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TELEWORK: BREAKING NEW GROUND?

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON FEDERAL WORKFORCE,

POSTAL SERVICE, AND THE DISTRICT

OF COLUMBIA

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT

AND GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

NOVEMBER 6, 2007

Serial No. 110–66

Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California, Chairman

TOM LANTOS, California

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

JOHN A. YARMUTH, Kentucky

BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

BETTY MCCOLLUM, Minnesota

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

PAUL W. HODES, New Hampshire

CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut

JOHN P. SARBANES, Maryland

PETER WELCH, Vermont

TOM DAVIS, Virginia

DAN BURTON, Indiana

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

BRIAN P. BILBRAY, California

BILL SALI, Idaho

JIM JORDAN, Ohio

PHIL SCHILIRO, Chief of Staff

PHIL BARNETT, Staff Director

EARLEY GREEN, Chief Clerk

DAVID MARIN, Minority Staff Director

SUBCOMMITTEE ON FEDERAL WORKFORCE, POSTAL SERVICE, AND THE DISTRICT OF

COLUMBIA

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

JOHN P. SARBANES, Maryland

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio, Chairman

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

JOHN M. MCHUGH, NEW YORK

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

JIM JORDAN, Ohio

TANIA SHAND, Staff Director

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on November 6, 2007 ........................................................................ 1

Statement of:

Green, Daniel A., Deputy Associate Director, Center for Employee and

Family Support Policy, Office of Personnel Management; Stan

Kaczmarczyk, Principal Deputy Associate Administrator for Government-wide Policy, General Services Administration; and Bernice

Steinhardt, Director, Strategic Issues, Government Accountability Office .................................................................................................................. 16

Green, Daniel A. ........................................................................................ 16

Kaczmarczyk, Stan .................................................................................... 26

Steinhardt, Bernice ................................................................................... 37

Peterlin, Margaret J.A., Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Deputy Director, U.S. Patent and Trademark

Office; and Lee J. Lofthus, Assistant Attorney General for Administration, Department of Justice .......................................................................... 57

Lofthus, Lee J. ........................................................................................... 76

Peterlin, Margaret J.A. ............................................................................. 57

Wilke, John, Trademark Examining Attorney, PTO Teleworker; Stephen

W.T. O’Keeffe, executive director, Telework Exchange; Ann

Bamesberger, vice president, Open Work Services Group, SUN Microsystems, Inc.; and Haywood J. Talcove, vice president, public sector

americas, Juniper Networks, Inc. ................................................................ 93

Bamesberger, Ann ..................................................................................... 111

O’Keeffe, Stephen W.T. ............................................................................. 99

Talcove, Haywood J. .................................................................................. 152

Wilke, John ................................................................................................ 93

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Bamesberger, Ann, vice president, Open Work Services Group, SUN

Microsystems, Inc., prepared statement of ................................................. 114

Davis, Hon. Danny K., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Illinois, prepared statement of ................................................................ 4

Green, Daniel A., Deputy Associate Director, Center for Employee and

Family Support Policy, Office of Personnel Management, prepared

statement of ................................................................................................... 18

Kaczmarczyk, Stan, Principal Deputy Associate Administrator for Government-wide Policy, General Services Administration, prepared statement of ........................................................................................................... 28

Lofthus, Lee J., Assistant Attorney General for Administration, Department of Justice, prepared statement of ....................................................... 78

O’Keeffe, Stephen W.T., executive director, Telework Exchange, prepared

statement of ................................................................................................... 102

Peterlin, Margaret J.A., Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Deputy Director, U.S. Patent and Trademark

Office, prepared statement of ....................................................................... 60

Steinhardt, Bernice, Director, Strategic Issues, Government Accountability Office, prepared statement of ................................................................. 39

Talcove, Haywood J., vice president, public sector americas, Juniper Networks, Inc., prepared statement of .............................................................. 154

Wilke, John, Trademark Examining Attorney, PTO Teleworker, prepared

statement of ................................................................................................... 96

Wolf, Hon. Frank R., a Representative in Congress from the State of

Virginia, prepared statement of ................................................................... 166

(1)

TELEWORK: BREAKING NEW GROUND?

TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2007

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON FEDERAL WORKFORCE, POSTAL

SERVICE, AND THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA,

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:05 a.m. in room

2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Danny K. Davis (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Davis of Illinois, Sarbanes, Cummings,

Marchant, and Issa.

Staff present: Tania Shand, staff director; Lori Hayman, counsel;

Cecelia Morton, clerk; Charles Phillips, minority counsel; and Alex

Cooper, minority professional staff member.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. The subcommittee will come to order.

Ranking Member Marchant will probably be here soon, but we

are going to proceed. Depending on where we are, we may obviously interrupt so that he can give an opening statement, should

he choose to do so.

Let me welcome Mr. Marchant and members of the subcommittee, hearing witnesses, and all of those in attendance. Welcome to

the Federal Workforce, Postal Service, and the District of Columbia’s Subcommittee hearing on Telework: Breaking New Ground?

The hearing will examine why telework, which has strong support

of Congress and personnel experts as a strategy for addressing

emergency preparedness and energy consumption, is not being universally embraced and implemented by Federal agencies.

Hearing no objection, the Chair, ranking member, and subcommittee members will each have 5 minutes to make opening

statements, and all Members will have 3 days to submit statements for the record.

I am going to begin, and then we will follow along as Members

are present.

Ranking Member Marchant, members of the subcommittee, and

hearing witnesses, welcome to the subcommittee’s hearing on

telework. Today’s hearing will examine why telework continues to

be under-utilized by Federal agencies and the improvements that

are needed to allow more Federal employees to participate in

telework programs.

Telework provides numerous benefits, including increased flexibilities for both employers and employees, continuity of operations

during emergency events, and decreased energy use and air pollution. The Office of Personnel Management [OPM], defines telework

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as work arrangements in which an employee regularly performs officially assigned duties at home or other work sites geographically

convenient to the residence of the employee.

Many of the current Federal programs were developed in response to a provision included in an appropriations bill enacted in

October 2000. This law requires each executive branch agency to

establish a telework policy under which eligible employees may

participate in telecommuting to the maximum extent possible without diminishing employee performance.

Under the current legislative framework, the General Services

Administration [GSA], and OPM have leading roles in implementing Government-wide telework initiatives. Unfortunately, telework

is not being used to the extent it should be. According to OPM’s

most recent report, only about 119,000 of the approximately 1.8

million Federal employees participated in telework in 2005. That

figure represents only 6.6 percent of Federal agency employees.

Some of the barriers to telework include office coverage, organizational culture, management resistance, and technology security

and funding.

Today we want to examine ways to address these barriers and

encourage teleworking.

On May 7, 2007, I, along with my colleague, Ranking Member

Kenny Marchant, and the full committee chairman and ranking

minority members, Henry Waxman and Tom Davis, sent a letter to

25 Federal departments and agencies requesting information on

the telework programs of those agencies. The letter was intended

to help us better understand how well agency telework programs

are working.

What we found is that not only is telework inconsistently defined

across agencies; many agencies do not effectively measure and

track teleworkers. Some agencies do not even know how many of

their employees are actually teleworking.

In recent years telework has increasingly been viewed as an important tool for ensuring continuity of essential Government services in a time of crisis, such as in the event of a natural disaster

or a terrorist attack. To help improve the preparedness of the Federal Government’s operation in emergency situations, last session

I introduced H.R. 5366, the Continuity of Operations Demonstration Project Act. This legislation provided for a demonstration

project under which at least two Federal agencies would perform

services and operations under a simulated emergency in which

Federal employees would have to work at locations away from their

usual workplace, including home, for at least 10 consecutive days.

A number of agencies have taken the initiative to perform demonstration exercises in the last several years, but there are still

many agencies that have not done so. I would like to see more

agencies test their ability to continue operations in an emergency

and incorporate telework into their continuity of operations plans.

I am pleased that Representative John Sarbanes, along with

Chairman Henry Waxman and Representative Frank Wolf, will

join me in introducing the Telework Improvement Act of 2007. This

legislation will bring together the efforts of my colleagues and

breaks new ground by ensuring that eligible Federal employees

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have the opportunity to telework, and that agencies are incorporating telework into their continuity of operations planning.

Several other legislative proposals have been introduced in the

House and in the Senate. This issue is receiving some well-deserved attention. The Federal Government can set the example for

teleworking. There are some very successful agency and sub-agency

telework programs that can serve as models for the public and private sector.

I thank you and look forward to the testimony of today’s witnesses. We are fortunate to have a distinguished group of witnesses

with us today, and I certainly want to thank you for being here.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Danny K. Davis follows:]

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Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Now it is my pleasure to yield such time

as he might consume to the ranking member, Mr. Marchant, for

any opening statement that he would like to make.

Mr. MARCHANT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Congress often focuses on where Government is failing and how

the American taxpayer is not getting what he or she is paying for.

Today we will be discussing telework, an issue which demonstrates

an opportunity for the Federal Government to increase productivity

while decreasing infrastructure and environmental costs. I look forward to hearing about these opportunities.

Mr. Chairman, for the sake of time I will leave the rest of my

opening statement for the record. And I would also like to submit

for the record an opening statement by Ranking Member Tom

Davis.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Marchant. I

would also yield time as he might consume to Representative Sarbanes, who has indicated and demonstrated a tremendous amount

of interest in this area of concern. I recognize Mr. Sarbanes.

Mr. SARBANES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you

for holding the hearing.

I am very excited about the prospects to increase the use of telecommuting and teleworking within the Federal Government and

serve as the kind of model which you alluded to, which the Federal

Government can be, joining with others in private industry that

have done so much in this area.

I had the privilege of being able to offer earlier this year an

amendment onto the energy bill that would try to promote this sort

of thing, and I want to thank the chairman for taking the initiative

to introduce this in a stand-alone form, as he will be doing and I

will be joining with him in that.

I also want to acknowledge, as he has done, Congressman Wolf’s

efforts over many years to bring this issue to the forefront. We look

forward to working with him, as well.

I represent a District which has a tremendous number of Federal

employees who commute in and out of the District of Columbia

every day, and I have heard from many of them about the promise

of telecommuting and what a difference it can make.

My original approach to this issue was with respect to how the

Federal Government can help reduce its carbon footprint by promoting teleworking, but obviously the benefits go far beyond that.

There are many, many dimensions to the issue.

In Maryland we are about to absorb many new jobs as a result

of Base Realignment and Closure Commission recommendations. I

think that telecommuting can help both in that transition as well

as over the long term as the number of jobs increases and, frankly,

as the degree of congestion in many parts of my District also increases. That all lends itself to the need for telecommuting.

I, myself, commute every day. I was saying this morning to somebody that until we can vote remotely I may not, myself, be able to

take advantage of the telecommuting opportunity, but I expect that

folks in my office can eventually, and bring it in to the legislative

branch, and certainly there are so many in the Federal executive

branch that can take advantage of this. But I understand what it

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means to be caught in gridlock, and so that is certainly a perspective that I bring.

The opportunity to save money, the opportunity to promote more

flexibility in the work force and in work arrangements, all of that

is part of the discussion that we are going to have today, and so

I think it is a tremendous win/win opportunity if we pursue this

in a more formal way by looking at how to enact and then implement policies, have people that are dedicated in their focus to the

telework option within Federal agencies.

I agree with the chairman that the Federal Government is in a

position to really model this in some innovative and creative ways.

I know many agencies have begun to do that, but we can, of course,

do more across the board.

I am looking forward very much to hearing the testimony of all

of our witnesses today and again thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Sarbanes.

