An amendment to the "must-pass" DoD authorization bill would limit offsite work by federal employees to no more than four days in any biweekly period. Image: Karen Focht/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock
By: FEDweek StaffA proposal to put into law a ban against a future excepted service Schedule F has been proposed as an amendment the annual defense authorization bill now ready for a full Senate vote, in what may be the last good chance for enactment of such a ban in this Congress.
The amendment would limit the excepted service to the current categories, in effect barring a repeat of a future executive order similar to the one issued—but not carried out—late in the Trump administration. That would have shifted 50,000 or more competitive service federal employees involved with making or carrying out policy into that new category, where they would lose most career protections and in which positions could be filled without competition.
A similar amendment has been offered to the House version of the general government appropriations bill up for floor voting as soon as next week. However, while that proposal appears to have some Republican support there, it first would have to be made in order by the House Rules Committee, controlled by conservative Republicans.
The proposed amendments would go a step beyond rules recently finalized by OPM to do the same, which could in turn be overridden by administrative action in a future administration.
Also being offered to the DoD authorization—one of the few “must-pass” annual bills—is an amendment to limit offsite work by federal employees to no more than four days in any biweekly period. Agencies could limit telework still further—apparently without regard to any union contract provisions—by citing factors such as “the frequency with which the employee needs to access classified information”; they could allow more in circumstances including where employees travel frequently or have “highly specialized expertise.”
Agencies further would have to report on how they measure the impact of telework on productivity as well as on any negative impact it has.
That bipartisan amendment is the latest of a series of proposals pending in Congress to either limit telework—including one in a House-passed appropriations bill banning it outright at DoD—or to at least require fuller reporting on it, with an eye to cutting it back and/or compelling agencies to give up under-used workspace.
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