Snowmageddon without the snow
DC power outage leaves teleworkers flying the COOP.
Last week’s power outages put telework to the COOP test for the first time since Snowmageddon.
The outages affected work at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), the ATF, GSA and others. The federal buildings are located within about half a mile of each other.
NextGov reports about 50 emergency personnel at FERC worked from home or an alternate site on Wednesday. An agency spokeswoman said “some” of the more than 1,100 nonemergency employees also teleworked, but it isn’t clear yet how many weren’t able to make that happen and will take administrative leave instead.
ATF estimated a “couple of hundred” employees were telecommuting Wednesday, but wouldn’t know for sure how many until the building re-opened. A spokesman told NextGov some employees had to go into the office in the morning to pick up laptops and other devices that would allow them to telework. (Remember this point, as it’s sure to come up again in the future.)
When the power was restored, then failed again, by Thursday morning GSA closed offices for a second day and asked employees to telework or use alternate work spaces.
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