We are now prepared to hear from our witnesses, but let me just

indicate that we had hoped to have Representative Frank Wolf as

our first witness because he has been a pioneer in promoting these

concepts and ideas and, unfortunately, could not be here at the moment, and so he might still get an opportunity to come in, and if

he is able to do so then we would look forward to hearing from him.

Our panelists are, first of all, Mr. Daniel Green, who is the Deputy Associate Director of the Center for Employee and Family Support Policy for the Office of Personnel Management. Mr. Green is

currently responsible for developing Federal employee benefits policy covering the multi-billion-dollar retirement and insurance programs administered by OPM. He is also responsible for promoting

important employee and family support programs like telework.

Mr. Green, thank you so much.

We have Mr. Stan Kaczmarczyk. He is the current Acting Deputy

Associate Administrator for the U.S. General Services Administration’s Office of Government-Wide Policy. Mr. Kaczmarczyk has policymaking authority over several key areas, including personal and

real property, travel and transportation, information technology,

regulatory information, and use of Federal advisory committees.

Ms. Bernice Steinhardt is the Director of Strategic Issues and

has held a variety of leadership positions within the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Congress’ analytic and investigative

arm. Ms. Steinhardt is responsible for examining Government-wide

management issues and supporting the Federal Government’s

transformation to meet 21st century challenges.

It is the custom and tradition of this committee, as well as it is

others, to swear in witnesses, and so if you would stand and raise

your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. The record will show that each one of the

witnesses answered in the affirmative.

We thank you very much, and we will begin with you, Mr. Green.

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STATEMENTS OF DANIEL A. GREEN, DEPUTY ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR EMPLOYEE AND FAMILY SUPPORT

POLICY, OFFICE OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT; STAN

KACZMARCZYK, PRINCIPAL DEPUTY ASSOCIATE ADMINISTRATOR FOR GOVERNMENT-WIDE POLICY, GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION; AND BERNICE STEINHARDT, DIRECTOR, STRATEGIC ISSUES, GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTABILITY

OFFICE

STATEMENT OF DANIEL A. GREEN

Mr. GREEN. Thank you, sir. Mr. Chairman and members of the

subcommittee, I am pleased to be here today to discuss OPM’s role

in promoting telework in the Federal Government.

Telework and other work life flexibilities are important tools

used by agencies to recruit and retain employees. Telework is also

an important component of emergency preparedness, helping ensure the Federal Government can continue core operations from remote locations in terms of a short or long-term crisis.

According to the latest numbers gathered by OPM, 49 of 8 executive branch agencies had more employees teleworking in 2006 compared to 2005. Those who do telework are teleworking relatively

frequently. In fact, over half of them are working from an alternative work site at least once per week.

Despite these successes, there was a slight decrease in the total

number of teleworkers reported Government-wide from 119,248 in

2005 to approximately 111,000 in 2006. This slight overall reduction was largely due to decreased numbers of teleworkers reported

at a few large agencies.

According to information OPM was given by these agencies, there

are two major reasons for the decrease: data gathering reporting

problems and data security concerns. We found that the internal

tracking systems used to gather data vary widely in their efficiency

and effectiveness, leading to inconsistencies in the information reported to OPM year to year. Agencies are developing internal systems to improve their data collection.

The second major issue is data security, which had an impact on

actual telework participation. Agencies have justifiably become increasingly concerned with the security of information systems overall and may perceive remote access as a particularly problematic.

We are working on various initiatives to address this issue and

to further explore what security measures are currently in place

and what recommendations need to be made to achieve a telework

environment that maintains data security.

Balancing these challenges are positive drivers for telework that

resulted in program growth for the majority of agencies in 2006.

One major driver is the recognition by many organizations that

telework is a valuable tool to ensure that vital operations continue

during a continuity of operations or pandemic influenza event.

OPM strongly recommends in our telework guide that agencies

have an effective routine telework program and that as many employees as possible should have telework capability.

In my written testimony I provide information on how three

agencies—Department of Labor, U.S. International Trade ConVerDate 11-MAY-2000 14:00 Sep 15, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00020 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\43599.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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sumer magazine, and OPM itself—have used telework as a means

to meet their individual operational objectives.

Telework is an important tool in emergency planning, and we

continue to support agencies in their efforts to integrate telework

into COOP and pandemic influenza preparation.

In responding to President Bush’s implementation plan for the

national strategy for pandemic influenza, OPM issued a completely

new guide to telework in the Federal Government on August 3,

2006. The guide was distributed to all Federal agencies and is posted on the inter-agency telework Web site, telework.gov.

OPM integrates telework in its pandemic planning and guidance

briefings for agencies and town hall meetings for Federal employees. OPM staff visits Federal managers, H.R., and technical personnel and others to provide a comprehensive review of policy regarding pandemic preparedness.

We are pursuing many activities to foster telework utilization. I

would especially like to point out our collaboration with the Chief

Human Capital Officer’s Counsel on several telework-related activities.

In February 2007, OPM staff helped organize the Chico Training

Academy session focused on agency telework best practices. There

were over 50 attendees representing more than 20 agencies at this

session, which highlighted the telework efforts of three Federal

agencies.

In addition, OPM is working with the CHCO Counsel Emergency

Preparedness Subcommittee exploring how best to refine current

telework definitions and enhance agency metrics in order to

strengthen the program.

Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, this concludes

my remarks. I would be pleased to respond to any questions you

may have.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Green follows:]

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Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you.

We will proceed to Mr. Kaczmarczyk.

STATEMENT OF STAN KACZMARCZYK

Mr. KACZMARCZYK. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, Ranking Minority

Member Marchant, and members of the subcommittee, I appreciate

the opportunity to appear before you today to discuss the General

Services Administration’s views on how telework programs succeed.

Successful implementation of telework in the Federal Government requires effective tools, useful guidance, proactive senior leadership, and flexible implementation.

Telework programs succeed when they have the basic tools necessary to complete the program. Legislation that would remove barriers to Federal telework is welcomed, and we look forward to

working with Congress on appropriate telework legislation.

Another factor leading to successful telework is useful guidance.

Last year GSA published Federal Management Regulation Bulletin

2006-B–3, which established guidelines for alternative workplace

arrangements in the Federal Government. This year we followed

up with FMR Bulletin 2007-B–1 covering technology, security, and

privacy issues for telework. This document helped establish that

telework, when appropriately implemented, can maintain information security.

Successful programs ensure that the entire work force is aware

of telework laws, policies, benefits, and practices. To that end, our

efforts include a very active listserve and Web site, along with videos, promotional materials, and press releases.

Another critical ingredient in successful programs is aggressive

top-level involvement and support. A good example of this is the recently issued challenge by our Administrator, Lurita Doan. She is

pushing GSA to lead by example and to increase the number of eligible employees participating in telework. The goal is to have 50

percent of eligible GSA employees teleworking at least 1 or 2 days

per week by the end of calendar year 2010.

In furtherance of leading by example and prior to any legislative

requirement, GSA will appoint a telework managing officer, as

called for in both the Senate and House versions of the Telework

Enhancement Act of 2007.

Proactively demonstrating that she is walking the talk, Administrator Doan recently spent the day working at one of the GSAsponsored telework centers and announced plans to continue teleworking every month.

We encourage other agencies to challenge themselves to use

telework to its greatest advantage. We will support their efforts

through workplace solutions offered by our Federal Acquisition

Service and our Public Building Service.

An examination of telework programs shows that flexibility implementation is another key to making programs a success. Along

these lines, Congress and GSA established the telework center’s

pilot project in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area. These centers offer Federal workers a convenient and effective telework alternative to working at home and are located between 16 and 80

miles from downtown D.C. Telework centers add the program flexiVerDate 11-MAY-2000 14:00 Sep 15, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00030 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\43599.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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bility needed to make telework a successful option for those who

want to avoid the commute but can’t work at home.

To illustrate, I would like to show you our new flash video, the

first flash video ever to be posted on GSA’s Web site, immediately

after my conclusion.

In conclusion, GSA believes that successful Federal telework programs can be cost effective, significantly reduce traffic, and improve air quality. They can help improve continuity of operations,

recruitment and retention of staff, and quality of work for our Federal work force.

Characteristics of successful programs include: effective tools,

useful guidance, proactive senior leadership, and flexible implementation.

I would be happy to answer any questions you may have.

Now we would like to show the video.

[Video presentation.]

[The prepared statement of Mr. Kaczmarczyk follows:]

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Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Kaczmarczyk.

As a matter of fact, your demonstration reminds me of the comment that is often made at my church that I attend, where people

say, I’d rather see a sermon than hear one any day. So we thank

you very much.

We will to go Ms. Steinhardt.

STATEMENT OF BERNICE STEINHARDT

Ms. STEINHARDT. It is going to be hard to follow that.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and Mr. Marchant and Mr.

Sarbanes. We appreciate the opportunity to be here today to talk

about the Federal Government’s efforts to promote telework for its

employees.

Over the years we have reported on Federal telework programs,

and over those years it has been clear to us that the Congress has

been rather frustrated in its efforts to try to make telework a more

widely used tool.

In our view, though, that frustration is likely to continue until

agencies bring a more results-oriented approach to managing their

telework programs.

What do I mean by that?

Right now Congress has quite a few aspirations for telework, and

OPM and the agencies have incorporated those aspirations into

their policies, and everyone is looking to telework to yield a whole

variety of benefits, some of which were mentioned in the video, others have been talked about this morning. Agencies are looking to

telework to recruit and retain a skilled work force, to ease traffic

congestion and improve quality of life, to provide for continuity of

operations in emergency events, and so on. But all of these aspirations have never been translated into program goals. No one is

managing to them, no one is setting targets for them, and there is

not a lot of information that is being collected to help in evaluating

telework programs.

When we did a study several years ago of four agencies’ telework

programs, we identified 24 key practices that agencies should follow, based on industry best practice. And four of those practices

had to do with managing for results. But these practices were

among the least employed, and none of the agencies were fully implementing them. None of them had goals or targets or information

for evaluation, and without this information they had no way of

making improvements, either.

Even in the most basic program performance measures we found

problems. In a study we did in 2005 in which we looked at five

other agencies, we found that most of them were measuring employee participation based on their potential to telework. They were

counting agreements for telework, rather than counting who was

actually teleworking or how frequently.

And for even more basic measures, like eligibility, agencies used

such differing methods of calculation that there is no really meaningful picture when you look across the Federal Government. As a

result, we recommended in that report that Congress determine

ways to promote more consistent definitions and measurements related to telework.

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I would note that the committee’s survey found very similar findings: that there was a need for much greater consistency and more

meaningful measures.

We also went on to suggest that Congress might want to have

OPM work with the Chief Human Capital Officers Council to come

up with a set of definitions and measures that would allow for a

more meaningful assessment of progress in telework programs.

Some of the information could be improved by more consistent

definitions, like eligibility. Every agency sets its own programs and

policies to meet its own local conditions and circumstances, but

there shouldn’t be widely disparate terms for basic things like eligibility.

Some of this effort would take additional effort to collect. For example, on actual usage of telework, some agencies have now put

into place time and attendance systems that can measure when

people are actually teleworking, the extent to which they are actually working. Others are working on it. Others are not. Some information might be already available through existing sources. The

Federal benefits survey and Federal human capital survey, for example, already ask Federal employees about their satisfaction with

telework.

In any case, it is our view that OPM and the CHCO Council are

very well positioned to sort through these issues and to consider

what information would be most useful to them as they try to manage for results.

I want to close by just saying that, as we have in the past, we

would be pleased to continue to work with you and your staffs as

you make this very important effort to introduce new legislation.

Thanks very much.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Steinhardt follows:]

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Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you very much, Ms. Steinhardt.

I want to thank each one of you for your testimony. We will

begin with a round of questions, and I will begin with you, Mr.

