Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Director Scott Kupor has admitted to filming a video in front of a blank wall while working from home to avoid suspicion. In an audio recording of an August 18 all-hands agency meeting, Kupor asks an OPM communications team member if it looks like he filmed the video as if he was “stuck in a jail cell.”
Kupor made the remarks in response to a question about the video, which was part of a periodic series where he offers updates from the agency on social media. A source confirmed to the outlet that it was Kupor who made the remarks.
“I was in my bedroom, but I was trying to find—because I knew someone was going to give me shit if like, they knew, ‘You were out of the office,'” Kupor says in the recording. “I was trying to find something that was not recognizable as being in my house, basically,” he adds.
The Trump administration has heavily pushed for federal employees to return to the office.
In an executive order, the White House directed agencies to “take all necessary steps to terminate remote work arrangements and require employees to return to work in-person at their respective duty stations on a full-time basis.”
According to data released by OPM, full-time telework and remote work hours across the federal workforce decreased by more than 75% between January and October 2025. OPM is still sharing management-directed reassignments to previously remote employees to move them back into physical offices.
Kupor, head of the government’s chief human resources agency since July 2025, has publicly argued that even jobs conducive to remote work can be impeded by working from home. In a January 2026 blog post, he wrote that “productivity can be impacted by distractions that pervade at the home.”
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Federal employees have largely disagreed with the administration’s return-to-office push.
According to the Federal News Network 2026 return-to-office survey of 7,463 federal workers, more than 53% of respondents said their overall work experience after returning to office was very negative.
In response to the outlet’s request for comment, OPM communications team member Kiki Nyoh said Kupor would not be considered to be teleworking, as he was taking a day off. Nyoh added that OPM has made “important efforts [in] restoring a high-performance based work culture and championing merit in the federal workforce.”
Kupor, 54, joined OPM from Andreessen Horowitz, where he was a managing partner for 16 years. He joins a host of former Silicon Valley investors in the administration, including Sriram Krishnan, now the senior White House AI policy advisor, who is working on tech decisions that affect the federal workforce.
His comments on working from home have sparked controversy among federal employees, who are concerned about the impact on their work-life balance.
The administration’s push for a return to the office may have significant consequences for federal employees and the overall productivity of the federal workforce.
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