Use of telework in Katrina aftermath limited

Several agencies with offices in New Orleans were unable to use telework to continue their operations after Hurricane Katrina forced employees to flee the region.

Some have incorporated the alternate work arrangement into emergency plans, but a lack of coordination, the destruction of homes, the temporary shutdown of e-mail and Internet service and general chaos in Katrina's aftermath in some cases combined to prevent the swift return to work envisioned by many telework advocates.

William Mularie, chief executive officer of the federally sponsored Telework Consortium, a Herndon, Va.-based nonprofit that works to popularize the arrangement, said he suspected that agencies were unable to use telework because their continuity of operations plans were based on "snowstorm" contingencies.

"What does your continuity of operations plan look like after 30 days?" Mularie asked. "I don't think there is a federal continuity of operations plan that looks for that. We're talking three months [since Hurricane Katrina], and yet the infrastructure is not there."

Some federal agency offices in New Orleans remain closed, including five Social Security Administration offices.

"Business as usual, no matter what," should be the model by which all federal agencies should operate, Mularie added.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reopened its New Orleans office a few blocks from its old site Tuesday. Spokesman David Grinberg said there is no way to track how effective telework was in keeping the agency's employees productive.

"We did not have a formal telework program in place in the time that the New Orleans office was inoperable," Grinberg said. "It was an emergency situation. Lives were ruined. People's safety was in jeopardy. There wasn't any time or means to establish a formal telework program."

Grinberg said that in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, employees were mainly trying to get their lives back together and "those who were able to get on a computer somewhere did so."

Most of the tasks that needed to get done, according to Grinberg, were hands-on, such as case file work and mailing notices to employees and employers. Much of the office's work was transferred to the agency's Houston office and its national customer service center.

Rep. Frank R. Wolf, R-Va., has repeatedly reported that federal contractors conducting business in the region hit by Hurricane Katrina said they had a difficult time working with federal agencies because they were not allowed to participate in telework programs.

"[M]any of these private sector businesses are utilizing telework in order to continue operations," Wolf said earlier this month before a congressional panel. "In the wake of [Hurricane Katrina and other emergency situations], a government-wide telework program should be the cornerstone of the federal workplace to ensure that necessary telework habits are in place in the event of a similar disaster in the future."

Wesley Davis, a spokesman in the Social Security Administration's Dallas office, said telework was not used significantly during the disaster.

"We really didn't do any telework," Davis said. "Most of the work was hands-on with people looking for immediate checks and needing the face-to-face contact … It wasn't set up to do out of the home."

Other agencies reported more success in using telework to continue operations.

Agriculture Department spokesman Jim Browmlee said telework was part of the agency's disaster preparedness plans and "operations were never disrupted to a point where critical things did not get done that needed to get done."

The National Labor Relations Board's New Orleans office, which is directly across the street from the Louisiana Superdome, was closed and employees were eventually set up in hotels where they lived and work.

"We are not recovering from a train wreck," said Kathleen McKinney, a regional attorney in the NLRB office. "We are in a train wreck."

McKinney said the office was able to process September elections to determine if employees would like union representation, docket charges and hold hearings, but was not able to hold trials since the case files were inaccessible. Mail from September also has not been delivered, McKinney said.

The NLRB reopened its New Orleans office to the public on Oct. 26.

Joe Hungate, chief information officer for the Treasury Department's inspector general for tax administration, said his agency's four employees in New Orleans were able to telework during the recovery.

Rep. Danny K. Davis, D-Ill., ranking member of the House Government Reform Subcommittee on the Federal Workforce and Agency Organization, is planning to introduce legislation this spring that would require the Chief Human Capital Officer's Council to conduct and evaluate a 10-day demonstration project where employees would work from alternate locations.

The project would give agencies and Congress ideas for improving flexibility and identifying work processes that should be implemented during extended emergencies, Davis said in a recent subcommittee hearing.