Despite the Trump administration scrapping this year’s signature survey for assessing trends in the federal workforce, a new opportunity has emerged for federal employees to make their voices heard.

The Partnership for Public Service is launching its own version of the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, which it is calling the Public Service Viewpoint Survey. The assessment seeks to fill what would otherwise be a gap in federal workforce data, after the Office of Personnel Management’s decision to cancel FEVS for 2025.

Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, said creating an alternative survey for federal employees to take this year is “not the first choice, but the necessary choice.”

“The best choice would be for the government to continue to do what the law requires and what it has done for many years in a row,” Stier said in an interview with Federal News Network.

Surveying federal employees and collecting data is especially crucial for 2025, Stier said, due to the major changes the Trump administration has made to the federal workforce.

“If the data were important in prior years, it’s even more vital today when so much disruption and turmoil is occurring,” Stier said, adding that without the data, “it’s not just flying blind — it’s flying blind in a hurricane.”

An OPM spokesperson declined to comment.

It’s the first time that the Partnership for Public Service, which advocates for non-partisan improvements to the federal government, has taken on this type of project. Though the non-profit hopes its survey will reach federal employees broadly across agencies, there will be some limitations in the survey’s distribution since it is external rather than government-run.

“We are not going to in any way, shape or form completely replicate or replace what the federal government has way more resources and access to be able to do,” Stier said.

When conducting FEVS each year, OPM can reach federal employees across all agencies in the executive branch more directly. That makes it easier to administer a governmentwide survey — and by extension, receive a stronger level of response from employees across virtually all agencies and subcomponents.

Without that same level of reach, the Partnership is instead working with various federal unions and employee organizations, who will promote the survey to their members on the Partnership’s behalf. Michelle Amante, the Partnership’s senior vice president of government programs, said the organization is trying to be intentional in its partnerships to get as wide a reach as possible, and to try to avoid gaps in the data.

“We’ll be looking at responses as they come in,” Amante told Federal News Network. “We’ll continue to work with our partners to try to get the word out where we see any big voids.”

Earlier in the year, OPM initially delayed the FEVS timeline due to what it said were more “urgent” changes for the federal workforce from the Trump administration. The subsequent decision in August to fully cancel the survey, first reported by Federal News Network, marks the first time that OPM will not run the FEVS since the annual survey began over 20 years ago.

OPM said agencies could still choose to survey their employees on their own this year, but any plans to do so would have to be run by OPM first. So far, most agencies do not appear to be moving forward with survey plans, raising questions about a legal obligation to survey federal employees.

In 2004, Congress began requiring all executive branch agencies to begin surveying their employees annually. Federal regulations mandate that agencies ask 16 specific questions to their employees, once per year, on agency leadership, employee satisfaction, the federal workplace, opportunities for professional development, contributions to agency mission and recognition of employees.

OPM is not required by statute to administer a governmentwide survey, but back in 2004, the agency opted to move forward with creating FEVS. Over time, agencies began to rely more heavily on FEVS, with relatively few conducting their own employee surveys and the vast majority simply using FEVS to fulfill the legal obligations. Despite the requirements, there are no clear repercussions for agencies that don’t conduct a survey.

“It’s really important to have those years of data to evaluate trends,” said Rob Shriver, managing director of the Civil Service Strong program at Democracy Forward, and former acting director of OPM. “I just can’t imagine, as somebody who’s led a federal agency, not having that information from my workforce.”

The Partnership’s survey will pull many of its questions from past years of FEVS. There will be several added questions, including some on artificial intelligence, as well as comparing year-to-year employee performance and service delivery.

But overall, the survey’s length will be considerably shorter than FEVS. While OPM’s 2024 survey had 90 core questions, the Partnership’s “Public Service Viewpoint Survey” will have just 23. The choice to run a shorter survey was intentional.

“In the past, the survey was just too long,” Amante said. “It’s been a barrier for many federal employees.”

The Partnership is also putting several precautions in place to protect federal employees’ identities and keep their responses anonymous. Federal employees will only receive an invitation to take the survey through their personal emails, rather than their government emails. The Partnership will also not send the survey directly to employees — instead, it’s collaborating with unions and employee organizations to distribute the survey to their members.

“We are doing everything we can to make it safe for federal employees to participate — we understand this is a difficult environment,” Stier said. “We have lots of safety protocols to make sure that federal employees can aggregate their voice, so that leaders can make better choices and the public can have a better understanding about what’s happening in our government.”

The American Federation of Government employees is one of several unions collaborating with the Partnership on the effort.

“We hope this can fill in a real gap and give folks information they need to make good decisions that will be beneficial to federal employees,” Andrew Huddleston, AFGE’s advocacy department director, said in an interview. “We’ve been keeping track of this data for many years. Interruptions to that dataset are deleterious to understanding how different workplace policies, different government policies, impact the federal workforce.”

In addition to filling a data void, the Partnership also plans to use the results of its survey to help determine the next round of the Best Places to Work in the Federal Government rankings. The annual series is one of the Partnership’s most popular programs, and one of the first initiatives the non-profit launched after it was founded in 2001.

The survey opens on Monday and will be out in the field until Dec. 19 at midnight. The topline results are expected to be released in early 2026. Once the results are in, the Partnership plans to share its findings and analysis with OPM, as well as leaders and managers across all agencies.

“It’s an opportunity for us to hear their voice — and to use that data and hopefully make data-driven public policy decisions,” Amante said. “We are very hopeful that federal agencies will partner with us when we have the data, and that we can help inform better decisions when it comes to managing the federal workforce.”

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