Lawmaker urges Bush to promote telework

A Virginia lawmaker on Wednesday urged President Bush to speak out in support of allowing federal employees to telework.

High-level support is critical to eliminating negative perceptions of alternative work arrangements, said Rep. Frank Wolf, R-Va., at a hearing on telework.

"If the president made this a priority, spoke about it at the State of the Union, then the Cabinet-level secretaries would get it down to the mid-level managers," Wolf said. "There are no downsides to this."

In a Sept. 15 letter to Bush, Wolf asked him to encourage agencies to actively support and encourage telework. Some federal contractors struggled to work with federal agencies in the Hurricane Katrina relief efforts because certain federal employees were barred from teleworking, Wolf said.

Dan Scandling, a spokesman for Wolf, said he is not aware of any response from Bush.

A handful of agencies likely will come under financial pressure from Congress to step up telework efforts. Language in the fiscal 2006 State-Justice-Commerce appropriations bill (H.R. 2862) requires five agencies to increase the number of employees who work away from the office or lose out on $5 million each.

Both chambers have agreed to a final version of that bill, and it is now headed to President Bush's desk for his signature. The agencies survived similar scrutiny last year.

Wolf used his influence as chairman of the appropriations subcommittee handling the spending bill to secure inclusion of the telework requirement. He and Rep. James Moran, R-Va., testified before the House Government Reform Subcommittee on the Federal Workforce and Agency Organization about what government agencies and private corporations are doing to help the country's workforce combat unstable fuel prices.

Wolf said was disappointed that the federal government has not fully embraced the concept of telework. Working away from the office reduces the demand for gasoline and eases traffic, he said. Telework also is an important component of agency plans to continue providing essential services in emergency situations, he added.

"Let's say someone in my office gets avian flu. Are you going to tell that person to come in if he or she is a key person?" Wolf told the subcommittee.

A lack of flexible telework policies has caused agencies to lose employees and has made them less productive, said Rep. Tom Davis, R-Va., chairman of the Government Reform Committee.

"Yes, telework requires a great deal of managerial skill and employee responsibility," Davis said. "It requires a change in organization culture, where employee 'face time' needs to be recognized as less important than employee productivity."

Daniel Matthews, the Transportation Department's chief information officer, told the subcommittee that the government should consider providing money for high-speed Internet access to help employees who need it to work from home.