48 FEDTECH JUNE 2004 CDWG.com

CDWG.com JUNE 2004 FEDTECH 49 
“I worked for years in the office, but there 
were so many interruptions that I wouldn’t 
get anything done,” he recalls. “So I stayed 
nights to get work done, and I was 
miserable.” Salter now teleworks full-time 
from his Marshall, Va., home. “My house is 
perfectly quiet, I get a lot more done, and I see 
a lot more of my family,” he says. 
TELEWORK 
With government leaders pressing for increased teleworking, federal 
agencies strive to change the mindset of supervisors and employees 
and to equip staff with the necessary technology. Tom Salter’s morning commute typically takes 
about 10 seconds. 
The computer specialist for the Treasury 
Department can march into his home 
office, fire up his computer and, a minute 
later, begin working. He no longer must 
endure the stress of a two-hour morning train ride to an 
office in Washington—and after work, he no longer has 
to muster the energy for another train ride home. 
Salter’s supervisors are supportive: They’ve equipped his 
home office with a notebook computer, high-speed Internet 
access and a cell phone. According to Salter, teleworking 
eases his stress, gives him the quiet he needs to write 
software programs and makes him more productive. 
By Wylie Wong 
ILLUSTRATION BY RANDY POLLACK 
Although only 5 percent of all federal 
employees telework, the federal government 
is a big proponent of teleworking (also called 
telecommuting) and is a trailblazer in the 
movement to let more employees work from 
home, teleworking experts say. 
Congress and every president since 1990 
have encouraged federal agencies to offer 
teleworking because it boosts the morale of 
government employees and helps them 
better balance their work and family 
obligations. It also serves as a recruiting tool 
for potential employees, saves the 
government money by reducing office use 
and eases traffic congestion, which lightens 
the load on the environment. In addition, 
teleworking lets agencies continue 
operating in the event of a natural disaster or 
terrorist attack that would prevent federal 
workers from reaching their offices. 
“I would put what the federal government 
has done up against any private sector 
company any day,” says Gil Gordon, 
president of Gil Gordon Associates in 
Monmouth Junction, N.J., and a board 
member of the International Telework 
Association and Council in Silver Spring, Md. 
“There’s been a great deal of creativity in 
adapting telework across a diverse family of 
jobs, from the IRS to the departments of 
Justice and Agriculture and the military. It’s 
taken the government years to develop 
policies, manuals and training resources, so 
each agency doesn’t have to reinvent it and 
start from scratch.” 
The federal government’s advocacy of 
teleworking began with pilot projects in the 
Home Sweet Office

50 FEDTECH JUNE 2004 CDWG.com 
Federal workers who don’t want to commute to the 
office and don’t want to work from home have a third 
option: telework centers. 
The General Services Administration (GSA) operates 
15 telework centers in the Washington area, giving 
suburban employees from every agency, as well as 
some employees from the private sector, a workplace 
close to home. 
The centers, originally funded by Congress and 
located in Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia, 
provide desks with a computer, high-speed Internet 
access and a telephone, as well as printers, fax 
machines, copiers and tech support. 
“Some people can’t work from home because they 
have small children, noisy neighborhoods or they 
don’t have suitable spaces for work,” points out 
Stanley Kaczmarczyk, director of the Innovative 
Workplaces Division of the Office of Real Property in 
GSA’s Office of Governmentwide Policy. 
“Some people like to get out of the house to 
work, but instead of fighting traffic for 80 minutes 
to go to the office, they can drive six minutes to a 
telework center and have a professional work 
environment,” he says. 
The centers have a 50 percent to 60 percent 
occupancy rate. GSA charges a user fee that varies, 
depending on the center. However, as in last winter, it 
occasionally offers free trials to first-time users to 
increase participation.  
TELEWORK CENTERS 
OFFER AN APPEALING ALTERNATIVE 
1990s and culminated in a law, PL 106-346, 
in October 2000 requiring federal agencies 
to develop teleworking policies that give 
qualified workers an opportunity to work 
from home. In the metropolitan Washington 
area, 15 telework centers provide workspace 
for employees in or near their hometown, 
so they don’t have to trek to their offices. 
In addition, two agencies in charge of 
promoting teleworking—the Office of 
Personnel Management (OPM) and the 
General Services Administration (GSA)— 
have developed a Web site, Telework.gov, 
that provides education and resources. 
