Does Telework Work?

• By Brittany Ballenstedt
• May 21, 2012
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Since the passage of the 2010 Telework Enhancement Act, it’s likely that your agency is implementing telework in some form or fashion. The question is, how will your agency know if that telework program is producing results?

Cindy Auten, general manager for Telework Exchange, said in an interview with Wired Workplace last week that measuring results was one of the most-discussed topics at the bi-annual Telework Town Hall meeting earlier this month. “One of the great challenges for agencies is making sure they can measure the success of their program appropriately,” Auten said.

In February, Auten noted that agencies like the Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security departments -- which were called out in a recent letter to Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry for having high numbers of positions deemed ineligible for telework -- may have a difficult time beginning to track and provide accurate data. And those agencies are not alone, she said.

Solving the challenge of measuring telework performance was the focus of a webinar on Thursday also sponsored by Telework Exchange.

Shirley LaBella, telework coordinator at the National Institutes of Health, said NIH’s telework program started as a pilot in 2001 with 51 employees teleworking two ...

The Next Big Thing in Telework

• By Brittany Ballenstedt
• May 14, 2012
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As agencies look to the next phase of telework implementation, one area dominates the conversation: BYOD, or bring your own device, strategies.

Cindy Auten, general manager at Telework Exchange, told Wired Workplace BYOD was perhaps the hottest topic at last week’s semi-annual Telework Town Hall meeting, with tech experts from agencies such as the Transportation Department and NASA weighing in on the future of mobile work and the growth of BYOD.

“The BYOD conversation was, I think, in every discussion on the technology side,” Auten said. “Across the board, it’s not a matter of if they’re doing it, it’s when they’re doing it.”

On Wednesday, I wrote about a couple of recent surveys that suggested federal agencies have more relaxed BYOD policies than their counterparts in the private sector. For example, 60 percent of federal IT professionals said there are no restrictions on the types of personal mobile devices employees can use to access their agencies’ networks.

A separate survey of the private sector, meanwhile, found just 33 percent of tech professionals said employees are able to access corporate networks using personal devices. Auten said it appears that roughly half of federal agencies are embracing ...

Pay and Hiring Freezes Leave Their Mark

• By Brittany Ballenstedt
• May 7, 2012
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The majority of federal chief information officers say pay and hiring freezes have affected their hiring plans and the morale of their IT workforce.

In a survey of 40 federal information executives by TechAmerica and Grant Thornton, 70 percent of respondents said the current two year across-the-board freeze on federal pay and hiring freezes have had an impact on their hiring plans. Pay freezes also have lowered employee morale, caused some staff to leave and are making it difficult to recruit and hire younger staff, respondents noted.

“Compounding the problem is that, as the nation recovers from the recession that started in 2008, more private sector IT jobs are opening up and competing for the IT labor force,” the report stated. “Some respondents say that federal employee bashing, sometimes by Congress, detracts from the attraction of working for Uncle Sam.”

Respondents also noted that the pay freeze has resulted in fewer incentives for employees to take on projects “outside their comfort zones,” and makes it harder to reward top performers. Budget cuts and pressure to reduce the numbers of contractors make it hard for agencies to fill the gaps left by employee attrition, respondents added.

On a list of top ...

Patent Telework Success

• By Brittany Ballenstedt
• April 30, 2012
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The Patent and Trademark Office has long been considered a model for other federal agencies when it comes to telework adoption. And, according to the latest report on the status of teleworking at PTO, it remains a telework leader: Seventy-nine percent of employees are eligible to work from home at least one day per week.

The PTO's 2011 telework status report noted that more than 6,500 employees agencywide are teleworking at least one day per week. A large number of employees are teleworking more than one day per week, with 3,464 working from home between four and five days per week and 3,114 working from home one to three days per week. Those figures mark an overall increase of 922 teleworking employees from the previous fiscal year.

Those working from home at least one day per week last year avoided driving more than 7.9 million miles, saved more than $1 million in gasoline and reduced emissions by 4,150 tons. Those teleworking four to five days per week in 2011 avoided driving more than 39.9 miles, saved more than $5.2 million on gasoline and reduced emissions by 20,957 tons, according to the ...

Telework Data and Defense

• By Amanda Palleschi
• April 23, 2012
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The abundance of new studies make it hard to argue that telework isn’t the “it” thing in workplace innovation. Federal telework policies enable savings for employees, their managers and taxpayers. About 120,000 federal workers telework regularly, and many say that number should continue to rise.

But, as with many attempts at change in government, there are obstacles: Changing culture to accept frequent telework and quantifying progress in implementing the initiatives are key among agency challenges.

On the latter point, the Government Accountability Office just released some not-so-good news: the Office of Personnel Management’s data isn’t all that reliable and could use some streamlining for easier agency-to-agency and year-to-year comparisons.

Lawmakers passed a bill in 2010 designed to make telework more prevalent in government. The legislation required OPM to assemble an interagency telework measurement group consisting of officials from several agencies all working to revise data on telework and to define key terms such as “telework,” “employee” and “eligibility,” to promote a common reporting methodology.

But then, backed by the new guidance, OPM changed the requirements in its call for data from agencies, so now it’s going to be difficult to compare 2011 telework data with ...