In anthrax aftermath, GAO turns to telecommuting

When the threat of anthrax infection forced members of Congress and their staffs out of their offices recently, the General Accounting Office gave up two floors of its G Street offices to accommodate them. But the agency kept its work flowing by having employees telecommute and share offices in other parts of the building.

On Oct. 17, House members decided to shut down so that their facilities could be checked for contamination by anthrax bacteria. As a result, half of GAO's Washington workforce, approximately 1,200 employees, were told to temporarily vacate their offices to provide room for all 435 House members, who each brought along two staffers, as well as all the staffers from more than 20 House committees, according to GAO spokesman Jeff Nelligan.

"We told the senior managers Monday morning, they alerted the managers whose staffs were affected on those floors by noon and by 4 p.m. those floors were cleared out," Nelligan explained. "This is a pretty resilient group of individuals here."

The next day, more than 500 GAO employees either worked at home or at a telework center, with another 700 squeezing into conference rooms and doubling or tripling up in offices on other floors.

The legislators and their staffers were urged to bring their own laptop computers, and special antennae were placed in the building to provide signals for cellular telephones.

When some of the House office buildings re-opened on Thursday, most members returned to their own offices. But about 150 lawmakers and their staffers are still at GAO because the Environmental Protection Agency is still removing traces of the life-threatening bacteria from the Longworth Building.

Nelligan said GAO employees have taken the anthrax-related adjustments in stride. "There has been no diminishment in the number of reports that have gone out," he said. "The work continues to get done and we keep testifying."