Green.

Could you describe how successful OPM has been in increasing

the awareness and comfort level of managers over the past, say, 2

or 3 years?

Mr. GREEN. Yes, sir. I don’t have metrics to show a quantitative

increase in satisfaction. I can talk about the things that we have

done. I think the most important document that we have produced

is the Telework Guide which is on our Web site and was widely distributed to all Federal agencies. That guide does a couple of things.

The primary point is that it is directed straight at managers of

teleworkers and employees wanting to telework, and gives them

off-the-shoulder, straightforward information on how to maximize

that experience.

The other thing that the Telework Guide does is it talks about

issues of importance to agencies and furthering their missions and

helping them to integrate telework in some important, critical

areas, most specifically in their continuity of operations planning

and pandemic planning and in dealing with issues of security and

protection of data while working remotely.

That is the most important thing we have done. We meet with

agencies regularly. We are working with the CHCO Council, as Ms.

Steinhardt alluded, to develop matrix and to expand and discuss

issues of definitions, of matrix for measuring telework, and for

ways to promote a better understanding of what telework can accomplish, what the issues are involving telework, and how to deal

with them.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. It has come to the committee’s attention

that OPM gave notice to its employees that effective October 29,

2007 that your telework program has been suspended. Could you

explain to us why OPM has suspended its program?

Mr. GREEN. Well, that is not actually correct. The program is not

suspended; however, telework has been temporarily suspended or

will be temporarily suspended for some employees who are currently teleworking. The overall program is still active, but the employees who are involved in retirement claims operations will be

brought in on a temporary basis for a couple of reasons. One is, as

you know, we are going through a retirement systems modernization effort, and involved in that will have to be retraining of employees, and those employees will be needed, as well, to transition

from the current legacy systems to the new RSM.

But of more immediate concern to Director Springer and to managers at OPM is the security of personal identifiable information,

and the issue there is the retirement case files, which have a lot

of personal information, of course, about people, are taken home

and worked on when people telework. So management wants to

find ways of protecting that information, and once that is done

then there will be a re-emergence of telework, I am sure.

I think, frankly, that RSM will be an alternate, huge help in protecting data, because we will be in the electronic mode and there

won’t be this same reliance on paper in the future.

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Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. So, at best, one could then say that there

is a temporary suspension of some aspects of the program while it

undergoes review to make adjustments that OPM feels is necessary?

Mr. GREEN. Yes, sir. Exactly.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. All right. Let me just ask Mr.

Kaczmarczyk, what policies has the GSA put in place to help ensure that personally identifiable information is adequately protected and how can you assure that agency networks are adequately protected when people are doing telework?

Mr. KACZMARCZYK. Sure. Well, as an agency we annually inventory all of our IT systems that deal with personally identifiable information to make sure that the program managers are aware of

their responsibilities.

As far as teleworkers go, teleworkers, of course, receive IT security training as teleworkers, but also as agency employees, because

we are dealing with the same systems in the office that we are

dealing with when we work from home, so everybody gets annual

IT training, everybody is aware of the issues, and there are technological solutions for teleworkers with virtual private networks so

you can work at home or from a telework center securely and

maintain the same security over personally identifiable information

from a remote location as you can in the office.

The general answer is that the policies are in place, the technology is there to support it, and the issue is the same, whether

you are working from the office or working from another location.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. And you are comfortable that this is

working well and will continue to work well?

Mr. KACZMARCZYK. In GSA, yes.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you very much.

I am going to stop and yield to Mr. Marchant.

Mr. MARCHANT. This question will be for any of the three panelists. Tracking worker productivity while under the telework program seems to vary between agencies and seems to be the major

issue when going into teleworking by supervisors and the administration. Which agency do you believe has established the fairest

system to the employee and to the agency in tracking worker productivity? Or is there a working system out there to track productivity?

Mr. GREEN. I would like to take a stab at that, if I may. OPM

has advocated for a number of years, and it is not unusual in doing

so, that managers manage by results. Those results can be measured by using performance standards that track results and not

processor or personnel aspects. So those results can be measured

whether a person is working at the office, remotely at a telework

center, or wherever. Therefore, that is really the answer for a manager that is concerned about whether the employee is working

when the manager is watching them or not watching them. What

did they accomplish? Did they meet their objectives?

Ms. STEINHARDT. If I can add on to that, I completely agree with

Mr. Green. The real issue is creating management cultures that

are focused on results, on what our goals are and what we need

to accomplish, and not where a person is and whether you can see

them.

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But that is exactly why we feel so strongly about the telework,

the way the telework program is being managed now, because you

really can’t manage for results until you have clear goals for what

you are trying to accomplish with telework.

If you want to increase recruitment and retention, if you want

to improve employee morale, you need to have goals for those and

you need to use telework as a tool that can help you accomplish

them. You need to set performance expectations for managers so

that they know what they are being held accountable for. You need

to cascade those expectations down to individual staff so that they

know what they are expected to do.

Telework is just one way to operate. It really needs to be viewed

in the context of what the agency is trying to accomplish.

Mr. KACZMARCZYK. I agree with that.

Mr. MARCHANT. Thank you. Go ahead.

Mr. KACZMARCZYK. I agree with the two witnesses. There are

good managers and bad managers, there are productive employees

and less-than-productive employees, and issues are the same no

matter where the work is being carried out. Sometimes, as a way

of maybe discouraging telework, you will hear that maybe a manager requires a teleworker to report in advance exactly everything

he or she is going to work on for that 1 day at home. You wouldn’t

dream of asking that the other 4 days that the person is in the office. We need to have the mind set that the work is independent

from the place where it is done.

Mr. MARCHANT. OK. Thank you.

Mr. KACZMARCZYK. Thanks.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Mr. Sarbanes.

Mr. SARBANES. Thank you.

Can you describe what it means, I guess Mr. Green, when you

talk about training somebody in teleworking? Just give me a sense

of what you envision. What does it mean to train a person in

telework or offer them best practices, or what have you?

Mr. GREEN. Certainly. Most of it is rather mundane, frankly. It

is things like, again, managing to results, and that an employee

understands that they are responsible for their work, and that

doesn’t change, whether they are working remotely or working in

the office. They have a responsibility to do their job. I mean, that

is basically it.

The other things, though, are practically things like there should

be a safety evaluation done of the work site, whether it is at home

or the telework center, to make sure that they are working in a

safe and secure environment; that information they do bring home

or use on their computer, whether it is the VPN side or not, is protected; that there is an understanding—and we recommend written

telework agreements to support this—that there is an understanding between the manager and the employee as to when they will

be teleworking, how they will be able to communicate with each

other while teleworking, and what the expectations are, not necessarily a blow-by-blow minute of what I am going to be doing

while I am teleworking, but generally what I will be working on

and, as I say, most especially being able to communicate with the

employee during the day.

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Mr. SARBANES. So, Ms. Steinhardt, I guess the concept of the

manager being trained in telework is as important as the employee

being trained. And would you regard it as useful to think in terms

of there being kind of a transition period or having workers transition to telecommuting status during which transition they would be

understanding better the managing for results imperative, and so

forth?

Ms. STEINHARDT. That is a good question. I don’t know that I

would envision necessarily a transition period. Clearly, managers

need to know what the expectations are, as well, but I think the

key here is really creating a culture within the organization. That

obviously is going to take a while to occur. But it needs to be that

everyone in an organization needs to understand that they are

working toward something. Telework shouldn’t be regarded as an

employee reward. That is not what it is about at all. It is a way

to get work done, and it needs to be viewed as a tool to accomplish

some organizational goal.

Managers do need to understand that, but it is part of a larger

kind of change in the way that they view their work. And managers need to be held accountable for what the organization is trying to accomplish through telework. It is not just the employee; it

is managers, as well.

Mr. SARBANES. Thank you. And Mr. Kaczmarczyk, is there a difference between a telework center and a satellite work location? I

am trying to understand. In other words, could you have a satellite

office that, itself, was the hub of telecommuters who were working

from home, as distinguished from a telework center that people go

to during the day and then they are teleworking from that center

to the main agency location? Or am I dancing on the head of a pin

here?

Mr. KACZMARCZYK. No. Satellite centers are more common in the

private sector than in the Government, but a satellite center might

be set up by a corporation if they had a concentration of employees

in a geographic area a certain distance from the main office, and

then those employees would report to that satellite center to work

every day.

Now, if those responsibilities included some kind of client service

or sales function, maybe the satellite center is their main office and

they do ‘‘telecommute’’ while they are on the road. I guess they

could also work from home, decide to work from home as well as

the satellite centers for continuity of operations.

The concept of the telework center is that every agency can use

them, so you have 1 day a week, 2 days a week, different Federal

employees from different agencies using a center that is geographically convenient to their home.

Mr. SARBANES. OK. All right. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you.

Ms. Steinhardt, you have placed a great deal of emphasis on having clear goals as a way to facilitate the utilization of teleworking.

Do you think that it would be very helpful to have Governmentwide goals that every agency would be expected to adhere to or

pursue, as well as individual agency goals that would be left to the

latitude of the agencies, themselves?

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Ms. STEINHARDT. That is a really good question. I would say yes,

there are some goals that are not necessarily unique to an agency.

Some are. For example, recruitment and retention, employee morale—those I think are related. Certainly every agency has some effort to attract a skilled work force, to maintain high employee morale. But the conditions vary agency to agency.

But commute time, for example, I would think that all agencies,

that is a Government-wide issue, and so reducing congestion, reducing energy use might be Government-wide goals. They are not

specific to any one agency. That is just by way of example.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. In your testimony you also mention

awareness training as a way of helping facilitate movement. Are

you aware of any results or how much help that might have been

or appear to be?

Ms. STEINHARDT. I am not aware that there have been any kinds

of evaluations there. I would say, just anecdotally, based on GAO’s

own experience, there clearly needs to be clear guidance on what

telework is and under what conditions it is available to employees

and the kinds of procedures, rules, policies they need to follow.

But I think one of the best measures to promote telework is actual experience with teleworking, and particularly among staff who

believe that it would be helpful to them on an intermittent basis,

you know, where they might occasionally want to telework. Once

people become familiar with it, both employees and managers, it

seems to be much more widely accepted. People know how to use

it, and then people may actually start using telework on a more

regular basis.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Mr. Kaczmarczyk, you mention in your

testimony that you will propose legislation to address travel pay associated with long-distance telework. Could you share some more

thinking about that?

Mr. KACZMARCZYK. Yes. This is mostly based on the experience

of an agency such as Patent and Trademark Office, that employs

a lot of full-time teleworkers from other locations, and they find

that—well, PTO is always one of the best examples because they

have cases and processing, and you have widgets that you can

measure for productivity, so they can demonstrate that people who

work from home actually produce more widgets, get through more

cases over the course of a week than people who are in the office,

so they have the opportunity to hire people who have the right skill

set but who live elsewhere out of the Washington, DC, area or who

would like to move out of the Washington, DC, area.

So, for example, if somebody lived in San Francisco and wanted

to telecommute full time out of their home to PTO in Crystal City,

that can be done. The issue becomes if the person needs to come

into the office periodically for training or orientation. That then becomes a travel expense that the agency has to pay because their

home office is San Francisco and not in Crystal City.

Now, for one person it is not a big deal, but if you had several

hundred people in the situation and you had to bring them all in

periodically for orientation or training or just for a face to face

meeting, it could be a considerable extra travel expense to the

agency, so it is felt that acts as a deterrent to encouraging these

types of virtual work arrangements.

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Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. It seems to me that Administrator Doan

is a bit more aggressive than some other agency directors and

agency heads and has actually laid out some pretty aggressive

ideas and goals. Does this include the establishment of telework

centers, as well?

