Federal Agency Reports to Promote and Use Telework Center
Agency Experience with GSA Telework Centers
In our survey to the Executive Agencies as noted in Section 630 of the Law, we asked agencies that use GSA telework centers to rate their experience. We also asked agencies that do not use telework centers to tell us why. The surveys were distributed to the 20 agencies identified in Section 630 of the Law. Nineteen of those 20 agencies responded to the survey. Here is what we learned.
Comments From Telework Center Users
In our survey, we asked the 20 covered federal agencies to rate their telework center experience as very positive, satisfactory or very negative. Eight of the agencies that use telework centers gave very positive marks to their experience and two rated their experience as satisfactory. Nine agencies responded but did not answer the question to provide a rating of their experience, and one agency provided no survey.
The eight agencies that rated their telework center experience as very positive noted that telework centers are responsive to agency and employee needs and do a good job helping employees establish remote workstations. They also said that telework centers are very well maintained and comfortable for performing work.
The Department of Justice reported that all of the telework centers at which its employees are working are highly rated due to their convenient locations, quality furniture, equipment and supplies, and the professionalism of telework center management. The Department of Transportation also commented on the high satisfaction of its employees and specifically mentioned the Fredericksburg telework center for its effective scheduling program and excellent service to employees of the Federal Highway Administration.
Comments From Non-Users
We asked agencies for reasons as to why they do not utilize telework centers and to indicate whether it was due to cost, inconvenience, quality of equipment, employee interest, or some other reason (or any combination of these factors). Fifty-five percent of survey respondents cited cost as the main reason for not using telework centers to a greater extent. 5
Three agencies specifically identified employee inconvenience as a reason for not using telework centers while six agencies cited lack of employee interest. In almost all of these cases, teleworking employees preferred to work from home instead of a remote location. The State Department prefers its employees to work from a home office due to security concerns and has provided them with laptops specially configured by the Department's technology staff. In FY 2000, 120 State Department employees worked from home, and in FY 2001, the number increased to 189.
Only the Department of Labor (DOL) identified quality of equipment as a reason for not using telework centers.
Forty-five percent of survey respondents marked "other" as their reason for not using telework centers to a greater extent. The Small Business Administration (SBA) stated that the current locations of the GSA telework centers are not accessible to the vast majority of the Agency's field operations, which encompass more than 80 percent of SBA's workforce. In the future, SBA's cost for telework center usage will be proportionate to the number of employees using the telework centers. The Social Security Administration said that its location in a Baltimore, Maryland suburb, where public transportation is readily available and traffic congestion is not an issue, limits the appeal of telework centers. However, many of their employees are eligible to telework and do so from their homes. Veterans Affairs (VA) reported that other forms of telecommuting are more conducive to VA's mission.