The Mobile Work Exchange, a public-private partnership advocating for a wider adoption of the practice of telework, kicks off its annual telework week today, and it says over 139,000 federal employees have pledged to work from home at least one day this week.
The popularity underscores the increasing importance of the IT tools and work processes that make teleworking possible among geographically dispersed teams.
According to the MWE, the event drew 39,000 pledges in its first year, and it has support among some agencies in addition to employees. The organization noted that agencies could use the week for testing purposes. For example, FEMA pledged that 3,300 of its 5,500 full-time employees would telework during the event last year in order to test system readiness (with continuity of operations plans being a main institutional driver of wider adoption).