Interior Dept gives employees third shot at voluntary incentives to leave their jobs

The Interior Department is giving employees a third opportunity to accept voluntary incentives to leave their jobs or retire early, ahead of a long-awaited department reorganization.

The department, in a press release on Thursday, said it will offer employees another opportunity to enroll in the deferred resignation program, or accept voluntary early retirement.

The department is looking to shrink its headcount ahead of a “strategic initiative to improve resource management and the delivery of critical resources nationwide,” according to an email obtained by Federal News Network.

“The initiative aims to strengthen Interior’s mission of stewardship and service, optimizing operations streamlining outdated bureaucracy and ensuring meaningful economic benefits for taxpayers and communities across the country,” the department wrote.

An Interior Department employee, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation, said the announcement “came as a total surprise.”

“We are going to lose a lot more people,” another Interior employee told Federal News Network.

The Interior Department has been preparing for an agency reorganization for much of the Trump administration.

Last October, the Interior Department told a federal court in San Francisco that it planned to eliminate more than 2,000 positions across its headquarters, agencies and bureaus throughout the country. Department officials told the court that the reduction in force was not related to the 43-day government shutdown, but happened to coincide with it.

The court, and later Congress — as part of a stopgap spending bill to end the shutdown — prevented Interior and several other agencies from sending out those RIF notices. However, those layoff protections from Congress expired in mid-February. So far, no agency has followed through on sending out those RIF notices.

The Interior Department said its initiative will include aligning more National Park Service employees into “visitor-facing” positions, “eliminating redundant layers” from the permitting process, and “reducing administrative burdens and improving internal operations.”

The department told employees that after evaluating core functions and improving coordination across Interior’s 13 bureaus and offices, it will “accelerate decision-making and enhance accountability.”

“Effective stewardship requires disciplined management of the resources entrusted to us.” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement. “By modernizing our operations we’re strengthening our ability to carry out Interior’s mission and deliver world-class service for the American people.”

In recent months, the Interior Department has incrementally proceeded with its reorganization plans.

Interior Department employees working in IT received reassignment notices in their email on March 20. Deputy Chief Information Officer Rick Kryger told employees in a recent message that these reassignment emails “will describe any changes to your position associated with the department’s unification efforts.”

“Each employee will receive an email with a customized attachment that is specific to your position,” Kryger wrote.

As Federal News Network previously reported, this consolidation will bring IT employees into the Office of the Secretary, and they will no longer address bureau-specific tech problems at the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, Fish and Wildlife Service and other components.

An Interior spokesperson said in a statement that, “We are modernizing the Department to improve efficiency, coordination, and the quality of information we deliver to the American people.”

In February, the Interior Department blazed ahead with a reorganization plan to consolidate its wildland firefighting operations. Those plans, however, stop short of merging with wildland fire personnel or programs at the Agriculture Department’s Forest Service. An internal memo said the newly created Wildland Fire Service “will unify wildland fire management within DOI only.”

“The success of these efforts will rely on ongoing support from Congress to secure the necessary funding and authorities needed to implement and sustain these important reforms,” the memo stated.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order last summer requiring the Interior Department and USDA to consolidate their wildland fire programs “to the maximum degree practicable and consistent with applicable law.” The Trump administration’s fiscal 2026 budget request noted that wildland fire response has been split across five agencies in two departments.

A comprehensive spending deal to fund the Interior Department through the end of fiscal 2026 did not endorse the Trump administration’s plans to consolidate federal wildland firefighting operations into a single agency.

Democrats on the Senate Appropriations Committee wrote in a summary of the Interior spending bill in January that the spending package “specifically provides funding to continue wildland firefighting using the longstanding practice of funding both the U.S. Forest Service and the Department of the Interior to allow Congress to consider legislative proposals for such a major change.”

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