Mr. KACZMARCZYK. She is very much interested in promoting

telework centers. The first step is to increase the utilization of our

existing 14 centers, and she plans to telecommute herself at each

one of them and to invite other senior agency leaders to join here

on these days and see for themselves how it is.

She also plans for GSA to centralize the funding for telework

centers so that there will be a pot of money that will buy a certain

number of seats, and then GSA managers won’t have a financial

constraint, themselves. It won’t come out of their program budget.

They can take advantage of the telework centers.

Once we get the current 14 telework centers fully utilized, then

we would be happy to look at other locations, as warranted.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you very much.

Mr. Marchant, do you have any additional questions?

Mr. MARCHANT. I don’t have any additional questions for this

panel. Thank you.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Mr. Sarbanes, do you have any?

Mr. SARBANES. Just a couple, real quick.

Are you aware of any agencies that have advanced enough

through this that they are actually in their recruitment of new employees holding this out as one of the options that is available as

a way of motivating the hirings?

Mr. Chairman, I ask that because I know that the Partnership

for Public Service just launched this major effort to recruit, I think

in the next couple of years, 200,000 or so mission critical Federal

employees. I would imagine that the ability to hold that out as an

opportunity to folks might help with recruitment, so I was curious

about that.

Ms. STEINHARDT. If I can offer GAO as an example——

Mr. SARBANES. Sure.

Ms. STEINHARDT [continuing]. We include telework, flexible work

arrangements including telework, as part of our recruitment materials, and we actually administer a survey to new staff to find out

the kinds of things that attract them to the agency, and those flexible work arrangements are among the top 10 reasons, so they remain a key part of our recruitment and retention strategy.

Mr. SARBANES. Great.

Mr. GREEN. OPM, itself, includes teleworking capability in its recruitment efforts. I would also point out, in my testimony I speak

a little bit about the efforts of the U.S. International Trade Commission and how they are using telework as a recruitment tool, as

well. And there are other examples.

Mr. KACZMARCZYK. Administrator Doan has required that all the

managers go through all the position descriptions in the entire

agency and designate them as to whether they are basically eligible

or not for telework, and then as vacancies come up against those

position descriptions the actual job announcement will note that it

is a telework-eligible position.

Mr. SARBANES. Great. Thank you.

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Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you very much.

Let me thank this panel. We appreciate your being here, your

testimony, and you are excused. Thank you.

While we are preparing for panel three I will go ahead with the

introduction of our panelists.

Ms. Margaret J.A. Peterlin was sworn in as Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce, Intellectual Property, and Deputy Director of

the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, USPTO, in April 2007. As

Deputy Director of the USPTO, she administers the laws of granting patents and trademarks and the day-to-day management of the

$1.9 billion agency and its more than 8,500 employees.

Mr. Lee J. Lofthus is the Assistant Attorney General for the Department of Justice. He is responsible for Department-wide financial reporting, budget formulation and execution, accounting operations, assets future fund, operational support, procurement, and

debt management support. He also oversees Department-wide facilities management, human resources, business services, and planning.

Let me welcome both of you. It is our custom and tradition, if

you would stand to be sworn in and raise your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. The record will show that the witnesses

answered in the affirmative.

We thank you very much for being here with us. We will proceed

and begin with Ms. Peterlin.

STATEMENTS OF MARGARET J.A. PETERLIN, DEPUTY UNDER

SECRETARY OF COMMERCE FOR INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

AND DEPUTY DIRECTOR, U.S. PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE; AND LEE J. LOFTHUS, ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL FOR ADMINISTRATION, DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE

STATEMENT OF MARGARET J.A. PETERLIN

Ms. PETERLIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member

Marchant, Mr. Sarbanes, and the subcommittee and distinguished

guests.

I appreciate the opportunity to be here today to discuss the

USPTO’s telework programs. I appreciate the opportunity to discuss them because it is very important that leaders of agencies

work to balance home life and work requirements.

If I may take a moment, I would just like to recognize my sister,

Megan Quarter, and my fiance, Dan Kinnery, who often remind me

to make sure that I have a work life balance.

On behalf of the agency, I thank the subcommittee for taking a

careful look at telework issues in the 110th Congress and look forward to working with you in the future.

The success of the USPTO telework programs is driven by toplevel agency support and clearly defined then communicated performance measures. We trust our employees to perform their responsibilities without micromanaging observations. These are fundamental principles that work well in the telework environment.

For very practical reasons, the USPTO is changing the boundaries of old workplace patterns. Our vision is for our employees to

perform their responsibilities regardless of their physical location.

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As a result, the telework program has led to improved employee retention, higher productivity, and increased morale.

Over the past 10 years we have identified a number of important

guiding principles. These are our lessons for creating and sustaining a successful two program. They are: First, a successful telework

program is contingent upon careful planning. We started small,

with a pilot of only 18 examining attorneys, and continually assessed our progress along the way. Over the course of the last 10

years, we have expanded our telework initiative and currently have

3,609 employees participating, which is 40.7 percent of total positions at the USPTO.

Second, the USPTO management views telework as a corporate

business strategy and human capital flexibility.

Third, our managers build and maintain a relationship of trust

with employees, whether they are working on the Alexandria campus or at home. Since the nature of patent and trademark work

lends itself to telework, our managers are very comfortable with results-based management techniques. They also understand the relevance of devising and clearly communicating performance measures. Managers and employees set and agree upon a list of goals

ensuring a mutual understanding of expectations.

Fourth, involving labor unions in the development of telework

programs engages represented employees and increases the likelihood of union support. At the beginning of our first pilot program,

we initiated a labor and management working group to develop

guidelines, procedures, and selection criteria for telework participation. Today the group meets on a regular basis addressing arising

telework program issues.

Fifth, at the USPTO we believe that training and education are

a necessary precondition for and sustaining requirement of a successful program. Before being granted the privilege of teleworking,

employees receive non-IT and IT management training.

Sixth, having a talented telework coordinator at the USPTO has

proven extremely beneficial to our organization. Telework is a winning proposal with numerous benefits. For many employees,

telework means less time on the road, which also translates to

lower auto emissions, gas consumption, and reduced traffic congestion. USPTO employees, alone, who telework collectively save more

than 613,000 gallons of gas per year and save more than $1.8 million annually in fuel costs. Additionally, there is combined reduction in emissions of more than 9,600 tons per year.

For the agency, the benefits have included: retention of seasons,

high-quality employees; maximizing use of space; avoiding the cost

of acquiring additional real estate as the agency has grown; and

maintaining high performance. Performance has been measured

over the years, and we have been able to compare our performance

and quality standards both inside and outside the telework program.

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Over the past decade, the USPTO has realized the benefits of implementing a robust telework program and has demonstrated that

telework is a business strategy that works for our employees, our

agency, and the economy.

I thank you very much for the opportunity to testify before the

subcommittee on this issue.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Peterlin follows:]

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Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you very much.

Before I go to Mr. Lofthus, I would like to just take a moment

and acknowledge the presence of two dear friends of mine who

stopped by. Dr. Herbert B. Slutski, who is the retired deputy commissioner of the health department for the city of Chicago, retired

university professor, and management consultant, and his wonderful wife, Maureen, who is a retired educator. We are delighted that

you both stopped by. Thank you very much.

Mr. Lofthus, would you proceed?

STATEMENT OF LEE J. LOFTHUS

Mr. LOFTHUS. Thank you. Good morning, Chairman Davis, Ranking Member Marchant, and distinguished members of the subcommittee. I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you this

morning to discuss telework.

The Justice Department was one of the earliest agencies to initiate a telework pilot program through our participation in the 1990

Federal flexible workplace pilot known as flexiplace. That early

program, developed by the Office of Personnel Management and

the General Services Administration, was established in response

to a recommendation by the President’s Council on Management

Improvement and was implemented with support from the White

House, Congress, and the major unions representing the Federal

employees. It was designed to test alternatives to the traditional

work environment.

Since that time, DOJ organizations have continued to look for opportunities to expand the use of telework where it supports the Department’s mission; however, an inherent challenge to DOJ’s ability to expand telework is the law enforcement, national security,

and intelligence gathering nature of what we do.

We have always recognized the practical reality that certain positions—correctional officers in prison, deputy marshals in duty in a

courtroom, and evidence technicians, for example—must perform

their duties at specific locations.

The Department’s overall telework participation rate is currently

at 4 percent of eligible staff. Eight of our non-law-enforcement components have participation over 6 percent, and our law enforcement

entities continue to look for ways to utilize telework flexibilities.

The Justice organizations with the top four highest participation

rates are the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services

[COPS], at 30 percent; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms,

and Explosives at 21 percent; the Office of Justice Programs at 13

percent; and our Civil Division at 12 percent. Additionally, my own

organization has a participation rate of over 10 percent.

Let me briefly describe some of these programs.

ATF has 504 employees, or 21 percent of its eligible work force,

teleworking. ATF’s success is, in part, attributed to a comprehensive communication plan that educates employees and managers on

how and when telework can best be used to meet the ATF mission

and support ATF employee efforts to balance work and family responsibilities. ATF regularly surveys its managers to determine the

effectiveness of telework arrangements and to obtain ideas on how

to further enhance the program.

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The Department’s civil division is comprised of over 1,100 attorneys, paralegals, and support staff, and civil has been working successfully to make telework a viable option across the division.

In my organization, as the head of Justice Management Division,

I can report that we have more than 98 employees on telework,

over 10 percent of our total JMD work force. My organization has

everything from attorneys to accounting staff paying bills to librarians to painters and the plumbers, so we are a good example of a

highly diversified organization where telework works well in some

jobs and less so in others.

Last week I discussed telework with my senior managers and directors as a prelude to supervisory training on telework flexibilities

we are doing throughout November in my organization. We also

helped facilitate department-wide awareness about telework

through our DOJ work life Web site. On this site, DOJ managers

and employees can learn about telework flexibilities and how to

participate.

Telework is an important part of three major Department initiatives: human capital as it relates to recruiting and retaining a diverse and talented work force for the 21st century; continuity of operations [COOP]; and our pandemic planning efforts.

In closing, at Justice we are trying to use telework where it

makes sense in a law enforcement and national security organization. At the same time, we are trying to use telework without opening ourselves to increasing cyber-threats to our systems, networks,

and the critical national security, law enforcement, and personally

identifiable information contained in those systems and networks.

Mr. Chairman, once again thank you for the opportunity to speak

this morning. I would be pleased to answer any questions you or

the panel may have.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Lofthus follows:]

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Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr.

Lofthus. We will proceed with questions.

Let me just begin with you, Ms. Peterlin.

What position classifications are eligible to telework at the Patent and Trademark Office?

Ms. PETERLIN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We have 17 programs

at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, because we have found

that, based on the work that our employees are doing, we may need

some flexibility. But if you look at our two largest programs, the

eligibility requirements are quite consistent, and that is the employee needs to be on a full-time status, they need to have a fully

successful rating, they need to demonstrate the ability to work

independently, they need to have no performance or disciplinary

actions against them, and they need to have high-speed broadband

internet at home.

So those generally who would be ineligible then, sir, would be

those whose primary responsibilities include interaction with internal employees or customers.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. And so you have a level of comfort that

the individuals who are eligible are going to be able to function at

a pretty high level without supervision in a sense, or certain level

of supervision?

Ms. PETERLIN. Yes, sir. Certainly at the USPTO it is our hope

that our managers are still engaged, very engaged with our employees who are teleworking, so that type of supervision would still

be ongoing.

In our trademarks business unit, that would mean you have full

signatory authority, that you can make the final determination

about whether a trademark, like Coca-Cola, should or should not

be registered, because we want to make sure that our employees

have the sufficient training and experience that we are setting

them up for success, and then everyone in our managers and our

employees participate in the title work training program, and that

gives us additional confidence.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. I wish all of my employees were like that.

