Wanna-be federal teleworkers raise their voices

Anyone doubting feds’ deep-seated desire to telework had better take a look at some of the activity on the GovCareerNetwork blog over the last 48 hours.

Because the question of whether qualified workers are being denied the chance to telework unleashed a tidal wave of responses. And the answer has been a resounding “yes.”

At the same time, just hours after that original telework item was posted, the Telework Improvements Act cleared the House (the Senate passed its telework bill earlier in the year). If the final bill is passed into law, it will lay down rules that should allow all eligible feds to telework at last.

The bill’s proponents outline a lot of benefits they expect the law to generate—personal benefits such as such as better work/life balance, and societal ones like less traffic congestion and less pollution.

While the flood of responses to the last post described a great many instances in which permission to telework had been denied, a few responses also detailed some examples of telework successes.

While individual feds clearly benefit from telework, there must be some more examples out there of some real government-side benefits that emanated from telework arrangements—dollar savings on physical facilities, improved continuity of operations, and so on.

Here’s the place to make them known.