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The Status of Telework in the Federal Government 2004

I. Message from the Director

I am pleased to present the Office of Personnel Management's (OPM) 2004 report on the status of Telework in the Federal Government. This report summarizes findings from our 2003 agency telework survey and describes the major telework promotion activities undertaken by OPM in partnership with the General Services Administration (GSA).

For the third consecutive year, the number of telework-eligible and teleworking employees continues to grow. Governmentwide, 751,844 Federal employees representing 43 percent of the Federal workforce were telework-eligible in 2003, compared with 625,313 Federal employees representing 35 percent of the Federal workforce in 2002. This represents an increase of 20 percent, or an additional 126,531 identified telework-eligible positions. The actual number of employees teleworking in 2003 was 102,921, representing a 14 percent increase over the number of teleworkers in 2002. Notably, since April 2001, the number of teleworkers has increased from 53,389 to 102,921, an increase of 93 percent in the size of the telecommuting workforce.
Initially, the thrust of developing telework as an employee/employer option centered on environmental goals, enhanced quality of life issues, and recruitment and retention issues. In 2001, President George W. Bush added telework to his New Freedom Initiative, which focused on expanding job opportunities for people with disabilities. In the aftermath of September 11, telework has attracted greater attention by Federal managers as an essential consideration in agencies' emergency planning efforts, whether for snow storms, other natural disasters, or terrorist attacks. Telework has been integrated into the Federal Government's Continuity of Operations Plans (COOP), and OPM is laying the groundwork for including telework in its evaluation of agency human resources programs.

For the 2003 report, OPM revised the telework survey instrument to sharpen and clarify definitions and to bring the survey in line with OPM's strategic focus for telework. Our focus includes recognizing the necessity of telework in emergency planning, the importance of a regularly scheduled and experienced cadre of teleworkers, and the use of occasional telework as a trial assessment period. We also emphasize the necessity for Federal agencies to take responsibility for meeting statutory telework obligations.

We conclude that telework is growing steadily in the Federal Government, whether measured by the number of employees teleworking or by the growing maturity of agency telework programs. Telework is progressively moving into the mainstream as an expected part of an effective agency's personnel strategy, rather than as a "special" program needing a great deal of external support.

Kay Coles James
Director


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