I recently attended a seminar on telework in Washington D.C. that focused on two areas: mobility and the current landscape of the Telework Enhancement Act of 2010. From the discussions at the event, it was clear that government agencies are moving towards a model that allows for teleworking, but implementing the industry’s vision of any device from anywhere is not on their horizon.
Government efforts to embrace the Telework Enhancement Act of 2010 are focused on the following three areas:
- The tools
- The policies
- The culture
Government is continuing to lean on the private sector for implementing the tools necessary to allow teleworking to take place. According to the latest Telework Exchange report, 65 percent of Federal agencies cite above average IT programs for enabling telework and mobility. That being said, many of the technologies are changing and current systems are in the process of being refreshed, specifically to accommodate mobility and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) trends. Yet, while keeping up with the ever-changing technology is clearly a challenge, it is not their largest challenge.
Creating policy, which is something the government excels at, (perhaps the private sector could even learn something from their public sector counterparts) is yet another hurdle. Creating policy allows the government to sort through many of the issues that all employers should when it comes to implementing telework programs. If the teleworker requires high bandwidth service for completing their job remotely, who covers it? At what point, if at all, does a teleworker forfeit their claim to a dedicated workspace back at their agency? If a teleworking employee is injured, can they claim worker’s compensation? There are obstacles with keeping up with policy changes, but this still is not their largest challenge.
The biggest challenge claimed by the telework coordinators is implementing 
the plan and changing the culture. Government agencies by far are tied to the historical ways that they’ve run their organization and implementing change among the employees is a difficult issue to tackle. In fact, it requires that the change in culture come from the top and migrate down.
Just this past month, the digital government strategy was released from the White House and telework was a part of the fabric of the strategy. Telework wasn’t specifically called out on the document and was in fact, only mentioned once, yet telework is the underlying factor in any effort to push forward a mobile strategy. After all, who needs to be mobile while tied down to a desk in an office?
So, while telework continues to progress within the agency environment, there is still a long way to go and it will impact technology, policies and culture. But, with the influence of our top leaders, we are in a better place today, than we’ve been in the past.