Telework is reaching a tipping point in Federal agencies, a fact that came to light during three in-depth panel discussions at the Spring 2009 Telework Exchange Town Hall Meeting.

Panelists – who ranged from agency Chief Information Officers (CIOs) to human capital managers to private sector security specialists – discussed the successes seen with telework, the ongoing challenges, and what still needs to be done to realize a greater return on investments in telework initiatives. Following are highlights of the day's conversations.

Making Progress Telework success stories are becoming more prevalent within different agencies and at all levels of government. That fact was dramatically illustrated during the session on "Telework Dividends—Getting Behind the Numbers," when telework leaders from Loudoun County, Va., the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) offered specifics on their telework programs, along with key benefits, lessons learned, and future goals.

Gene Troxell, government director of IT for Loudoun County, kicked off the presentation by noting that, though the county established a telework policy in 1996, the work arrangement did not really take off until 2006.That is when the county administrator re-emphasized the work arrangement and hired a telework coordinator. In calendar year 2007, while the workforce overall turnover rate was thirteen percent, teleworkers boasted an impressive three percent turnover rate.

Today, 440 workers – or 20 percent – of the Loudoun County workforce (excluding public safety officials), are teleworking. While the workforce overall turnover rate is thirteen percent, teleworkers boast an impressive three percent turnover rate.

The biggest challenge to implementing telework within a local government is the diversity involved, Troxell stated. "We have 28 departments in Loudoun County," he explained. "They all have a different mission, culture, types of employees, and interests. You compare the Department of Fire and Rescue with Library Services—they are totally different business operations."

Troxell and his team have to deal with other factors, including:

• 45 percent of Loudoun County employees live outside of the county and 21 percent live outside of Virginia
• County departments use information systems based on a range of technologies, from mainframe to client/server to Web browsers
• Teleworkers access the county network using a number of connection types, such as cable, DSL, and satellite

Troxell stated that his technology team has been able to overcome all those hurdles to create a solution that has enabled teleworkers to work "on cruise control."

The key to success, however, has more to do with user training than technology, he stated, noting that new teleworkers are required to have a one-on-one, in-person training session with a Loudoun County IT staffer. "Teleworkers must know how to use Virtual Private Network (VPN) connections and how to launch applications before they are allowed to take a laptop home," he said. "The IT department does not make service calls to employees' homes."

Dr. Jack Jones, CIO and acting CIT director for NIH, pointed out that his organization, which kicked off its telework program in 2001, has 3,300 regular teleworkers. However, the agency has the capacity to handle as many as 10,000 remote workers. "I would suggest that if you're thinking about this purely in terms of telework to think instead about mobility," Jones said.

He explained that 9,000 NIH employees carry smartphones and another 11,000 occasionally work wherever they happen to be. That causes various issues for the IT department, including dealing with devices and systems they cannot control, such as home networks and Internet cafes, and identifying funding to provide support to remote workers. "Everybody wants it and everybody is sure that somebody else should pay for it," he said.

Thomas Boyce, deputy CIO of the NRC, discussed how telework is just one part of the work-life initiative under implementation at his agency. The NRC currently is conducting a pilot project looking at the feasibility of extending the end of the workday from 5:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m., for example. The arrangement, Boyce explained, would give employees "a window in the middle of the day where you're off taking care of those family duties, such as soccer practice or whatever, and then you either come back to the office afterwards or telework from home."

Currently, the NRC has 440 official teleworkers, though many others use the work arrangement on a periodic basis. Those that spend a lot of time on the road are provided a laptop and an air card for secure connectivity to NRC's network. "We don't want users plugging into the wireless network at the coffeehouse," he explained. "We want them accessing our resources over a secure backbone as much as possible."

Boyce admitted that NRC is facing a number of challenges in trying to increase its telework adoption. One issue is formally funding telework and the necessary infrastructure, though he believes a solution is to tie telework to continuity of operations and disaster recovery programs. Another hurdle that NRC faces, like many other agencies, is that some employees simply are ineligible for remote work due to the classified nature of their jobs. "While we examined ways for them to work at home, we have not yet found an easy answer for security reasons," he explained.

Finally, Rod Turk, director of the IT Security Management Group and Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) for the USPTO, spoke about the "staggering" benefits teleworking has provided his agency.

