More Federal Workers are Telecommuting

An anonymous reader writes "Boosting the ranks of federal employees who telework is a slow, sometimes painful process, despite numerous incentives and legislative edicts lobbed at U.S. agencies over the years. Take the situation at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), which last month was ordered by a federal arbitration panel to allow its legal instrument examiners to telework on a pilot basis. ATF was against letting these specialists telework because it says the material they need to remove from agency offices in order to telework posed a security risk. The Federal Service Impasses Panel (FSIP) became involved at the request of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), which successfully argued its case for allowing the examiners to telework on a pilot basis."

Comments

Discourage those staying behind?

[primadd]

As this sbc article details, those left behind find it "less personally fulfilling to do their work".
So how exactly is this a good thing, unless you plan on having no office at all - which is not quite feasible.

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Re:Discourage those staying behind?

[Wansu]

  My team lead was working a full day at the office and dealing with the builds at night from home. Whatever they were paying him, it wasn't enough to put up with that nonsense. So the abuse can go both ways.

That's the way my last boss treated telecommuting, as a supplement rather than as a substitute. And here's the kicker, I was working on nightly builds. Mine was the only group in a large company compelled to work scheduled, rotating shifts of uncompensated overtime. Either you were up until 2 or 3am tending to the builds and all the stuff that could and would go wrong or you had to get up at oh-dark-thirty to mop up and fix whatever carnage remained. At least with telecommuting, I only had to get out of bed and sit at my computer but I was still putting in extra time at the office too. But the boss didn't consider it real work and had no compunction about imposing on what had been your private life. Yeah, it was Lumbergh-a-rama. It was common to be awakened by the phone at 4AM, just after I'd fallen asleep. The pointy headed boss called me one time when I was in the middle of taking a massive dump. I wondered whether he could hear my voice reverberating off the bathroom tiles or splashing sounds.

Bottom line: Telecommuting can be a shackle as well as a quality of life improvement.

Also, don't ever let yourself be roped into tending to nightly builds. It is a thankless task.

Re:Discourage those staying behind?

[microTodd]

The pointy headed boss called me one time when I was in the middle of taking a massive dump.

Why, oh why, in the world did you ANSWER THE PHONE?

Um...

[Angst Badger]

The Federal Service Impasses Panel?

Am I the only one here who thinks the existence of that agency is the real story?

I telecommute almost every week

[LinDVD]

As an employee of the USCG, I am allowed to telecommute one day a week, every week on any regular 5-day work week. Any Ensign (O-series) and higher, 3rd class Petty Officer (E-series) and higher and all GS-7's and higher can do telecommuting, pending supervisory (permission is granted from supervisory GS-12's or GS-13's) and network security approval. Non-rates and the majority of contractors don't get assigned a security token, and therefore don't get the privilege. Now I can't speak for other Federal agencies of course...

Security please!

[G4from128k]

I can only hope (because I doubt that I can expect) that these telecommuting workers use encrypted datafiles, well-secured "work-only" home-office PCs, multi-factor authentication, non-wireless internet connections, etc. I'm sure any number of people would love to gain access to government data or databases.

Telecommuting sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

I am an IT professional. I have had to work in telecommuting heavy environments. While a small dash might allow you to get work done when you would otherwise have to take vacation (such as blizzard-like conditions), overall I have yet to meet an effective telecommuter. Pretty much all of them suddenly become a lot less effective at their jobs and a great hindrance to everyone else's jobs.

I suppose there might be some kind of tele-fu style that allows a telecommuting worker to be effective and subtle while striking from a great distance. But generally people aren't around for meetings, aren't around for ad-hoc conversations, are always less informed than people that are regularly in the office (I wonder why?), and in a few instances of direct observation are less productive than before they got telecommuting privilage.

Fine, people are giddy happy that they can work without actually showing up for work or paying attention to what's going on. Great for the worker satisfaction or some shit of the telecommuter. But as someone who has to work with these people telecommuting sucks.

ATF should be abolished

[schwit1]

Alcohol and tobacco should be regulated by the FDA, and firearms and explosives by the FBI.

Every federal agency should have to periodically justify its existence and some should be abolished. An agency can be outdated or it's functions better done by another agency or the states. Unfortunately the federal government has become a jobs program.