The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform (Committee) has published a report on telework with recommendations for the incoming Trump administration.
The report goes into extensive detail, outlining how the state of telework in the federal government has evolved from prior to the pandemic to today, ultimately laying out its case for why it makes the concluding recommendations that it does.
It paints a picture of a system that has little oversight, has been subject to abuse, and one in which agencies don’t really know how many federal employees are teleworking or what impact it has on the agencies’ missions and performance.
The report says that the Committee has tried for the past few years to get pertinent information in investigating telework but couldn’t. For instance, it notes that in 2023, the Committee sent letters to 24 agencies seeking information about their telework programs. It describes the ensuing situation as follows:
Certain omissions in agency responses, coupled with [OPM] Director Ahuja and Acting [OPM] Director Shriver’s inability to testify to the level of telework in the federal government, suggest federal agencies are failing to track basic data about their telework programs. For example, when asked about their D.C.-based employees, only about half of the agencies answered how many employees engage in telework; only about half disclosed the average number of days per week telework-eligible employees engage in telework; and fewer than half answered how many telework agreements were in place with the agency. …agencies were either unable or unwilling to answer basic questions about their telework policies and practices, indicating that the agencies did not have an understanding of how telework affects their ability to deliver on their missions for the American people.
The report also notes that there are many federal office buildings that are largely vacant or underutilized which is needlessly costing taxpayers money. “American taxpayers are wasting billions to pay for owned and leased federal office space that remain largely vacant,” states the report.
Committee Chairman Congressman James Comer (R-KY) told the Daily Mail in an interview that he has been frustrated by his office’s inability to get agency employees on the phone to do work for his constituents.
He said, “There’s a record backlog of initial disability claims. There’s long wait times for the field offices and it’s impossible to get Social Security Administration employees on the phone. And we believe this is because there’s too much teleworking going on.”
Consequently, the report makes several recommendations for the incoming Trump administration. Comer told the Daily Mail that the suggestions are for a new “business model” for telework in the government and that he expects the recommendations to be presented to the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) which is looking at ways to cuts costs and reduce regulations.
This concluding statement in the report captures the essence of why the Committee felt the need to provide the report and offer the recommendations:
The Biden-Harris Administration was largely unresponsive to Committee information
requests about the degree of telework and remote work they’ve employed, and any evidence concerning the impact of these stay-at-home policies. But based on the limited data it provided—as well as information gleaned from OPM’s annual, statutorily-required reports on federal telework—it can be concluded that the rampant use of telework is likely underreported, even the reported levels are excessive, there is little evidence that it is enhancing productivity or addressing recruitment and retention gaps, and there is evidence it is harming agency missions and citizen-facing services.The telework data reported by federal agencies is overwhelmingly reported via manual
means, based on employee self-reporting, or the assumption that individual employee telework agreements are being followed to the letter. Managers have few incentives to ensure compliance, since its notoriously difficult to discipline federal workers, including those who violate telework agreements (or shirk their duties while “working” from home).
One of the recommendations suggests reverting telework back to pre-COVID levels and only expanding it at agencies that can “make a convincing, measurable case for doing” so. That appears to be the central theme of the report, namely that telework is fine if it works, but all the evidence obtained by the Committee led them to conclude that the rapid expansion of telework during and after the pandemic has lacked the planning and oversight necessary for it to be successful in its current state.
The list of recommendations from the report are included below.
Recommendations from House Oversight Committee Telework Report
Administrative
- Base telework and remote work policies on achievement of mission outcomes, not employee preferences or union demands.
- Establish automated systems for tracking the use of telework and remote work, and create clear, measurable metrics to evaluate its costs and benefits.
- Impose more frequent and timely reporting requirements on agency-level telework, to better inform Executive Branch leaders, Congress and the public.
- Use the White House and central management agencies to implement an enterprise-wide approach to telework and remote work that prioritizes the public interest. Do not permit a telework bidding war among agencies looking to attract federal workers that transfer between them based on which will let them stay home the most.
- Align the federal property footprint with the government’s office space needs. Dispose of unneeded property and terminate unnecessary leases, while optimizing use of the space that remains.
Legislative
- Introduce and enact a new version of the SHOW Up Act, restoring agency telework to no more than pre-pandemic levels. Only permit higher levels at agencies that make a convincing, measurable case for doing.
- Consider legislation disallowing collective bargaining over federal employee telework.
- Consider legislation that would open to renegotiation at the start of each new Presidential term all existing collective bargaining agreements with federal employees.
- Consider legislation to pay all remote federal employees at the Rest of United States locality pay rate, to encourage a broader geographic dispersion of the federal workforce, and to reduce its cost to taxpayers.
Some of the suggested legislation has already been introduced in the new session of Congress, such as the SHOW UP Act and the Federal Employee Return to Work Act, legislation that would set locality pay for teleworking federal employees at the Rest of U.S. rate.