09/24/09 02:52 pm ET
Wired Workplace has been trying to follow the Twitter updates from Thursday's Telework Exchange town hall meeting, at which Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry and U.S. Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra were scheduled to speak, but surprisingly, there haven't been many tweets. Luckily, Alyssa Rosenberg at Government Executive and Ed O'Keefe at The Washington Post have some details from the meeting.
Berry asked attendees to send him their ideas on how to gain acceptance of teleworking among federal managers, Congress and the public, noting that if those groups "think that teleworking is a day off, then we're dead." Berry also urged eligible federal employees to telework at least once a week, the Post reports.
Meanwhile, Chopra urged federal managers to not let the conversation end at "we have security concerns," and to begin searching for a solution to those problems. "We are hungry to bring the private sector's best practices into our operations, to as much as possible remove the barriers," he said. "There are a wide range of technologies both existing and emerging that would help to move the ball forward in many of these circumstances."
It looks to me like telework faces some of the same challenges that Government 2.0 efforts face in the federal workplace, and the problems do not appear to stem from a lack of technology, but rather a need to radically change the culture within federal agencies. What barriers exist at your agency, and what can be done to overcome them? How can the government sell the concept of telework to skeptical federal managers, Congress and the public, who might view the strategy as simply a "day off?"
COMMENTS
An experienced manager should realize that he/she manages work, not people!
Germaine T. Savoy 09/30/09 10:45 am ET
Many federal workers would like to telework, and would be very productive doing so. Employees do not see telework as a day off at all - to the contrary, most see it as a day to be much more productive, and free from office interruptions. Many also see it as being appropriately responsive to environmental issues as well. The mandate for telework needs to come from senior executives in the federal agencies. Currently, employees must make a request to telework, and that request is usually denied. There is in fact little perception among employees that telework is truly desired by management in the federal government. The first thing that has to change is that workers who request the option of telework should be approved to do so, and senior management needs to insist that line level managers support this..... and be able to provide evidence that their staff are taking advantage of it. On the matter of so few tweets on the subject is that many federal agencies are blocked from tiwtter and other internet sites on work computers, so they can't tweet during the day.
lorraine doo 09/25/09 08:19 am ET