I think that you have one of the more successful programs and activities. But could you also explain why the USPTO has been so

successful at teleworking?

Ms. PETERLIN. Yes, sir. I appreciate the question because I think

if you had called us to testify 10 years ago we would have a different story, sir. We would say that we are embarking on it and

we would only have had 18 examining attorneys. I think the reason

why 10 years later we are very grateful to be described as a success

story is because we have very carefully progressed, assessed the results. We started small, we assessed our results, we implemented

training, we implemented the necessary IT security, and we kept

pushing ourselves. We kept saying these results are great. We are

getting 99 percent of return on our surveys with employees saying,

I feel better about my job. We have productivity increases of 10

percent in our patents and trademark area. So we kept seeing excellent results as we became more and more confident over time.

So I think our success today is because we were willing to start,

and then the successes kept building one on the other.

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That being said, sir, certainly there have been challenges along

the way, and some managers needed to be brought to the issue and

some employees needed to gain comfort in teleworking.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. What advice would you give to other

agencies, if you had the opportunity to do so, to increase their

telework numbers?

Ms. PETERLIN. Sir, I think the best advice is always the advice

that taps into a specific experience that we have confidence in. For

us, that has been to have the necessary IT security structure in

place, have training for managers and employees, identify what the

management criteria will be.

If your organization is already managing by results, then you are

setting the necessary preconditions to have a successful telework

program. If it is managing by observation, then you probably don’t

have the necessary preconditions in place for teleworking.

So I would say start off by having a good management structure,

by managing by objectives, and that is successful for you whether

you are teleworking or not. Then engage your managers at every

level, both at the senior level of the organization and the first level

managers. Participate in the necessary training. Endorse that

training. Then start a program, start a pilot program, have assessment metrics for the program, survey the individuals, be willing to

make adjustments to your program, but then move out. Identify

the successes.

One success for the PTO, sir, if I may continue my answer, is

that we are hiring at the PTO, because of our strategic planning

in a situation where we found we were under-staffed, 1,200 examiners per year over 5 years. We have a beautiful new campus in

Alexandria, VA, which would still not hold the rate of increase that

we have found necessary for us to meet our requirements.

So without the telework program in place, we would not be able

to even hire sufficiently to meet our mission requirements, so teleworking for us is sort of a bottom line flexibility in order for us to

achieve our mission.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you very much.

I am going to stop and yield to Mr. Marchant.

Mr. MARCHANT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Do you have a defined, stated goal as to where you want to be

10 years from now as far as your telework program?

Ms. PETERLIN. Sir, what we are doing right now at the USPTO

is we are looking at whether or not we should move to a nationwide work force, which would have a distributed work force across

the United States.

On our patent side, most of our patent examiners have multiple

degrees. We have many Ph.D.s. The examination process is a very

rigorous process. Because we can’t make that job any easier, the

way to retain and attract talented people for us is to try to make

the job as flexible as possible.

So our stated goal right now is to look at what a nationwide

work force would look like. I think if you asked us maybe even a

year ago we would have said, teleworking is great. Since then we

have looked at it and said, teleworking may be an interim step to

a distributed work force as a nationwide work force, so that if a

major company has a layoff there will be many talented people that

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we would love to have working and recruiting at the USPTO, but

their church is in another State, their family is in another State,

and their kids are in high school in another State, and so if we can

give them an opportunity there, that benefits the USPTO and it

also develops the loyalty to an organization that we would like to

benefit from.

So I don’t know that our 10-year goal is teleworking as an end

goal. It may be teleworking as a means to a nationwide work force.

Mr. MARCHANT. If someone comes to you and they know that

they are obviously qualified for the job they are applying, and they

know that you would like to hire them, are they free to propose to

you the terms of their telework? Can they say, I will be happy to

take this job, but I want to telework 3 days a week? Are they free

to do that, or do you hire them based on them doing the job in the

office and then negotiate the telework with them?

Ms. PETERLIN. Thank you for the question. That is something

that we are looking at in terms of the types of flexibilities we can

have, because one of our pressures as an organization, as I mentioned to the chairman, is a real estate issue and whether or not

someone in the teleworking program, specifically in patents, would

still need a dedicated office space, or they would be involved in

shared office space.

Unless we are hiring someone who had retired from the PTO and

decided to come back—and we very fortunately have that. You will

be hearing from someone in the next panel, sir, who was in our

trademark side and then left, enjoyed a successful time in the private sector, and then decided to come back to the PTO and is teleworking. But there is an initial period of time, if you are not a return employee, an initial period of time so that you can have your

full signatory authority, or you have your certified exam passed on

the patent side before we have a telework relationship established.

That is, again, to make sure that we are setting our employees up

for success.

Mr. MARCHANT. OK.

Mr. Lofthus, the percentages you gave on your various departments, are most of those people on a 1-day? I mean, of the percentages you gave us that participate, what percentage of those are 1

day, 2 days, 3 days? Those percentages obviously were for any part

of the job that they telework, right?

Mr. LOFTHUS. Correct. At least half of those folks are on 1-daya-week telework schedules. There may be folks who work more

than 1 day a week. That may also be situational, meaning their

basic telework schedule may be 1 day a week, but if the situation

allows it, maybe their supervisor allows them to work an additional

day, that is more situational than the way we do the schedule.

Mr. MARCHANT. I think you probably recall last year or the year

before where someone that I think was involved in some kind of

a telework project at the VA had taken some hard files or had some

files at home that were stolen from their home. It was not good.

There is nothing good about it. Those are obviously some of the

drawbacks and some of the pitfalls of telework. You guys, since

that incident have you sat down and talked about it and said, OK,

this is something about telework that we can’t afford to have happen, and taken some corrective action?

86

Mr. LOFTHUS. That is something that concerns us. While we

want to encourage telework at the Department of Justice, we want

to do it even though we are a law enforcement organization where

some jobs simply are location specific and problem aren’t that suitable for telework. But, nonetheless, we want to encourage telework

wherever we can.

One of the barriers that I see, though, in all candor, is the fact

of information security and working with classified information.

The example that you point out is very much in our minds as we

deal with these issues.

When we look at the cyber threats that are out there now and

that are increasing, we want to make sure that we are not exposing

the agency and the information we have to risk as we expand

telework.

I think if you set the clock back a few years, I think it was very

easy for folks to say, well, I have a home computer and I will be

able to work from home and things will be just fine. Just having

a home computer I think is no longer just the way you need to look

at telework. Those home computers do insert an element of risk in

the agency operations. Certainly they do in an intelligence or national security operation.

We don’t control that security domain over your home computer

and since we don’t control that, that does introduce an element of

risk, and that is something that we want to be very vigilant when

we manage for those type of risks.

Mr. MARCHANT. Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Marchant.

Mr. Sarbanes.

Mr. SARBANES. Thank you.

You, Ms. Peterlin, talked about how you would bring people together, labor unions and management and so forth, and others to

tackle the challenges that have been presented with respect to telecommuting. Can you just give an example of something that came

up, a theme, a problem that was being identified kind of across the

board, if it was, that you were able to take on and push through

and now look back and say, We were able to move past that?

Ms. PETERLIN. Certainly. I will give you a current example, if I

may, and it is one that I think I confess we are still pushing

through and working past, but I think it is important to use this

example because it reveals how the team comes together.

We have technology centers at the USPTO that look at particular

types of innovation, and within those technology centers we have

then art units. We had an art unit that became a virtual art unit

where the art unit, its managers, and the examiners went home

and worked together virtually. There were still other people in the

technology center. So you had in some ways some people in the

same office teleworking and some still in the office, because we

were trying to test could we send an entire unit at this level home.

What we found is that we need to make sure that the people who

were still at the USPTO don’t carry all the burden of training the

new examiners that are on board, because we saw that—and this

is something that our union has raised to our attention and some

of the employees in the surveys raised to our attention—that peoVerDate 11-MAY-2000 14:00 Sep 15, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00090 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\43599.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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ple had an inclination to want to seek training from the person

that they could go next door to their office, and there was a little

bit of a barrier of thinking, oh, I don’t want to call them because

they are at home.

That, to me, raises just a management issue of going back and

saying, they are not at home, they are teleworking today, and they

want you to pick up the phone and talk to them.

This is an example of an issue. I think it is the type of issue you

are asking me to talk about.

Mr. SARBANES. Right.

Ms. PETERLIN. And I would say that we just finished the virtual

art unit pilot, so we just had this assessment about the fact that

some people are reluctant, just personally reluctant to reach out to

the teleworking trainer more so than the trainer that may be a few

doors down. And so we are going to approach that by talking to our

managers and saying, Look, it is important that you don’t have

that instinct, because that instinct is a bit artificial. The trainer at

home is confident and interested and wants to be involved in training, as well.

Mr. SARBANES. OK. That is a great example.

Either one can answer this question, or both. It picks up on what

Mr. Marchant was saying. As a practical matter, we talk about

telecommuting or teleworking, the definition qualifying based on 1

day a week or 2 days a week or 20 percent over 2 weeks, or whatever. But somebody gets into a good telecommuting arrangement,

is it not the case, practically speaking, that they are going to move

toward a kind of full-time telecommuting arrangement? Or am I

missing? Because, particularly in terms of saving space and other

things, I would imagine that, until you get to that kind of tipping

point, maybe you are not getting the benefit of it so much.

I am just curious across in both offices, across the work force

that is telecommuting, how many are in that full-time telecommuting category?

Mr. LOFTHUS. We don’t have many in the full-time telecommuting category yet. One of the things that is coming down the pike,

though, that I think will help in this area is the ability to track

telework and the job series of the folks that do telework and how

frequently they telework.

We at the Department of Justice or in the National Finance Center at the Department of Agriculture supporting our payroll systems, and they have a new system—or new to us—called Star Web,

and Star Web allows us to start tracking at a time and attendance

recordkeeping level, meaning a very detailed level, how often people are telecommuting, and we can really get now for the first time

really good statistics on who is doing it, how frequently they are

doing it, if the success of what they have already done allows them

to expand their use of telecommuting.

I think that gives us an advantage over the more anecdotal data

we had a couple of years ago, so I am looking forward to the fact

that we can use that kind of information that will help us target

other areas in the Department where telecommuting may be a viable option and people just haven’t looked at it yet in those areas.

Mr. SARBANES. OK.

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Ms. PETERLIN. Yes, sir. I have a lot of statistics in front of me,

and so I want to give you what I think might be the most useful

statistics.

We have found that it isn’t always the case that if you are teleworking 1 day now that you will migrate to 4 days, because what

we are trying to do is the reason why we have 17 programs at the

USPTO is because we find that, depending on the business needs

of the particular mission, your job may allow you to telework 1 day

a week.

We have customer call center personnel who work 4 days a week,

but the requirements of their job would allow that, if they consolidate administrative type of work into 1 day, they can telework during that day.

Then we have other positions where they can telework 4 days a

week.

So right now in our trademarks examining attorneys working

from home 4 days a week, we have 246 examining attorneys working at home 4 days a week. We have 26 who work at home 3 days

a week, 7 2 days a week, and 55 1 day a week.

So, depending on the position and the requirements of the position, that does influence the number of days where teleworking

makes sense, which does impact the return on investment that the

agency might——

Mr. SARBANES. Are the ones that are working 4 days a week,

does that mean 1 day a week they are coming in to the main location, or they are just working 4 days a week according to a flex

schedule?

Ms. PETERLIN. They are working 4 days a week from home, and

so 1 day a week they would be in the office. There is a requirement

that folks come in for 1 hour per week to establish their duty station for pay purposes.

