The next phase in employee surveillance is here

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Palantir’s new USDA contract is alarming — less because of its size than because of what it makes normal.

The Department of Agriculture has obligated $3.9 million for a Palantir return-to-office tracking tool, with a potential value of $13.3 million through September 2027. Although that may look small in federal procurement terms, it could still become a prototype for something much larger: a government market for software that turns office attendance into an enforcement system.

The release of a new, mandatory app from the White House sharpens that concern, because it includes more than operational notices. Government Executive reported that it features official statements, policy announcements, social media posts and a “text President Trump” option that pre-populates a message praising him, with potential tracking features as well. Even if the administration views the app as a communications tool, Congress should ask whether government-furnished devices should carry content that career employees may reasonably perceive as political branding and surveillance.

The Palantir USDA contract and the White House app may look like separate controversies, but they point to the same federal blind spot: Washington keeps adopting tools that can shape, track or influence the federal workforce before Congress sets clear rules for how those tools may be used.

The White House can defend both moves in practical terms. Trump’s return to office directive last year told executive-branch agency heads to terminate remote-work arrangements and require full-time in-person work, subject to exemptions. The Government Accountability Office has found serious federal office utilization problems, including many headquarters buildings using an estimated average of 25 percent or less of capacity during sampled weeks in early 2023.

And the White House’s own webpage describes an official mobile app that offers real-time updates, live events, policy initiatives and direct access to administration content. Those are real management, space and communications arguments.

But good administrative reasons do not erase governance risks.

The Palantir case raises the risk of federal worker monitoring through employee mapping, office capacity measurement, and space-utilization analytics. The White House app case raises a different risk: mandatory software on government phones that may expose employees to official messaging, social feeds, push alerts, and device-level security questions. The common issue involves control over the employee environment.

That distinction matters, because federal workers do not experience these technologies as abstractions. A dashboard that ranks office attendance can become evidence in discipline, relocation, reductions in force, or office closure debates. A mandatory app on a government device can become a channel for messages employees cannot easily ignore during work. Further, Government Executive reported that an FAA message said the app would be automatically installed on FAA-issued iPhones and iPads and that employees did not need to take action. That move makes the employer, not the employee, the installer.

Congress should treat both stories as part of one oversight category: federal workforce data and device governance. The Privacy Act already governs agency systems of records about individuals, including rules around disclosure and routine use. The Hatch Act’s stated purposes include ensuring nonpartisan administration of federal programs, protecting federal employees from political coercion in the workplace, and preserving merit-based advancement. Neither law answers every question raised by analytics dashboards and forced app installations, but both point toward the same principle: agencies should not blur management, monitoring and political influence.

The Palantir story shows that although a system built for workplace analytics may begin with legitimate facilities management, the same data can support individualized judgments if agencies connect attendance, location, supervisory, and human resources records. Low office use may reflect telework habits. It may also reflect vacant jobs, obsolete leases, poor transit access, unsafe facilities, or mission models that no longer depend on daily in-person work. Data can clarify reality, but it can also flatten it.

The Office of Management and Budget’s 2024 memo on AI oversight required agencies to strengthen governance, manage risks, and maintain inventories of AI uses. The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s AI Risk Management Framework says trustworthy systems should be valid, reliable, safe, secure, accountable, transparent, explainable, privacy-enhanced, and fair. Those standards should apply when software classifies employee behavior, flags attendance compliance, recommends managerial action, or combines workplace datasets.

Congress should require agencies to answer several questions before these tools spread. What data does the system collect? Who can access individualized records? How long will agencies retain raw data? Can managers use it for discipline, performance reviews, reductions in force, office consolidation, or relocation decisions? Will inspectors general have audit access? Will agencies publish privacy impact assessments, update system-of-records notices, and disclose AI-related functions in public inventories?

The fix should not ban public-sector AI or prevent agencies from communicating with employees. It should separate legitimate management from surveillance and coercion. Agencies can measure building use with aggregated statistics, short retention periods, role-based access, and independent audits. They can send workforce updates through approved channels without forcing general-public messaging apps onto every employee phone. They can improve operations without turning every badge swipe or device screen into a compliance tool.

Leaders who care about effective AI adoption at work should treat trust as infrastructure. If federal employees believe every desk assignment, badge record, app notification, and building sensor may later be used against them, agencies will buy compliance at the price of candor, morale and mission focus.

The federal government has every right to know whether taxpayers fund empty offices. It also has every right to communicate with its workforce. It has no right to drift into a workplace surveillance and messaging regime through a series of small software decisions. The Palantir contract and the White House app order give Congress a timely warning: set the rules before the tools set them for us.

Gleb Tsipursky, Ph.D., serves as the CEO of the future-of-work work consultancy Disaster Avoidance Experts and wrote “The Psychology of AI Adoption at Work: From Resistance to Results” and “Returning to the Office and Leading Hybrid and Remote Teams.”

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