OPM has not taken adequate steps to establish a completion date by which agencies will produce reliable telework data from employee time and attendance tracking systems, GAO has said.
Based on OPM’s 2012 telework report, challenges such as management resistance and technology limitations remain as barriers to wider adoption of telework.
Small agencies in particular express concerns in regard to telworking employees who do not have backup in the workplace and about the limited funding available for IT to support telework, according to GAO-13-298R.
It called on OPM to provide goal setting assistance – in preparation for the 2014 telework report – for agencies not yet able to report telework goals, including agencies which intend to establish non-participation goals but are not yet able to report on these goals.
OPM should also request in its data call that agencies specify when they expect to be able to report their goals, including timetables for complete reporting and the status of action steps and milestones they established to gauge progress, GAO said.
It recommended that OPM include in its 2014 report to Congress the amount of cost savings resulting from the impacts of telework each agency may have identified, and the method the agency used to assess or verify the savings, as well as to improve the reliability of data collection by working with the Chief Human Capital Officers Council.