Mr. SARBANES. I see. OK.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Sarbanes.

Mr. Lofthus, recognizing that the Department of Justice is a law

enforcement agency, isn’t there a large number of law enforcement

positions that could be eligible for telecommute?

Mr. LOFTHUS. Mr. Chairman, yes, I think that is true. I think

there are law enforcement positions that are suitable for telework.

But what we have learned is it depends on an individual’s duties,

and I can give you an example of that.

At Justice we have a job series called investigator, criminal investigators, and we have investigators across our law enforcement

components. At the ATF we happen to have a large number, I

think nearly 400, investigators who are telecommuting, and they

are doing that very successfully. These are investigators that go

out into industry and they do reviews and they write reports. ATF

has found it very viable for those investigators to do that report

writing and assimilate their information from telecommuting centers or from their homes, so that is working very well.

At the same time, in that same broad job series, investigator or

criminal investigator, we have investigators at DEA and FBI who

have really quite different duties. They may be working on case investigations that involve informant information, may involve undercover operations, may involved classified information. So those

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investigators really have duties that are more site specific and they

come into the office for the protection of the data.

So you have similar-sounding jobs with actually quite different

duties. So when we look at our opportunities for teleworking, what

we found is we have to go below the job series and really look at

the specific duties of the individuals.

But your point is an excellent one. What we have learned, again,

I think, from some of the new data we are getting, is the opportunities for attorneys—the civil division example—the opportunity for

attorneys to telework is one that I think there is some potential

there. We have had pockets. My organization has a small number

of attorneys, but some of those telework. Civil Division has been

successful. The U.S. Attorneys Organization has attorneys that

telework. So there are people in the Justice/law enforcement environment that can telework, and we are looking for those opportunities.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. The Department of Justice has some innovative programs for telework, but we think that some of it bureaus are lagging. Recently the ATF gave a group of 50 employees

in the position of legal instrument examiner the choice of relocating

to West Virginia or leaving employment at ATF. West Virginia

would be a 3-hour commute for many of these employees. Telework

was not an option made available to them.

The reason given is it would require automation of form processing, which ATF has claimed would cost $2.7 million. Could you explain how the ATF arrived at $2.7 million to automate the work

of the legal instrument examiners and, aside from money, what

would prevent the legal instrument examiners from teleworking?

Mr. LOFTHUS. Mr. Chairman, that case is one where I would prefer to be able to get back to you on the specifics. I do know that

ATF was concerned that the cost of any system improvements

which would be needed to make telework a viable option there. But

if I may, I would prefer to get back to you with specifics.

That falls again in the category where I think we are serious

about looking for opportunities to make these telework options

available to our staff, but sometimes there are barriers.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you.

In a letter sent on May 7, 2007, the subcommittee asked the Department of Justice whether the agency excludes any categories of

employees from teleworking. DOJ provided a long list of job categories covering over 47,000 employees that are excluded from

telework. DOJ said these jobs are excluded because they require

handling secure materials or performing onsite activities.

Just some of the categories of jobs that are not eligible for

telework at the Department of Justice include: building maintenance, intelligence analysts, security specialists, supply program

manager, language specialist, legal clerk, and paralegal specialist.

That is just a sample that DOJ identified, and actually identified

many more jobs that are excluded from telework.

I can understand why it would be difficult for some of these employees to work from home. For example, an employee performing

building maintenance obviously needs to be present at the building

in order to perform maintenance on it. But DOJ’s list includes a

number of jobs where, at least based on the job titles, it seems like

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the employees may be able to perform at least some of their duties

from an alternate work site.

Do legal clerks and paralegals need to be present all of the time?

Can’t they perform research and other work from alternate work

sites? And what happens if an employee in one of these job categories asks to telework? Is that employee automatically excluded

based on his or her job title, or does DOJ look at specific responsibilities and activities of each employee who would like to

telework?

Mr. LOFTHUS. We need to look at the specific duties. I don’t want

to have a Justice environment where we have such sweeping decisions made to exclude people based on job series, alone, because of

the things I have already pointed out, in the sense that criminal

investigators or investigators may have the same job title but very

different duties, so I think we need to look at the underlying duties.

While we did have a long list of jobs that were excluded, 59,000

jobs were deemed eligible for telecommuting. If one were to take

an extremely restrictive view of the eligible positions, you might

say only 40,000 jobs at Justice would be eligible for telecommuting.

I think we have tried to be optimistic and include as many jobs

as we can to make them eligible, which is how we got up to the

59,000 number of eligible positions. So I think we are trying to give

telecommuting the benefit of a doubt and not exclude people based

on job title, alone.

I think if you look at the fact that we have 22,000 agents, we

have 30,000 plus correctional officers, there is 50,000 positions,

alone, that one could say those you just can’t telecommute. Correctional officers may be one thing where you have to be present at

the institution and there at the prison, but the agents, we do have

a small number of agents where we are experimenting with telecommuting. I think that is an example where we are trying not to

exclude people automatically just on a series title, but give people

an opportunity to try it, see if it works, see if the supervisors like

it.

As some of the other panelists have talked about, results are

what really matter here. If we can do this and get good results,

then I think our position would be we want to be open to that type

of consideration for our employees.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you very much.

Ms. Peterlin, as I noted earlier, Representatives Marchant, Waxman, Davis, and I sent a letter on May 7, 2007, to 25 departments

and agencies requesting current information on the agencies’

telework information. In response to that letter, we received general information from the Department of Commerce, but no specific

information on the agencies within the Department, including the

Patent and Trademark Office.

Given the apparent success of PTO’s program, it would be helpful

to have more specific data in order to compare it with other agency

programs. Would you be willing to submit for the record answers

to the questions we asked in our May 7th letter?

Ms. PETERLIN. Yes, sir, we would be delighted to.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you both very much.

Mr. Sarbanes, do you have any additional questions?

91

Mr. SARBANES. Just real quick.

At the USPTO, is there any expense that you, as a policy, are

willing to incur with respect to outfitting a telecommuter’s home office, or do you put that burden exclusively on the employee?

Ms. PETERLIN. No, sir. As we are looking at our cost/benefit analysis, and somehow this is always an X factor of the retention value

to the employee, the morale, the productivity increases that we see,

we outfit their home offices. And we actually also pay for the cost

of the telework training for the manager and the employee.

Mr. SARBANES. OK.

Ms. PETERLIN. But we still find that cost/benefit analysis leads

to benefit for the agency.

Mr. SARBANES. The two objections that I can think of, or the

things that I focus on the most as obstacles or the resistance to

teleworking, are, one, this whole productivity question. I am completely assured by the testimony that if the managing to results is

done properly, that is easily overcome as an objection. The other

I guess would just be this less tangible esprit d’corps dimension,

the notion that people are far-flung and you don’t see them. This

is the good part of face time. There is a bad part of face time,

right? The good part of face time is that you see the people and

it helps to congeal spirit within the office, and so forth.

Can you speak to that? I mean, I guess the extent everybody is

teleworking in your office is still coming in to a central location for

some period of time during the week. It offers opportunities for

meetings and other group activities, if you will, that can address

that issue of esprit d’corps, but maybe you could just talk about

that briefly. And Mr. Lofthus, as well, if you would like.

Ms. PETERLIN. Yes, sir. I appreciate your focus on that question

because it is a focus that a lot of our senior management has spent

time on. What are the necessary collaboration tools? Our examining attorneys and our patent examiners need collaboration tools

and search tools in order to do the work that they perform, and in

order to complete this examination, but they also need collaboration tools in order to be able to connect.

I think this is something where you don’t ever reach a plateau.

It is always going to be a management issue. How do you connect

with someone who is living in Michigan if the main office is in Alexandria, VA? I think some of that has to do with the comfort of

the employee and feeling that they can connect through the collaboration tools.

Some of the tools that we have are as simple or as basic as telephone, voice mail, e-mail, but we are doing more and more and

hold a town hall. In our trademarks area we had a video town hall

so that the teleworkers actually logged on at home on their computers and they had an all-hands meeting or a town hall meeting.

So I think making more frequent use of town hall meetings or

using instant messaging, you have to use the IT tools that currently exist, and then you also have to have managers who will,

just as a good manager does swing by a cubicle every now and then

just to see what is going on, swings by electronically the employee’s

cubicle.

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But I think that is a challenge. I think it is OK for it to be a

challenge, to recognize it as a challenge, and then you just have to

figure out how to reduce the impact of that challenge.

Mr. SARBANES. OK. Thank you.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Sarbanes.

I note that we have been joined by Mr. Cummings. I know when

you have a work schedule and load as heavy as his, it is difficult

to be in three or four places at one time, so thank you, Mr.

Cummings.

Did you have any questions or comments?

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, first of all,

for acknowledging my schedule. I appreciate that. And I will be

very brief. I just have one question.

We are finding that, despite the legislative leeway to doing so,

agencies are not promoting telework programs as broadly as I

would think they would have. Are there certain barriers to this?

And is there a legislative solution?

Mr. LOFTHUS. If you don’t mind, I will go first.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Sure.

Mr. LOFTHUS. In terms of barriers, I think at the Department of

Justice what we have found so far, other than inherent law enforcement issues where there is a deputy marshal who has to be

on duty in a courtroom, so if you look past what I will call those

inherent site location jobs to the jobs that are more suitable for

telework, you need tone at the top where senior leadership at your

agency or department says that telework is an important program

for the agency, it is important for the operation of the agency, and

it is important for the quality of work life for our staff, so you need

positive tone at the top.

You need open-minded supervisors. What we are finding at the

DOJ, as telework expands and as we see pockets of success—for instance, with our investigators at ATF, with the attorneys in the

civil division, with other jobs—as you see pockets of success, I

think that breaks down barriers in the rest of the Department

where people may have said, Well, I don’t think such and such a

job is very suitable. We can demonstrate otherwise.

So it comes back to being able to have open-minded managers

and people who are behind the program and that are supportive of

it. That is what we are finding at Justice.

Ms. PETERLIN. What I would like to add to that list, sir, and

what has been a primary issue to us, one of the barriers to

telework is having the development of a reliable and secure computer system so that our folks could actually get immediate access

to the same documents that they would have been able to have access to were they in their office, and that they are able to download

them reliably.

So because we were able to start small years ago, we have been

actually able to anticipate and include in our program designs and

upgrades that the system would accept teleworking and would be

able to provide that sort of instant response, high band-width capability, and security needs.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Cummings.

93

Mr. Issa, did you have any questions or comments?

Mr. ISSA. No, sir. Not at this time.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Well, we want to thank both of you very

much. We certainly appreciate your presence here this morning

and we appreciate your participation.

Thank you, and you are excused.

Mr. LOFTHUS. Thank you.

Ms. PETERLIN. Thank you.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. As we prepare to hear from our last

panel, let me just begin with the introduction of our witnesses.

Mr. John Wilke is a Trademark Examining Attorney with the

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. In 1981 he left the USPTO to

take a staff position at General Mills in Minneapolis as an attorney. Mr. Wilke works for the USPTO out of his tome in Long

Grove, IL, under the office’s extended geographic telework program.

Mr. Steve O’Keeffe is the founder and executive director of

Telework Exchange, a public/private partnership focused on promoting the adoption of telework.

Ms. Ann Bamesberger is vice president of SUN Microsystems

Open Work Service Group, an organization focused on creating an

infrastructure that supports the increasingly global dispersed and

mobile work force.

And Mr. Haywood J. Talcove is vice president of public sector

americas for Juniper networks. With his teams, Mr. Talcove supports the networking and security needs of Government through

his company’s broad range of high-performance technology solutions.

I want to thank you all for being here.