USPTO has one of the most successful telework programs in the Federal government, with more than 80 percent of its 5,740 eligible employees now teleworking on a regular basis. Nearly 1,500 patent and trademark examiners work remotely four days a week.

Benefits that USPTO has experienced thus far include:

• The ability to increase the workforce without increasing real estate costs
• Cost savings to date of about $11 million
• The ability to provide workforce training using the telework system
• A 10 percent improvement in workforce productivity

Turk added that USPTO succeeded because the program was rolled out using a carefully planned and structured approach. "We treated this as a project, with local goals to begin with, and we charted a course based on those goals and requirements to a logical conclusion," he explained. Mr. Turk remarked that by following recognized project management guidelines, the USPTO team even included training and metrics to determine if the program was successful.

Despite the success of the telework program, Turk said, "We're not stopping. And as we continue to grow, we're going to continue to use that project-based paradigm and continue to size up our systems and make those systems available to the new people coming on to telework for USPTO."

Meeting Tough Challenges When former General Services Administrator Lurita Doan challenged her staff to get 40 percent of eligible GSA employees teleworking by the end of 2009 and 50 percent by the end of 2010, no one knew whether her mandate was going to be simply difficult or downright impossible. Amazingly, the agency already is well ahead of schedule. Officials recently reported to the United States Office of Personnel Management (OPM) that the agency now has 43 percent of eligible employees teleworking.

Key members of the team responsible for meeting and exceeding Doan's challenge discussed their remarkable success during the Town Hall Meeting's second session, "Establishing a Balanced Telework Portfolio." On hand were Casey Coleman, CIO; Wade Hannum, director of performance and the Worklife Policy Division; and Steve McPeek, director of human capital management.

Steve McPeek noted that the telework challenge was particularly daunting because at the time the directive was issued, only eleven percent of the agency was teleworking. Getting from 11 to 50 percent required a three-pronged approach that addressed organizational culture, employee training, and technical requirements.

Mr. McPeek shared six key reasons why GSA is well on its way to its final goal:

• Received top leadership commitment. Administrator Doan conducted town hall meetings with GSA employees and appointed a telework champion to travel to field offices, listen to employee and manager concerns, and communicate the program's vision.


• Conducted a position eligibility review. GSA looked at every position within the agency and started with the premise that every employee was eligible to telework on a regular basis, except for those in wage-grade positions and those positions that by nature of their work had to be on site.


• Updated the 12-year old GSA telework policy. "It's not an employee right to telework but it is very heavily supported in our policy," McPeek explained.


• Worked together. The Chief Human Capital Office and the Office of the CIO partnered on every aspect of the Telework Challenge, even collaborating on a more simplified telework policy. That policy now has just two attachments: a two-page telework agreement (cut down from seven pages) and a technology plan that is completed by each teleworker.


• Advertised. GSA added language in job vacancy announcements to indicate whether or not the positions are telework-eligible


• Tracked telework participation monthly. "We posted the telework adoption statistics on the agency intranet site for everyone to see. Leaders in one organization were able to see how they were doing compared to all the other GSA organizations," McPeek explained. "That certainly provided motivation throughout our organization."

Coleman noted that in implementing the Telework Challenge, her team tried to balance three competing interests: cost, security, and employee productivity. "Those three do not always go together," she admitted. "If you emphasize information security you can put security protocols in place such that employee productivity can be hampered or it can be prohibitively costly."

GSA at the time did not – and still does not – have a separate IT budget for telework. However, because in 2007 the agency had consolidated all of its common infrastructure into one program and brought all of its networks, desktop and laptop computers, cell phones, wire services, and Blackberries under the CIO's management, it "gave us the ability to really create a modern standardized platform," Coleman added. "It was secure and allowed us to support this challenge to have more of our employees working remotely."

GSA teleworkers are required to use a government-furnished laptop, which significantly enhances program security, Coleman said. In addition, teleworkers must complete a telework IT plan. "We go through that with them to train them on how to use the tools and the technology, what to be aware of, what not to do," said Coleman. "We view that training and those ongoing reminders and periodic policy refresh as another key to security." Overall, GSA uses a defense-in-depth approach to security, which calls for all communications to the laptop to be encrypted and for the installation of tracking software on each laptop. Coleman noted that GSA also is moving forward with other security tools, including full encryption of the laptop and two-factor authentication in accordance with Homeland Security Presidential Directive-12 (HSPD-12).

