It’s unclear if the WH even knows how much telework is taking place, said Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas. Image: Stasonych/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffThe House committee that oversees the federal workplace has scheduled one of its few hearings of the year focusing on telework in the federal government, policies and impact on productivity.
“The Biden administration has allowed federal agencies to continue levels of telework that are significantly higher than they were before the pandemic without providing any data about the impact,” said Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, in announcing a hearing for this week in his federal workforce subcommittee of the Oversight and Accountability Committee.
“It’s also unclear if the Biden administration has a handle on how much telework is even taking place – earlier this year, the OPM director could not tell us, which raises concerns,” he said.
That was a reference to a March hearing on OPM where Republicans peppered director Kiran Ahuja with questions about the state of teleworking and its impact on agency operations. She said that higher levels of telework have improved productivity although she did not offer the kind of direct evidence that the questioners were seeking.
Afterward, GOP leaders of the committee sent letters to the 25 largest agencies asking about their telework policies. “To date, four agencies have yet to respond at all, while the others failed to provide comprehensive information and materials,” Sessions said.
A follow-up round of letters has been sent, plus one to the White House asking about a statement that chief of staff Jeff Zients made in an email to agencies urging them to “aggressively execute” a shift to more onsite work this month and next. In that message Zients said that “We are returning to in-person work because it is critical to the well-being of our teams and will enable us to deliver better results for the American people.” Committee GOP leaders suggested that may have been an inadvertent admission that the administration knows that productivity is down.
Several surveys of federal employees conducted by unions, plus one of SSA customer service reps recently conducted by that agency’s inspector general, have produced findings that productivity is just as good, if not better, in a high-telework environment.
“Hearing from federal workers about their own work product is not enough – we need an objective measurement to determine what impact telework has on the ability of agencies to get their missions done,” Sessions said.
Scheduled witnesses include officials from DHS, NASA, NRC and NSF. That notably excludes federal employee unions, which say that decreases in telework could violate contract provisions—potentially triggering unfair labor practice complaints and intervention by the FLRA, which could order that agencies honor those provisions.
House Republicans already have twice passed—once as a separate bill and once as an add-on to a spending bill—language to require agencies to revert to pre-pandemic telework practices and increase it only if they can make a business case that it improves their operations.
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