It is the custom and tradition of this committee, as well as others, that all witnesses are sworn in, so would you stand and raise

your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. The record will show that the witnesses

answered in the affirmative. We thank you all very much.

We will proceed and will begin with Mr. Wilke.

STATEMENTS OF JOHN WILKE, TRADEMARK EXAMINING ATTORNEY, PTO TELEWORKER; STEPHEN W.T. O’KEEFFE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, TELEWORK EXCHANGE; ANN

BAMESBERGER, VICE PRESIDENT, OPEN WORK SERVICES

GROUP, SUN MICROSYSTEMS, INC.; AND HAYWOOD J.

TALCOVE, VICE PRESIDENT, PUBLIC SECTOR AMERICAS, JUNIPER NETWORKS, INC.

STATEMENT OF JOHN WILKE

Mr. WILKE. Thank you, Chairman Davis, Ranking Member

Marchant, honorable committee members, and distinguished

guests. My name is John Wilke. I am a Trademark Attorney Examiner at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. It is my honor and

privilege to testify before this committee this morning.

I have been asked to testify because I am a trademark office teleworker and I am also participating in a USPTO pilot program

94

which allows employees to work from geographically remote locations.

In my case, I work for the PTO from my home in Long Grove,

IL, just north of Chicago. I am testifying from my home office

today. This is my lovely basement here.

I first worked as a trademark examiner at the USPTO from 1979

to 1981. This was my first attorney position and I learned a great

deal from those first few years at the office.

I left the PTO to work as a trademark attorney in private industry for the next 23 years. I eventually became trademark counsel

for Monsanto Co. and then patent and trademark counsel for

American Tool Companies, another Chicago company. During that

time I was elected to the Board of Directors of the International

Trademark Association, and I served as chairman of several ITA

committees, including the ITA Patent and Trademark Office Committee.

Following the takeover of American Tool, I considered several

trademark positions in law firms and other companies, but when

the PTO offered me this position I was very glad to return to the

office.

I worked at PTO headquarters in Alexandria for over a year,

really becoming re-qualified, and when I became eligible for the office’s telework program I requested that I be allowed to work from

my home here in Chicago.

Fortunately, the office was able to accommodate that request as

part of a new geographic expansion pilot program, and I have been

working remotely from here since last January.

The office’s telework program has truly been a wonderful blessing for me. It has allowed me to remain close to my family and

friends and has allowed me to participate more fully in the life of

my community here.

My family and I have lived in the Chicago area for nearly 20

years. My wife, Ophie, and I raised our three children in Buffalo

Grove. They all graduated from Stephenson High School in Lincolnshire. Our son, Sean, went to Columbia College in Chicago, and

Matthew went to DePauw. They both now live and work in Chicago

itself.

Ophie works at Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge. We

are active members of the St. Mary Parish in Buffalo Grove. I sing

in the choir. She is a eucharistic minister. We have a lot of friends

here that we have made over the 20 years we have been here.

The telework program with PTO has made it possible for me to

work for the office and at the same time stay near our children and

among our long-time friends. It has truly enhanced the quality of

my life and the life of my family.

I believe the telework program has also been of great benefit to

the Patent and Trademark Office, itself. Thanks to this program,

I was able to return and actually make a valuable contribution to

the trademark examining operation. Soon after my return I was

given the responsibility in assisting in the training of new examining attorneys, and I have served as a mentor for six young attorneys so far. I have also maintained the highest production and

quality levels, and have achieved a rating of outstanding for every

rating period since my return.

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Last month, in fact, I was recognized by the American Intellectual Property Law Association with an award that was given to me

here in Washington for outstanding performance as an examining

attorney in the Patent Office.

The office has greatly benefited from the contributions of many

employees who have joined the PTO or who have come back to the

PTO or who have remained at the PTO in large part because of its

excellent telework program. While there is still a need to address

the problem of the weekly office visit requirement, which is one of

the barriers that was mentioned here earlier, I feel the PTO is still

the best telework program in Government or in private industry.

It has truly enhanced the quality of my life and has benefited the

agency, as well, by allowing it to attract and retain capable and experienced employees.

I believe other agencies and other Federal employees would also

greatly benefit from the adoption and implementation of similar

programs.

Thank you very much for allowing me to join you there today.

I would be happy to answer any questions you might have.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Wilke follows:]

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Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you very much, Mr. Wilke. We will

proceed now to Mr. O’Keeffe.

STATEMENT OF STEPHEN W.T. O’KEEFFE

Mr. O’KEEFFE. Chairman Davis and subcommittee members,

thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Steve

O’Keeffe, executive director with the Telework Exchange. We are a

public/private partnership.

Every Federal agency is actively involved in the membership of

our organization, and we have more than 6,000 Federal employees

who have registered on our site to understand the telework opportunity. This is my third testimony on telework. Your focus for the

hearing is on breaking through, and so I am going to dispense with

formality and cut to the chase.

While telework is moving, the programs are locked in traffic jams

and new action is required to move things forward.

So why should America care about telework? Let’s start with cost and gas consumption. The Federal work force spends $20 billion a

year on commuting. Extrapolating to the U.S. white collar work

force, America spends $572 billion a year on commuting. This is

significantly more than the gross domestic product of the Republic

of Ireland.

As Americans, we burn $26 billion of gas by commuting each

year. That is 62 percent of the U.S. strategic petroleum reserve.

Now to pollution. The average Fed pumps 8 tons of pollution per

year into the environment commuting. This translates to 14.4 million tons across the Government. If all eligible Feds teleworked 2

days a week, we would eliminate one-quarter of the emissions from

the Federal work force each year.

Now to time and productivity. The average Fed spends 245 hours

commuting each year; in fact, more time commuting than on vacation each year. If all eligible Feds teleworked just 2 days a week,

the Federal work force would reclaim 73.3 million hours of their

lives back each year. That is an additional week off work for each

Federal employee per year.

Now to pandemic planning. As we approach the season, clearly

this is top of mind. Only 27 percent of Feds would show up for

work in the event of a pandemic, according to a recent study. Just

21 percent say they are aware of their agency’s pandemic plans,

and out of these Feds only 27 percent know if their agencies incorporate telework into continuity of operations plans.

The question is: who will tend to America if Uncle Sam calls in

sick?

So where are the road blocks? First, eligibility. OPM reports only

10 percent of eligible Feds telework today. A CDW study shows

that 79 percent of Feds would telework if given the option. Clearly,

the math does not add up. This is why the Telework Exchange

rolled out the telework eligibility gizmo to allow Federal employees

to quickly understand approximately their eligibility status. As you

know, the eligibility criteria vary widely among agencies.

In fact, it was good to see OPM testifying again. We would like

to see more from OPM in the way of telework leadership. We offered to partner with OPM to establish a telework friendly seal of

approval for telework positions on USAJOBS.GOV. This would

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allow agencies to identify new jobs as telework friendly, to make

Government jobs more attractive. We posed this program to OPM

almost 2 years ago, and we are still waiting for an answer.

At consecutive hearings, Members have asked OPM for its success in getting managers to buy into telework. Again, the same answer: no quantifiable data. I would ask why.

We asked if OPM will step up to provide much-needed leadership

or continue to take a back set on telework.

Other roadblocks—management resistance. Management resistance is still the elephant in the room. Regrettably we see in the

Federal Government the continued culture of management by

walking around. That said, as managers experience telework they

become more favorable to it. Managers that manage teleworkers

are more favorable than managers that don’t, and managers that

telework, themselves, are still more favorable. The problem is that

too few Federal managers are teleworking.

Poor mission alignment. Just 35 percent of Federal managers believe their agencies support telework. If telework is a critical plank

in continuity of operations, then clearly the message is getting lost

in translation from the leadership to middle management and we

need to redouble our efforts here.

Lack of resources. Agencies do not dedicate the time to telework.

The majority of telework coordinators today spend less than 25 percent of their time on telework.

So it can’t be all bad news, right? That is true. GSA announced

an aggressive telework challenge, which we heard about this morning. PTO, DSSA, and other agencies area already blazing the trail.

Representative Wolf proposed a National Telework Week, and we

strongly support that. And there are many activities afoot on the

Hill, including these hearings, the S. 1000 proposed legislation, and

the Telework Amendment to the Energy bill. So telework is not

completely gridlocked, but traffic is clearly moving too slowly.

So what can we do? Benjamin Franklin said that the definition

of insanity is to assume the same behavior and expect a different

outcome. What we need to do is innovate. First we need to address

eligibility. We need to offer telework as an opt-out rather than an

opt-in for Federal employees. And we also need to require them to

justify why they are making positions ineligible.

We need to address management resistance, educate managers,

and encourage management specific pilot programs so managers

actually have hands-on experience teleworking. We need to test

drive continuity of operations. Telework is not a break glass in case

of emergency proposition, and we need up-front commitment from

agencies, and we need to allocate resources, one full-time senior

level telework coordinator per agency, and that person should participate on a team with the IT planning support organization.

I would like to put forth a challenge. As I mentioned earlier, we

have been waiting for OPM to respond to us for almost 2 years to

set up this notion of the telework friendly seal of approval. The

Telework Exchange will independently launch a Government

telework friendly job bank on our Web site in 2008. Agencies will

be able to post telework friendly job postings at

www.teleworkerchange.com. People will then be able to go to the

Web site and check out Federal jobs that they may be interested

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in applying for. The door is always open for OPM to come back to

the table in terms of partnership.

We also encourage other agencies to take the same kinds of commitments as GSA, DSSA, and PTO in the telework drive.

Thank you for your time this morning. We appreciate your consideration.

[The prepared statement of Mr. O’Keeffe follows:]

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Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you very much, Mr. O’Keeffe.

We will go to Ms. Bamesberger.

STATEMENT OF ANN BAMESBERGER

Ms. BAMESBERGER. Thank you, Chairman Davis. And thank you,

members of the committee, for having me here. I very much appreciate the opportunity to share with you some ideas from the private

sector, having spent the last 10 years working in the area of life

balance, work balance. I am very pleased to see my Government

taking action along the same lines.

I would like to just briefly explain the context of SUN Microsystems. It is a computer system. We have been in business since

1982. It started at Stanford, University. That is, indeed, what SUN

stands for. It is Stanford University Network. We were one of the

first networking companies to embrace Unix as an open system.

We are not that large. We are about 35,000 employees, and we are at about $15 billion revenue. I mention those numbers so that

you have some context for some of the numbers that I will be telling you and scale that up according to the population that you are

probably considering in terms of opportunities for the Government.

I don’t think I need to dwell on the drivers that have caused us

at SUN to embrace what we call open work. We don’t call it

telework. We don’t call it telecommuting, because for us it has become the way of work. Clearly, since we are a computer company,

we are clearly very, very comfortable with technology, and yet over

the last 10 years I have seen a sea change literally in the last 2

years. Even here I notice a lot of your staff running around with

Blackberries. I’m sure they didn’t do that 2 years ago.

We are looking to hire next generation employees, and the GenY people that we are studying now in research combinations with

the universities are very tech savvy. We will see our kids texting

each other. That is a form of collaboration. It is not necessarily face

to face, but it is becoming a new way of engaging, and universities

are embracing this, and so we are watching universities so that we,

ourselves, can remain at the leading edge.

Global markets, technological innovation, you have seen them

all. You know that business continuity is a big issue. What I

haven’t heard a lot of today, which actually surprises me, is the

cost containment opportunities that this kind of work actually affords.

I remember Ms. Peterlin, who struck me as being a subject matter expert in many ways, did indicate that they are investing

money in technology and yet still coming out ahead of the curve.

The truth is you save so much on real estate by not continuing to

proliferate traditional office environments that, I would submit, if

you look around today are not 100 percent occupied. People are in

meetings, people are out, people are traveling. So even today you

probably have an opportunity to do some cost containment.