GSA also tries to foster openness wherever possible as a way to encourage employee productivity, Coleman stated. For this reason, GSA allows employees to use social media tools like Facebook and Twitter. "We find that these collaboration technologies allow people to connect virtually and build camaraderie, organizational culture, and a sense of team when employees are not co-located in the office," Coleman said.

Hannum spoke about the cultural changes brought about by increased telework and how GSA has dealt with management resistance. The key, he stated, was training. GSA took the basic OPM online course on telework and modified it to focus on GSA policies, procedures, processes, and definitions. Today, GSA offers two courses: one designed for teleworkers and the other for their supervisors.

When the new 13-page GSA Telework Policy was drafted, agency officials received more than 400 comments, Hannum recalled. "There were a lot of concerns and questions that could not be handled in the policy, so we used the training to help answer questions for supervisors and employees alike."

A key strategy that helps overcome cultural obstacles is to have the teleworkers bring their performance plans, Hannum said. He explained the reasoning. "We take a look at the performance plan and we say, ‘This performance plan is the expectation of the work that you do inside your office, is that correct?' And they usually say, ‘Yes.' Then we say, ‘What's the difference if you are teleworking?' And what's the answer? ‘No difference.' We now are no longer talking about teleworking. We're now talking about: How do we perform as an organization in a mobile environment?"

Hannum explained that GSA does not really have a secret to success beyond lots of hard work and a willingness to ask questions and find solutions. "There is no reason that the model cannot be duplicated and replicated in other agencies if the leadership wants it to happen," he said.

Security and the People Problem
The biggest challenge in implementing effective security is not technology but people and policy, according to panelists in the Town Hall Meeting's third session, "Secure, Mission-Critical Telework Programs." Captain Ken Barrett, program manager for the Task Force Work Life Initiative for the United States Navy, moderated the panel and asked the speakers to share real-world answers to common questions confronting telework officials.

"I work in technology but I guarantee when I go out and consult on this issue, what I find in many cases is that the problems are not technological, they are cultural," stated John McCumber, strategic manager, Public Sector Group at Symantec Corporation.

Culture, in fact, plays a role in how security policies are devised, and according to McCumber, that can cause real security problems. Many Federal agencies still try to protect data by thinking they can put a wall around it. "While the government was busy trying to come up with an appropriate way to control the perimeter, the perimeter went away," he explained. "So now the question is: How do we protect and manage information as it is transmitted, processed, and stored all over the place? I think that's our technology challenge. How we address that in the coming years is going to be critical, but how we culturally adapt to it will be even more important."

Ron Simmons, director of Knowledge Management Integration at the United States Marine Corps, suggested that an important way to overcome cultural resistance to telework is to build support from the ground up, something he has done, first at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and more recently with the U.S. Marine Corps.

"I know organizations that have spent years trying to convince middle and upper management about the importance of telework or the concept of virtual work, and it is primarily a philosophical debate. When you have employees building solutions, I have yet to find a manager that did not pound on his chest saying: ‘Look how I inspired my people to be creative,'" he explained.

In fact, when he was at the FAA, Simmons tested just how strongly employees felt about telework by turning off the technology that enabled it. "If you have people who have figured out their own solutions and are proud of them, and they've got ownership of their ways of working, they are going to be mad at you real fast if you try to take them away," he said. "We found that out."

Another trick is to use peer pressure. At the U.S. Marine Corps, Simmons built a virtual work environment and had to hold back the supervising general from ordering his eight divisions to adopt the new solution. Simmons advised that it would be a more successful program in the end if it was pushed forward from the bottom up. Within 30 days, three of eight divisions were working virtually and within 60 days all eight were using the system. "When three are doing it, the other five start seeing it and saying, ‘Wow, maybe we ought to start doing that too,'" he said. "Those eight divisions are still working today and they were never given a direct order."

McCumber noted that many cultural and technological problems can be solved by implementing metrics, a task that many managers are often reticent to undertake.

"Where I've seen problems implementing the technology, I can almost always march back and find managers who are either incapable or unwilling to measure," he said, noting that metrics are equally important to security. "When people say secure, what they really mean is, they want it managed, and the only way I can control and show somebody how effective (security) processes are is if I can measure them and I can show them the reduction of risk."