Have Telework Will, Not the Way

While 81 percent of government and business IT makers say their organizations have written continuity-of-operations plans, both sectors report implementation challenges and lack confidence that employees could work remotely during an emergency, according to a new study by Telework Exchange and Intel.

The study found that while 71 percent of federal and private sector organizations have tested business continuity plans, 46 percent experienced some challenges with their plans. More specifically, public sector IT leaders said that 60 percent of the federal workforce could not work remotely in the event of a national emergency. This compares to private sector IT decision makers, who said 45 percent of their workforce could not work remotely due to a business closure.

The study also found, however, that 84 percent of IT decision makers believe the need for mobility has increased in the past year, with public sector IT leaders noting that they expect telework use to increase by 65 percent in the next three years.

The report recommended five steps to improve an organization's workforce mobility. For example, organizations should: engage and encourage managers to telework, provide remote network access to all employees, provide secure mobile equipment to employees, establish policies and train employees on secure mobile computing, and establish mobile tech support systems.