Telework will be a main topic of a second major hearing on OPM during this Congress in the House Oversight and Accountability Committee. Image: Vera Petrunina/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffA Senate committee has approved a telework-related bill—marking the first action on that issue in that chamber following several committee and floor votes in the House—while setting aside for now a second; meanwhile the issue is likely to arise at a House hearing scheduled for May 22.
The bill approved by the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, S-3015, would require more detailed reporting by OPM on offsite work by agency, require more training of both employees and managers on rules of offsite working, and would require annual reviews of employee telework agreements, to determine whether to renew them, taking into account factors such as whether the duties have changed, the employee’s performance and the needs of the agency.
However, the committee set aside a separate bill on its agenda, S-4043, to require OPM to set new requirements for agencies to track and report on their telework practices, including the impacts on customer service, backlogs and wait times, cost to operations, space utilization, recruitment and retention, and more.
The bill was delayed pending discussions on a Republican amendment that Democrats opposed, to require detailed regular scrutiny of offsite workers’ performance. Similar language to require more monitoring of offsite workers is in another bill pending before the committee, S-4266, which further would require federal employees work onsite at least 60 percent of the time.
Telework meanwhile likely will be a main topic of the second major hearing on OPM during this Congress in the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, which said that in the hearing announcement that in the prior hearing last year, then-director Kiran Ahuja “could not answer basic questions about the percentage of the federal workforce teleworking or working remotely.”
OPM “has failed to improve confidence that civil servants are accountable to the American people,” chairman Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., said in the announcement, and “has a poor track record of accomplishing core tasks and performing oversight over agency resource practices. OPM’s top goal is to position the federal government as a model employer, but under the Biden Administration, this has meant meeting the political demands of federal workers and federal employee unions instead of holding civil servants accountable.”
The chief OPM witness is to be acting director Rob Shriver, who has been temporarily promoted from deputy director following Ahuja’s recent resignation.
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