Interior Department employees have been told to submit updated resumes and verify information in their personnel files by noon on April 29/NPS file

As Interior Department staff continue to work towards an across-the-board reduction in force (RIF), all Interior employees have been asked to update and submit their resumes to the department.

That request was made late Thursday afternoon to National Park Service workers in an email from the agency's associate director for Workforce and Inclusion.

While the Interior Department was expected to have finalized its RIF plan by April 14, the email gave employees until noon on April 29 to have submitted an updated resume and to have verified their personnel records with the Park Service.

Resumes should include a list of all relevant work positions an employee held as well as "a description of key responsibilities for each role, with dates specified in month and year format. It should also include any degrees, certifications, completed training programs, and any other information that can be used for qualification purposes for positions as part of workforce optimization efforts," the email said.

President Donald Trump since taking office in January has worked with businessman Elon Musk to downsize the federal goverment. At first the Park Service was forced to rescind offers for seasonal positions; on Valentine's Day some 1,000 NPS employees who were on probationary status were fired; while at the same time the administration encouraged federal employees to take the "fork in the road" offer that would allow them to resign but remain on the payroll through the end of the fiscal year in September. A Voluntary Early Retirement offer was later added to the mix. 

While the seasonal job offers were later extended and a federal judge ordered the probationary employees to be reinstated, a sizeable percentage of the Park Service workforce has left the agency since Trump took office even before the RIF is implemented.

According to tracking by the National Parks Conservsation Association, an estimated 1,100 employees took the latest "fork in the road" offer; some 700 took that offer in February; and an estimated 700 took an early retirement package. Overall, according to the advocacy group, nearly 13 percent of the Park Service workforce has been eliminated. In past years, the workforce has approached 20,000 employees when seasonal workers were included.

The email Thursday to Interior employees asking for updated resumes comes a week after Interior Secretary Doug Burgum gave Tyler Hassan, his assistant secretary for policy, management and budget who also worked for Musk in his Department of Government Efficiency, authority over Interior's budget and workforce. That assignment, spelled out in a secretarial order, gave Hassan, who worked in the oil industry before joining the administration, full authority to "take all necessary actions, including appropriate notifications, to effectuate the appropriate consolidation, unification and optimization of administrative functions within the Department and its Bureaus..."

Interior's bureaus include the Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, U.S. Geological Survey, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Bureau of Reclamation, Bureau of Indian Education, Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Bureau of Trust Funds Administration, Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, and Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement.