"To the board: if you have this level of distrust for my management, you should fire me immediately. This request is out of line, and shows great disrespect for our employees as well as myself. If you are dissatisfied with the information you receive about the company's operations and performance, you can talk to me and my staff about that. I will not allow you to display such callous disregard for the people under my leadership."

You would write "Ask HN: my company has thousands of employees, a board member showed up in Slack and told everyone to write him a weekly summary, or we'll be fired, what to do?" and everybody would be like "WTF that's beyond stupid, name the company, also it's time to polish your resume!" yada yada.

Don't be obtuse.

And it’s not the board that send the emails, it’s a committee created by the board.

It’s unclear whether OPM has the authority to order employees to do anything.

The real way to do this. If it was what they actually wanted to happen was for the president to issue an executive order requiring everyone to logon to a secure site and fill out a form. Then give some kind of reasonable deadline that makes allowances for people on PTO or leave.

If a board wants something done, they can urge the CEO to implement it, but they do not hold unilateral power to dictate internal operations. They can vote to remove the CEO if they feel that they aren’t producing the desired result, but again, this is an indirect action.

DOGE are not the boss of most (any?) government departments. Its entire purpose, legally, is to improve software: https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/esta...

So once again, who are they to ask this, legally? Who are they to fire employees from other departments who rightfully deny this request?