Mike Causey

Teleworking and Personal Security

Are some federal agencies backtracking on promises to get more workers teleworking, or are the number of teleworking opportunities growing? The answer to both, ...

Federal News Network Staff

June 11, 2008 4:00 am

3 min read

Is Uncle Sam backtracking on pledges to push teleworking, or are individual agencies simply reengineering their programs? The answer:

Probably yes.

One the downside, some feds report that often at the “whim” of a new boss, or an old-fashioned supervisor, people who could telework aren’t being given the chance and those who were doing it are being recalled to their offices.

As oft-happens in Washington, both camps have the stats to back their case.

On the plus side, figures from nearly every agency show the number of employees teleworking and identified as possible candidates is on the rise.

Last week, Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) queried the General Services Administration and Office of Personnel Management on their teleworking policies. Wolf, probably the leading congressional proponent of telecommuting programs, said he had complaints from constitutents that both agencies had reduced teleworking opportunities. GSA responded immediately. You can see that response and column by clicking here.

Now it’s OPM’s turn to respond. In a June 9 letter to Wolf, Director Linda M. Springer said her agency continues to be a staunch backer of governmentwide teleworking.

As to the constitutent complaints Wolf got, Springer said that last year OPM suspended the telework program “on a limited basis” for a review to determine that PII (personally identifiable information) was secure. The idea, OPM says, was that programs required “intensive hands on technology training.” OPM said that approximately 342 employees were involved in the telework suspension, a fact we reported here last week.

Bottom line: OPM says about half those employees were notified June 9 that their teleworking assignments are back on track.

The questions raised by Wolf and the responses from GSA and OPM illustrate that in many agencies teleworking is a lot more complex than letting Sally or Joe work from their home computer. There are various security issues that need to be considered. Some Army employees told us last week that new measures being taken at work will make it difficult if not impossible for them to work from home. And there are some jobs, many of them supervisory, where it may never be possible to work from home except on an emergency basis.

In some places it is possible nobody will ever be able to telework. In others just about everybody might be able to do it. A Health and Human Services employee has this good news about teleworking: “All Feds with the HHS Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) in Rockville, Md., have laptops with which we they can work from home, through our VPN, exactly as if we are all working in the Eisenberg Building, AHRQ’s headquarters.”

On the Lighter Side of Teleworking…

Stanley Feuer (hereafter known as “Stan the Man”) says computer security is tough all over:

Telecommuting has some security/encryption issues. Even on station I have passwords, access codes and verify codes on the computer. Heck, at home I went on a Disney website and even it required me to compose a password. I used MickeyMinnieGoofyPlutoHueyDeweyLouieDonaldDuck which seemed like a very long password, but the requirements were that the password had to be a minimum of 8 characters.

Well, they did say characters.

Nearly Useless Factoid

According to Mahalo (“the world’s first human-powered search engine”), the chip name Doritos means “small pieces of gold.”

To reach me: mcausey@federalnewsradio.com