The site includes step-by-step guides and 
sample agreements for managers and 
employees. 
Among cabinet-level agencies, the 
Education Department is a leader, with 
31 percent of its employees teleworking. 
The Treasury has 22 percent, and the 
Labor Department has 18 percent, 
according to a 2002 OPM survey. 
Data Security Concerns 
But most agencies have been slow to make 
teleworking a priority. Concern about data 
security and IT issues are the top two 
reasons agencies gave OPM for going slow 
with teleworking. Management resistance 
ranks third, according to OPM’s 2002 
survey. 
Each agency has a telework coordinator 
who oversees the effort. But a lack of 
involvement by federal CIOs and other 
senior IT managers is a major obstacle. The 
survey found that many agencies have not 
developed plans to meet teleworkers’ 
technology needs and instead have left all 
such technology decisions up to their 
supervisors. 
If IT staff became more involved, it would 
help resolve these technology issues, says 
Stanley Kaczmarczyk, director of the 
Innovative Workplaces Division of the Office 
of Real Property in GSA’s Office of 
Governmentwide Policy. 
“There is no single technology barrier, 
but for each [problem], there is a 
solution,” Kaczmarczyk says. “For 
TELEWORK 
I would put what the federal government has done up 
against any private sector company any day,” says 
Telework Association board member Gil Gordon. ‘‘

CDWG.com JUNE 2004 FEDTECH 51 
example, for the security problem, there’s 
hardware, software and training.” Also, 
he notes, “CIOs should be involved with 
planning, coordinating and funding the 
telework programs.” 
Making IT Work 
One Treasury agency has overcome the 
barriers to teleworking. At the Treasury 
Inspector General for Tax Administration 
(TIGTA), 92 percent of the agency’s 
nearly 1,000 employees telework on 
occasion, with 35 percent teleworking at 
least twice a week. 
When the agency launched a test 
program three years ago, the employees 
responsible for overseeing the Internal 
Revenue Service were enthusiastic, but 
most managers balked. The agency sent 
the managers to training sessions that 
explained the virtues of teleworking and 
taught them how to manage employees 
remotely. 
“Managers are used to walking down 
the hall and seeing employees hard at 
work,” says TIGTA CIO Joe Hungate. “In 
the training, we hit home the point that 
you need to be managing the results and 
performance, not whether they 
are sitting at their desks.” 
The effort couldn’t have 
succeeded without the strong 
backing of agency leaders. 
“No one will do anything that 
their boss doesn’t want done,” 
Hungate points out, “so 
unless the heads of the agency 
make it known, there will be 
resistance.” 
Hungate has invested heavily 
to give teleworkers the 
technology they need for home 
offices, including notebook 
computers, printers and a cell 
phone or second phone line. The 
agency also pays for half the cost 
of high-speed Internet access. 
To ensure network access, he 
standardized on the type of 
routers that teleworkers use at 
home and installed virtual 
private network (VPN) 
technology so employees could 
retrieve e-mail and securely 
connect to headquarters. He 
added IT staff, increased the help 
desk’s operating hours, and 
installed remote management 
software on notebooks so IT staff 
could control teleworkers’ 
computers for troubleshooting 
problems. 
Trained to Succeed 
The IT staff trained each teleworker to 
ensure they knew how to use the 
technology, Hungate says. The only 
stumbling block is that some areas don’t 
offer high-speed Internet access. “If you 
don’t have cable or DSL, you don’t have 
enough bandwidth to do meaningful 
work,” he says. 
Because a percentage of TIGTA workers 
telework each day, they can share desks, 
which reduces the need for office space. 
TIGTA annually avoids incurring an 
additional $200,000 in rent in Washington 
In the training, we hit home the point that 
you need to be managing the results and 
performance, not whether they are sitting at 
their desks,” says TIGTA CIO Joe Hungate. ‘‘ 
PHOTOGRAPHY BY GETTY IMAGES 
Employees working at home generally 
need a computer, printer, high-speed 
Internet access and a phone.

CDWG.com JUNE 2004 FEDTECH 52 
and $100,000 in Atlanta, Hungate says. 
“We have a reservation system,” he 
explains. “You call up a concierge and 
reserve office space for the times you are 
required to be in an office.” 
Other agencies have found different 
ways to provide technology to teleworkers. 
