed by the full Senate on July 9 in a 49-46 vote. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) was the lone GOP nay vote.

“Just as the U.S. is the world leader in so many important industries, the federal workforce should be the envy of world — and not only in terms of efficiency. Rather, we should also enable hard-working federal employees to do their absolute best work every day on behalf of the American people — working in an environment that rewards innovation, measured risk-taking, and merit versus one that rewards legacy, risk-avoidance at all costs and tenure,” Kupor told senators.

“This too is a matter of fairness — it’s unfair that dedicated federal employees are hamstrung by an organizational system not of their own doing that prohibits them from best serving the American people. If confirmed, I intend to work with the president, Congress and each of the government agencies to design from the ground-up a talent recruitment, development, and management system that empowers federal employees to provide the best services to all Americans — one in which innovative thinking and efficiency drive decision-making and personal growth opportunities,” Kupor said.

Launching such a comprehensive redesign of one of the world’s largest public workforces would be difficult under the best of circumstances, but Kupor takes office against a backdrop of unprecedented upheaval and controversy throughout the federal workforce.

President Donald Trump appointed Kupor, but in the months between his first day in the Oval Office, January 20, and Monday’s swearing-in, the chief executive has relied on Acting Director Chuck Ezell to launch multiple ground-shaking workforce initiatives that military theoreticians call “preparing the battlefield” for the coming full-scale assault.

Most prominent among those initiatives was the Deferred Resignation Program (DRP) that earlier in the year offered federal workers the opportunity to retire early on extremely favorable terms in September. About 75,000 full-time civil servants accepted the offer, marking one of the biggest-ever single reductions in the workforce.

More Reductions-in-Force (RIF) are either already in process or being planned, either as a result of revelations by Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), formerly led by space entrepreneur Elon Musk, or more generally due to the president’s promise to streamline the workforce.

While RIFs generate lots of headlines, the second of Trump’s Ezell-led initiatives is certain to lead to more internal resistance in the bureaucracy that will likely be a constant headache for Kupor.

The “Schedule Policy/Career” (SPC) reform reclassifies thousands of career employees who occupy highly-paid policy-making management positions throughout the federal establishment, especially in the Metropolitan Washington, D.C. region, where government agency headquarters are located.

The SPC quickly drew opposition from two major professional groups representing such workers, the Senior Executives Association (SEA) and the Federal Managers Association (FMA). And a survey of 500 federal career managers in the national capital region found nearly half of those who voted Democratic in the 2024 presidential election promising to fight SPC implementation at every turn. Former Vice-President Kamala Harris received 84 percent of all donations by federal workers contributing to the 2024 presidential candidates.

This issue will likely be in front and center for Kupor, and not only because most federal career workers tend to vote Democratic. There is also a widespread view among career workers that they are exempt from all political considerations in carrying out their duties, thanks to the Pendleton Act of 1883. That law abolished the old “spoils system” of awarding federal jobs to campaign supporters and replaced it with a merit-based career service system that evolved into today’s government workforce.

The problem with that view is that under the Constitution, even after the career service was erected in 1883, all executive branch employees ultimately must answer to the President, who in turn answers to the voters. Presidents thus can promulgate policies endorsed by voters and then expect career workers to faithfully implement those policies.

To emphasize how wrong the Spoils System misconception is, the SPC points out multiple times that “covered positions remain career positions and are not being converted into political appointments” and that SPC-covered employees “are not required to personally or politically support the current President or the policies of the current administration. They are required to faithfully implement administration policies to the best of their ability, consistent with their constitutional oath and the vesting of executive authority solely in the President. Failure to do so is grounds for dismissal.”

Kupor will face a constant onslaught of criticism from federal employee unions like the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) and the Democrats in Congress who get millions of dollars in campaign contributions from the unions.

Dr. Robert Moffit, senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, knows from eight years of close-up experience in dealing with federal unions and professional groups. He served in senior political appointee positions at OPM and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) during the Reagan administration.

“I have worked closely with civil service employees, both at the federal and state level, most of my professional life. I am happy to report that, overwhelmingly, I have found those with whom I have worked, diligent, honest, honorable, and trustworthy,” Moffit told The Washington Stand.

“But it is also true that some civil servants are not truly civil servants at all and see themselves as defenders of their personal, partisan, ideological interests, or even outside corporate interests. And these bureaucrats, buried deep in the bureaucracy, can indeed slow or defeat the programs and policies of a popularly elected president,” Moffit said.

“The effectiveness of policy is in the details, the nitty gritty administrative actions or regulatory modifications necessary to bring about real and lasting change. Bad actors can delay the necessary policy analysis, slow walk the paperwork, insist on multiple, but often unnecessary, levels of internal review. Let your imagination run on the kinds of foot-dragging that can stall or undercut presidential policies,” Moffit added.

Congressional Republicans, however, are strongly supportive of the Trump reforms. Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), who is chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, told TWS that he is enthusiastic about Trump’s civil service initiatives.

“The federal bureaucracy has wasted taxpayer dollars and exerted too much control over Americans’ lives for far too long without accountability. The American people gave President Trump and Republicans a mandate on November 5 to change the way Washington works and hold the unelected bureaucracy accountable. The Oversight Committee applauds President Trump’s progress to restore transparency and accountability in the federal government. We will continue to work with the White House to identify areas for reform, hold bureaucrats accountable, and ensure the government effectively serves the American people,” Comer declared.

Kupor is certainly no stranger to great management challenges, having taken the Andreessen Horowitz venture capital investment fund from its initial workforce of three to a 600-employee behemoth overseeing more than $45 billion in institutional assets.

Even so, former OPM Director Donald Devine, who implemented landmark reforms of federal employee retirement and health benefit programs during the Reagan years, knows all too well how intense the criticism can be and how lonely being that agency’s decision-maker can be.

Devine, who The Washington Post once described as “Reagan’s terrible swift sword of the civil service,” lauds the Trump initiatives as the heart of a sound plan. But, Devine told TWS, Kupor “has to make a decision: does he want to be popular or successful? Few care or even know about federal personnel management except the unions and executive employees and their lobbying organizations.

“And their most powerful supporter is the daily Washington Post reporting favorably on their bureaucratic ‘We know better’ how to run the government. But things have worsened since the Reagan era. President Trump will get no better coverage, nor will the new director if he properly uses his powerful position to implement the plan to make government work,” the former OPM chief said.

Welcome to Washington, Director Kupor.