Since the nation’s earliest days, the federal government has struggled to contain leaks. The newest proposal to plug them — a nondisclosure agreement that federal agencies may roll out to more than 2 million civil servants — is unlikely to improve matters.

The plan comes from the Office of Personnel Management, whose director, Scott Kupor, previously worked in venture capital and technology — two industries that helped pioneer the practice of requiring employees to sign NDAs. “The federal government should not be held to a lower standard,” Kupor said.

Unlike the private sector, however, the government must balance its need for confidentiality with its employees’ First Amendment rights. Myriad laws and rules already exist to prohibit the wrongful disclosure of classified information or private personal data, such as tax forms. Those federal employees and contractors who handle such material already sign NDAs, such as Standard Form 312, and receive training on their obligations. Serious breaches should be, and generally are, severely penalized.

The new NDA’s language seems almost designed to confuse. On the one hand, it would have federal workers commit to protecting all “non-public, confidential, or proprietary information, whether or not marked as such,” that would include any “sensitive, pre-decisional or deliberative material.”

In effect, the goal seems to be extending the tailored rules that apply to classified information or private data to a much broader, and vaguer, class of documents and communications. Meanwhile, as required by law, the proposal stipulates that it won’t change — “supersede, conflict with, or otherwise alter” — civil servants’ existing rights and obligations in dealing with government information.

So what’s the point?

OPM says the goal is to “promote consistency” and “better inform” federal workers about their duties. Yet it’s hard to see how a voluntary NDA can promote consistency across agencies that may or may not adopt it, and even harder to imagine that five pages of dense legalese about an employee’s “existing non-disclosure obligations” will be very informative.

It’s also unclear how such a contract would be enforced. During the president’s first term, White House staff signed NDAs that many argued were unconstitutional. Although the Department of Justice sued a former aide to the first lady for violating the agreement after she wrote an unauthorized memoir, the suit was quickly dropped by the next administration.

A broader worry is that the government might wield the NDAs to intimidate public servants or to weed out those — even in nonpartisan, career positions — who fail to embrace the administration’s political agenda. Vague new requirements may create uncertainty or discourage workers from reporting legitimate misconduct for fear of prosecution.

Perhaps understandably, public reaction to the NDA proposal is already overwhelmingly negative, and some members of Congress have expressed pointed skepticism.

If the administration’s goal is to reduce harmful leaks, it would do better to focus on tightening oversight of the process for granting federal security clearances, which government watchdogs have flagged as “high risk” since 2018. Addressing deficiencies in information security should also be a priority. A report last year from the Information Security Oversight Office found that federal agencies varied widely in their training and that too many people had classification authority without needing it.

The federal government has a duty to protect Americans’ private data and national security. The current system could use some reform. Collecting bureaucrats’ signatures is at best a distraction from those efforts.

____

The Editorial Board publishes the views of the editors across a range of national and global affairs.

_____

©2026 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com/opinion. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.