For instance, when OPM upgrades its 
desktop computers, teleworkers can take 
old computers home for work, says Abby 
Block, deputy associate director of OPM’s 
Center for Employee and Family Support 
Policy. 
The Agency for International 
Development has a large workforce that 
works remotely from around the world. 
In the past, workers connected to 
headquarters through VPNs; now the 
agency has made it even easier. 
The IT staff has created a Web site that 
international workers and domestic 
teleworkers can easily log onto to access 
their e-mail, files and office productivity 
software. All they need is Internet access 
and a Web browser. 
To ensure security, each worker carries 
a hardware device the size of a pocket 
watch that displays a six-digit personal 
identification number (PIN) that changes 
every minute, says Phil Gordon, the 
agency’s security operations manager. To 
make the connection at the Web site 
secure, users type in their identification 
number and the PIN, which synchronizes 
with a server at the data center to verify 
the user and allow access. 
An Opportunity to Succeed 
To increase federal teleworking, the Equal 
Employment Opportunity Commission 
(EEOC) is offering notebook computers, cell 
phones and multifunction (print, scan and 
fax) machines to employees who telework at 
least six days every two weeks. Even with the 
technology investment, the agency will save 
money because teleworking reduces the 
need for office space, says Joann Riggs, 
assistant director of the EEOC’s human 
resources office. 
OPM and GSA officials state that any 
workers who can do their jobs at home 
(such as researchers), as well as those who 
have disabilities or are recovering from 
injuries, should be allowed to telework. 
OPM’s Block encourages skeptical 
supervisors and employees to try 
teleworking. “When there’s uncertainty 
among managers and employees, we’re 
advocating that they try it as a test, with 
no commitment from either party to 
make it permanent,” she says. “They can 
try it for three months and see if it works. 
If it works, then we encourage them to do 
it regularly.” If the experiment doesn’t 
work, Block adds, they can always stop. 
Annual internal employee surveys show 
worker satisfaction has increased at TIGTA, 
according to Hungate, and 58 percent of 
employees say that teleworking is the reason. 
For telework to succeed, supervisors 
and employees must agree on performance 
expectations, Hungate points out. 
Employers must also set parameters, such 
as how often people check e-mail. Only 
about a dozen TIGTA employees have lost 
their teleworking privileges because of poor 
work performance, he says. 
Staying Productive 
At the Agency for International 
Development, Maribeth Zankowski, 
teleworker and senior management analyst 
for workforce planning, says she guards 
against slacking off by acting as though she 
were going to work at her agency office. 
“I get up at the same time and start 
working when I would normally leave the 
house,” says Zankowski, who teleworks 
every Friday. “It’s important to stay 
disciplined, with no distractions.” 
Mary Lynne Schwartz, an EEOC 
attorney, says the flexibility lets her better 
balance work and family. “I start work at 7 
a.m. and work until I pick up the kids from 
school, and if I’m behind—a rare 
exception—I will work that evening to 
finish what I didn’t complete,” she says. 
For Treasury’s Salter, his 10-second 
commute to his home office is easy—it’s 
stopping work that’s hard. 
“Instead of four hours of commuting, I 
take advantage of those hours and end up 
working more,” says Salter. “If things are 
going well, it could be 3 a.m. before I stop. 
But the nice thing is, I sleep in the next day.” 
Salter remembers with no fondness the 
rigid 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. schedule of his 
first days as a government employee 
nearly 30 years ago. And he’s happy with 
the change in policy. 
“That’s one nice thing about our 
office,” he says. “They’re concerned about 
getting the work done. How you do it 
doesn’t matter.”  
When there’s uncertainty among managers and 
employees, we’re advocating that they try it as a 
test,” says OPM’s Abby Block. ‘‘TELEWORK 
Percentage of employees 
at federal agencies who 
telework at least part-time: 
 Agency for International 
Development 62% 
 Office of Personnel 
Management 41% 
 National Science 
Foundation 33% 
 Federal Deposit 
Insurance Corp. 32% 
 Education 31% 
 Equal Employment 
Opportunity Commission 26% 
 Federal Communications 
Commission 25% 
 Environmental 
Protection Agency 24% 
 Treasury 22% 
 Labor 18% 
 Commerce 15% 
Source: The Status of Telework in the 
Federal Government, 2002 survey, Office 
of Personnel Management. 
FEDERAL 
STAY-AT-HOME 
WORKERS