United States General Services Administration

Interagency Telework Issues Working Group Subcommittee DRAFT Reports

United States Office of Personnel Management

This document contains the reports and recommendations made by the HRM subcommittee of the Interagency Telework Issues Working Group. This subcommittee was charged with addressing all of the HR-related problems and barriers to telework that were solicited from and submitted by Federalwide government telework coordinators.

As requested by the full Interagency Telework Issues Working Group, the HRM subcommittee has chosen four of these reports to feature in the executive summary. These reports focus on the following issues, which the group felt were the most likely in need of clarification at a government-wide level, and so re present ongoing barriers to the expansion of telework in the federal government:

• Duty location
• Work schedules
• Emergency dismissal/closure
• Dependent care

Each report addresses the current state of the issue, identifies problems and barriers that must be overcome, takes account of existing flexibilities adopted by some agencies, and makes recommendations for future action.

In the course of researching telework-related issues, however, it has become increasingly clear to the HRM subcommittee that many of the identified barriers and problems are related to gaps in communication, rather than to the content of any particular guidance, policy or piece of legislation. Many of the issues originally identified by federal agencies are perceived rather than actual, in that the solutions already exist but are either misunderstood or are poorly disseminated. Of the four pressing issues identified above, for instance, two - work schedules and dependent care - are excellent examples of this kind of information gap.

It is the subcommittee's opinion, therefore, that the most important product of this entire effort was the recommendation to establish a governmentwide telework information website, which was undertaken and accomplished by the General Services Administration (GSA) and the Office Personnel Management (OPM). The new website (www.telework.gov) has been designed to provide one-stop guidance and information on federal telework policies. The website establishes a single location for OPM and GSA to provide access to guidance issued by both agencies and other information on initiatives and activities. Both OPM and GSA have reviewed the information on both the GSA and OPM telework websites to ensure there is no contradictory information and where there was it has been corrected. In addition, the HRM workgroup recommended that a detail person take the "Q & As" from the various subcommittee reports and format them into "Q & As" for the governmentwide telework site. This is being accomplished through the detail of Susan Brown from the Department of Agriculture to OPM.

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