OPM prepares legislation allowing agencies to require telework

The Office of Personnel Management is crafting a legislative proposal that would allow agency heads to require work from home or other alterative sites during a pandemic health crisis, an agency official testified Tuesday.

Daniel Green, OPM's deputy associate director for employee and family support policy, told the House Government Reform Subcommittee on the Federal Workforce and Agency Operations that agency chiefs need the legal authority to require employees to telework to maintain government operations and, at the same time, "social distancing" during an emergency.

An OPM spokesman said there is no indication that the proposal, if enacted, would allow an agency head to mandate telework outside of health crises.

Current OPM policy states that neither agency heads nor OPM can mandate telework, but says by ordering an evacuation and authorizing pay for evacuated employees, agencies can require work from home.

A revamped telework guide from OPM is due in three weeks. It is expected to include planning checklists to determine whether employees are prepared to work remotely in the event of a catastrophe such as a terrorist attack, natural disaster or health emergency.

In response to questions raised by the early May theft of computer equipment containing personal information on 26.5 million people from a Veterans Affairs Department employee's home, Green said the updated telework guide will tell employees and managers that they are responsible for keeping government property and information secure regardless of their work locations.

"When [agency] employees telework, agency security policies do not change and should be enforced at the same rigorous level as when they are in the office," Green said.

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., said she is concerned that placing security risks on employees will have a "huge chilling effect" on interest in working away from the office.

William Mularie, chief executive officer of the Telework Consortium of Herndon, Va., said in order to prepare for successful telework during crises, agencies should test to ensure employees have proper equipment at home and a high-speed Internet connection.

"No serious telework effort can succeed without addressing the issue of home-based broadband access for employees," Mularie said. "Many of our local urban, suburban and rural areas are 'Third World' in terms of continued reliance on dial-up Internet access."

Joslyn Reed, a representative of the Telecommunications Industry Association and assistant vice president of regulatory affairs at Hughes Network Systems, a provider of broadband satellite networks, said employees should be reimbursed for home Internet costs.

General Services Administration telework guidelines released earlier this year say agencies legally can pay for the installation of communication services, such as Internet and fax lines, in private residences, and cover monthly charges, as long as employees have been approved to work from home.

Danette Campbell, senior adviser for telework at the Patent and Trademark Office, said about 320 patent examiners have given up their offices to work from home on a regular basis and, at the current rate, 3,000 examiners will be working from home by 2011. To date, 310 patent supervisors at PTO have received training for managing employees working from remote locations, Campbell said.

The PTO telework program is one of the most aggressive in the federal government and is intended to save the agency space as it prepares to hire about 3,000 new examiners over the next six years, and to help retention of employees.

The Patent Office Professional Association has stated that the program's requirement that examiners give up their offices may have made employees hesitant to participate.

As of March, 225 PTO employees had signed up. The goal for 2006 was to move 500 employees into the program by September, putting 40 at a time through a two-week training course.