Proposed 'WALDO Act' Mandates Public Website Listing Every Federal Employee's Salary and Work Location

The “Wheres the Workforce At Listed by Duties and Office Act”—mercifully shortened to the “Wheres WALDO Act”—wants to pull back the curtain on how the federal government staffs its operations. This bill mandates two major transparency pushes: first, the creation of a public, searchable website listing data on every single civil service employee; and second, annual reports detailing the government’s spending on contract workers.

The Great Federal Employee Reveal

Within 18 months of enactment, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) would have to launch a website that puts individual federal employees’ details online for anyone to browse. We’re talking about a comprehensive profile for every civil servant, including their job title, a description of their duties, the agency they work for, and their primary work location. Crucially, the site must also list the employee’s “annual rate of basic pay, including any bonuses or supplemental wages paid during the year” (SEC. 2). If you’re a federal employee—say, a cybersecurity analyst in Denver or a claims processor in Atlanta—your specific salary, bonuses, and where you show up to work would become public record, available to anyone with an internet connection.

What That Means for the Average Federal Worker

For the millions of people who make up the civil service, this is a massive shift in personal privacy. While the salaries of high-level government officials are often public, this bill extends that requirement to every single employee, down to the entry level. Think about how this plays out: a public database linking your specific job duties, your exact pay, and your primary work location could expose federal workers to targeted harassment, identity theft risks, or even make them targets for recruiters looking to poach talent. It’s a huge administrative lift for OPM and a significant security concern for the employees themselves, who currently have a reasonable expectation that their specific compensation details are not broadcast online.

Tracking the Contractors

The second major part of the WALDO Act focuses on the outsourced workforce. The bill requires OPM to publish an annual report detailing the total number of part-time and full-time contract employees working for the government, along with the total cost of that contract work (SEC. 2). This data must be broken down by the federal agency using the contractors. For those interested in government efficiency and spending, this provision is a big win. Currently, getting a clear, unified picture of how much the government spends on contract labor versus civil service labor is difficult. This annual report would provide a much-needed, agency-by-agency breakdown, offering real transparency into the “shadow workforce” that supports federal operations and helping the public track where their tax dollars are going.

The Trade-Off: Transparency vs. Privacy

The WALDO Act presents a clear trade-off. On one hand, it delivers high-level transparency regarding government spending, especially on contractors, which is a definite benefit for accountability. On the other hand, it achieves transparency into the civil service workforce by sacrificing the personal privacy of individual federal employees, requiring the public disclosure of their specific salaries and work locations. While the intent might be to show taxpayers exactly who is doing what and for how much, the practical consequences for the employees—ranging from security risks to unwanted public scrutiny—are significant and unavoidable under the bill’s current language.