Federal officials shut the government down
as
Hurricane Sandy crashed ashore late last month, but
NOAA employee Holly Bamford remained
hard at work.
While heavy rain and wind lashed her
Silver Spring office, the
National
Ocean Service manager oversaw a massive real-time operation to monitor
storm damage in coastal waterways — from debris in the Port of New York
to shifting beaches on the Delmarva Peninsula — from the comfort and
safety of her Montgomery County home.
The government's efforts to promote telecommuting — intended to trim
costs, ease traffic congestion and improve worker satisfaction — are
also boosting productivity during major storms.
"People assume when the government is closed, nothing is happening," said Bamford,
the
deputy assistant administrator of the National Ocean Service. "My
experience has been when the government is closed all my meetings still
take place."
About one-third of the region's federal employees continued to work
after the government shuttered offices for two days in response to
Sandy, according to an Office of Personnel Management estimate.
Out of 2.2 million federal workers nationwide, nearly 685,000 are
eligible to work from home — at least occasionally, according to an OPM
study released in June. Of those eligible, 168,558 reported
telecommuting at some point in September 2011. That's up from about
114,000 in 2010.
Congress has asked departments to drive those numbers up. A 2010 law sponsored by
Rep. John Sarbanes
requires agencies to offer telework training to eligible federal
employees and develop government-wide policies for working off-site.
An earlier storm that closed federal offices — the 2010
"Snowmageddon"— helped solidify support for the measure. It faced
opposition from
House Republicans
who cited the cost of training employees and upgrading technology. The
nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the law will cost
taxpayers $30 million over five years.
"Telework was an important tool to help mitigate the disruption caused by Hurricane Sandy," said Sarbanes, a
Baltimore County
Democrat. "A robust telework program will not only improve disaster
planning for the government, it will reduce traffic congestion in the …
region and improve quality of life and work satisfaction for valued
employees."
OPM officials say concerns within some agencies
about
the potential for lost productivity and outdated technology have
stymied the spread of telecommuting. Advocates hope the work that
continued during Sandy, Snowmageddon and other storms will convince
skeptics that more employees can work efficiently from home in good
weather, too.
"Industry calls telework 'work,'" said Cindy Auten, general manager
of Telework Exchange, an advocacy group funded by public and private
organizations, including technology companies. "We have to build
telework as a standard operating procedure."
With long-range forecasts predicting a particularly snowy winter in
the region, federal agencies may have more opportunities to test their
telework plans.
As a general rule, only employees who have previously agreed to
unscheduled telework or those who happened to be scheduled to work from
home on the day of a storm are required to telework when federal offices
close, according to an email from OPM on Oct. 28, the day before Sandy
made landfall.
But policies and participation vary by agency.
Only 21 percent of eligible
Environmental Protection Agency
employees worked remotely at some point in September of 2011, according
to the OPM study. By contrast, nearly 90 percent of eligible employees
at the Virginia-based Patent and Trademark Office have worked from home.
Like most federal employees, Bamford gets word of closings from the
OPM website and internal agency emails. National Ocean Service workers
use phone and video teleconferencing to conduct meetings as well as
document-sharing software when they're not in the office, she said.
Bamford spent about a day and a half at home during Sandy.
Bamford said she is often more efficient at home because she has time to digest meetings and is distracted less often. But
she
said the impromptu conversations that take place in her office or even
the elevator help to improve communication and collaboration.
Rob Gutro, deputy news chief and meteorologist at
NASA's
Goddard Space Flight Center, regularly works from home in good weather
as well as when storms close the Greenbelt-based agency. One of Gutro's
responsibilities is to update NASA's hurricane webpage, which provides
the public with some of the same satellite imagery the
National Hurricane Center uses in its forecasting.
Gutro, who lives in Bowie, said a big advantage of telework is
avoiding the stress of the often ugly Washington-area morning commute.
Another plus is that he is removed from typical office distractions,
like the audible meetings that take place in a nearby conference room.
"In the office there's a lot of distraction," he said. "If you work in a cube farm you've got a lot of noise."
