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By: FEDweek StaffThe top Republican on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee has pressed three departments under that committee’s purview for information on the teleworking habits of their employees, saying he is concerned that they “are not working at full capacity at their duty stations.”
Similar letters to HHS, Education and Labor from Sen. Richard Burr, N.C., represent the latest in a series of skeptical letters and remarks at hearings from members of Congress regarding telework, which remains at high levels historically speaking although well below the peak levels earlier in the pandemic.
Burr wrote that he is dissatisfied with the departments’ responses—and lack of responses–to earlier letters he sent requesting records of virtual private network log-in usage “or other means by which employees were demonstrating their responsibility to actually work during the telework phase of the COVID-19 pandemic.” In the case of HHS, he said he had received “troubling information suggesting that up to one-third of the department’s employees are not logging onto their government issued computer equipment on an average day.”
He again asked the three for information such as VPN long-in data broken out by component; “a comprehensive chart of progressive discipline actions taken once it is determined an employee is not logging in to the system”; “details regarding the utilization of cell phones or other technology designed to assist work”; and “any modifications made to the department or subagencies’ collective bargaining agreements to allow for remote work after re-entry is authorized.”
“Further, as requested in previous correspondence, I ask you provide the reentry plan for the Department nationwide and an assessment of the implementation of this plan to date,” he added in each of the three letters.
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