USDA Exec to Managers: Get In The Office

Another blow for telework: Federal Diarist Steve Barr reports today that Thomas C. Dorr, Agriculture's undersecretary for rural development, has ordered key managers who report to him to quit working alternative schedules and return to standard eight-hour-a-day arrangements. Nontraditional schedules may be good for the managers, Dorr wrote to them in an e-mail, but they don't work for him: "With just over two years remaining to accomplish the agenda that I laid out for Rural Development, I feel that it is necessary and critical to our success that all key management officials are available and accessible on-site each day in order to help us accomplish such a large agenda remaining for Rural Development."