Our response in that way is that over 10 years we have now contained over half a billion dollars from our real estate run rate,

which is the second-highest run rate after salary. I would imagine

that is true for you, as well. The truth is, we can also save in technology. We have adopted what is called a thin client approach to

computing, which will become more and more the norm as we look

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to the future. It is really what web2.0 is starting to be all about,

the kids doing IM, the kids going on Facebook, the communication

that is happening very, very fluidly on top of the computer networks. So networks are not going to be quite the same as they once

were, and the fluidity of communication, you will be able to see

more and more of an increase.

But what I really want to do is focus not just on how we have

benefited, but you spend a little bit of time on what I have heard

from you to be your primary barriers, and I would welcome questions.

Management resistance is, indeed, a barrier. I would be foolish

not to say that I don’t have some scar tissue. The truth is the line

of sight is a very strong perception of control, and psychologically

a belief system is a very powerful thing to try to break.

We at SUN have not tried to break that belief system. We have,

rather, tried to work with it and validate managers’ concerns and,

in fact, enlist them in providing the solution that would work both

for them and for their employees.

It is doable. It is not as insurmountable as it seems when you

first start, nor does it have to take 10 years. Again, I am seeing

a leapfrog. I am seeing a sea change, so that in the next year or

two I submit that managers will become more and more aware of

how their employees are working this way, and the expectation of

managers will be that they will manage in that way a lot more

than we have seen in the past. I am seeing that at SUN.

I also share that, from a management perspective, the default of

having this be the way of work would be a terrific shift in the mind

set of managers, so that they, rather than trying to choose who is

eligible, would have to work with their staff on who isn’t and why.

It is quite true that across all types of work—and we have marketing people, we have legal people, we have engineering people—

the differences among job classes is really minuscule, and you will

find that the type of embracing of this work is just a matter of experimentation, trust, and time.

I see my time is up. I also want to really touch on two other

things. What I didn’t see here today was a systemic approach. I

saw the real estate folks potentially talking about the telework centers, which is terrific. I saw the human resources people talking

about management. But what would really help is if you thought

of this as a system, because the total cost of operations, the real

estate savings could be reinvested in the management side, and

that is non-trivial. Inside a corporation like mine, our functions are

siloed, so trying to get the savings from one entity and reinvest in

another is a challenge, but it is doable and it is very valuable to

the employee. The employees really, really appreciate this.

I strongly encourage you to embark. Don’t try to boil the ocean.

Don’t try to do it all. Don’t try to get it right. Leverage Ms.

Peterlin. She was terrific. And I would start small. Again, I would

set very clear outcomes for your pilots, keep them small, set the

metrics with regard to your business objectives, not necessarily

your telecommuting objectives, but what is the business trying to

accomplish. What you will find is you will probably be able to accomplish those better, faster, and cheaper by using a different way

of getting people to work and having the work come to them.

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I thank you for your time, and I look forward to answering questions.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Bamesberger follows:]

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Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you very much.

We will go to Mr. Talcove.

STATEMENT OF HAYWOOD J. TALCOVE

Mr. TALCOVE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee, it is a great privilege to testify before you

today on a pressing need for policies that help promote and enable

telework and remote access across the Federal Government.

Telework will radically alter in a very real way all facets of Federal Government, from how it conducts business and protects and

serves citizens, to how it promotes good stewardship of the environment.

In four short years, the front edge of the Boomer generation will

turn 65. This shift will have a significant impact on both the public

and private sector. Through telework, we can help reduce and improve workers’ accountability.

The benefits of telework are clear. First, telework promotes efficiency. It benefits the Federal Government by boosting worker productivity through instant, highly secure remote access to Government networks and resources that workers need to do their jobs.

Second, telework is an attrition remedy. Telework acts as an incentive that makes working past retirement age both feasible and

attractive for Government employees who are needed to train and

mentor the next generation of agency staff who will replace them.

Third, telework is both a motivational and recruitment tool, as

we have heard today. It can empower employees to balance work

and family life, which can result in lower rates of absenteeism and

better retention.

Beyond the human capital benefits of telework, it is vitally important to highlight the important role telework plays in homeland

security and Government continuity of operations. The past several

years have been marked by manmade and natural calamities, such

as the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the Minnesota

Bridge collapse, and the southern California wildfires, have demonstrated like few other periods in recent history the importance

of continuity of operations and emergency preparedness. It is at

times like these that citizens rely on Government the most and expect Government to deliver needed services and support in a timely

fashion.

For Government to respond in a timely manner, it must equip essential employees with the tools necessary to communicate and

execute their responsibilities 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365

days a year.

The good news is that off-the-shelf technology already exists to

support secure teleworking by employees. Secure socket layer, virtual private networks [SSLVPNs], can provide connectivity to IT

assets so that employees can securely access resources from virtually any location using a variety of devices.

More to the point, because disruptions or disasters may strike at

any moment, the best way to ensure that Federal workers are prepared for continuity of Government is to promote and practice

telework as a part of everyday agency operations.

But perhaps of all the advantages of telework, it is the environmental benefits that most impact citizens in their everyday lives.

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Most if not all of us here in this chamber have suffered through

the maddening experience of inching along, or idling, as the case

may be, in the Washington, DC, area traffic. Just consider for a

moment how much cleaner the air would be if Federal agencies in

this region, alone, promoted regular telework.

Among their employees, now consider the man hours saved and

the aggravation spared if telework were more widely practiced. Of

course, telework is not a magic bullet for all that ails the environment; it does, though, represent a way for us to cut commute times,

lessen congestion, and decrease the county’s dependence on non-renewable and foreign sources of energy.

Yet, despite all of these benefits of telework I have outlined

today, some Federal agencies have been slow to adopt and enable

the practice.

To get a better sense of the Government’s plans for and current

telework capabilities, Juniper Networks commissioned a third

party to poll more than 1,400 Government employees. The survey

revealed most notably that 8 in 10 respondents, 79 percent, said

their agency allows telework in some form. Less than 3 in ten, 28

percent, actually do telework on a routine basis. Routine basis is

defined as more than 20 percent of their time, or at least 1 day a

week.

Additionally, although few Government respondents, 12 percent,

reported that their agencies have telework training programs, the

good news is that a majority, 51 percent, said their agencies had

dedicated staff to support telework, the critical COOP component.

In conclusion, we at Juniper Networks recognize that implementing and promoting telework policies throughout the Federal Government is a daunting though not futile task. The good news is

that some agencies, such as the U.S. Department of Labor, Mine

Safety, and Health Administration and the General Services Administration are already leading the way with infrastructure in

place to enable teleworkers or have ambitious plans to have half

of eligible employees teleworking at least 1 day a week by 2010.

Private industry looks forward to helping these and other Federal agencies in every way possible as it moves toward the goal of

enabling telework for all critical employees.

On behalf of Juniper Networks, I would like to thank you for the

opportunity to speak to the committee today.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Talcove follows:]

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Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you very much.

Mr. Talcove, let me just begin with you. In your testimony you

mention that your company commissioned a survey of more than

1,400 employees on teleworking in the Federal Government. How

many agencies did this survey cover?

Mr. TALCOVE. I believe it covered all Federal agencies and the

majority of State and local governments, as well.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Did the survey ask why so few employees

actually telework when given the opportunity?

Mr. TALCOVE. It came down to a lot of the comments that were

made by my colleagues that were testifying today. There are concerns from a management perspective. How do you run an operation if your employees aren’t centrally located? There is concerns

about technology and infrastructure. There is concerns about security. All those issues came up.

I can speak from my personal experience at my company, which

has about 6,000 employees, and though it is challenging, we have

overcome those obstacles and work remotely on a regular basis.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. And so in order to promote or further promote, what do you think we can do?

Mr. TALCOVE. I am going to talk from just my personal perspective in running my organization. I think it starts at the top. In my

group it is not about being in the office 8 hours a day; it is about

getting your job accomplished in a timely fashion and meeting the

metrics that we have established.

It is also about trusting your employees to do the right thing;

that when they are not in your direct visibility—I have an organization that is worldwide, from Washington, DC, to California to

Germany. I can’t see everyone every day, and I trust that they are

going to do the right thing.

Then the third thing is the economies of real estate. Being in the

private sector, it is incredibly expensive to open facilities. The cost

of technology in telecommuting is significantly less.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Ms. Bamesberger, let me ask you what

role has telework played in helping your company, SUN Microsystems, recruit and retain the work force it needs?

Ms. BAMESBERGER. Mr. Chairman, I think Ms. Peterlin answered

that question for me. We have, over time, learned that our initial

capital is very difficult to recruit and retain. We are in Silicone

Valley. We have the famous Google stealing from all of the companies that used to be the Silicone Valley babies. In order to be competitive, we have had to increase our reach to beyond just down the

street, so we find our knowledge workers from wherever we can.

In order to do that, our managers, themselves, have seen the value

proposition, because they are managed to their results and their

output, they have found that they need to be more flexible with regard to where they hire people.

So it isn’t unreasonable at all to have hiring managers looking

for people outside of the geographic area that would make sense to

commute to a location.

So we have found that it has really helped recruiting and retention because we let the work go to the individual and not have the

individual drive to work. And we are finding that the next generation employee is making lifestyle decisions before they make their

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employer decisions. So if that is the case, then they will be choosing where to live before they choose where to work, in which case

we would like to be prepared so that we can capitalize on that.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you.

Mr. O’Keeffe, what level of satisfaction has your company found

as you have interacted with individuals in both the public and private sectors relative to satisfaction among employees who actually

do telework?

Mr. O’KEEFFE. We recently completed a study with the Defense

Information Systems Agency looking at its generation-wide recruits, the average age about 26 of people coming into Defense Information Systems Agency. So what we see there is not necessarily

their level of satisfaction historically, but the priority they place on

telework, and it is one of the three most important factors, the ability to work where they want to. The flexibility not with sitting in

traffic, in their decision to come work for the Federal Government.

So consistently, though, we do see that telework comes up time

and time again. Flexibility is a consistent factor in promoting job

satisfaction and promoting retention and recruitment.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you very much.

Mr. Issa.

Mr. ISSA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I am going to concentrate on a couple of areas of questions that

I think the first couple are going to be sort of Government related.

Mr. Wilke, you are living in Chicago area. You work for an entity

that is Washington based. We pay a premium at the PTO for people to work here in Washington. How does that work for you in

that you have chosen to live in an area that has a certain cost versus the District of Columbia area?

Mr. WILKE. Well, my duty station is still Washington, DC.

Mr. ISSA. Do you think that is fair to the Federal Government

that you get paid a premium for Washington, DC, while you can

live anywhere in the world at any cost? Or do you think the Federal Government, if they allow telecommuting, should, in fact, not

pay a premium for where either you choose to live as a high area

or choose to live as a low area, that there should be one national

rate if we allow telecommuting?

Mr. WILKE. Well, I don’t know about whether there should be one

national rate, but I think it would be fair to let everybody be compensated in accordance with the cost of their location.

Mr. ISSA. Why? Why should the Federal Government subsidize

somebody’s choice of where they are going to live if we are going

to have telecommuting, if we are going to pay for the cost of wherever you choose to be? This is a private sector question to the public, but shouldn’t we essentially say we are not going to pay a premium for where you choose to live? I mean, you could be doing this

in Maui. Would we pay a little higher because you chose to be in

Maui than if you chose to be in Arkansas? Would you think that

is fair? I happen to think you have a lovely basement, but should

I pay a difference based on where your basement is?

Mr. WILKE. Well, in this case, if my duty station was Chicago

you would be paying a premium because Chicago is slightly a higher cost area than Washington, DC. I am fine with leaving it a

standard rate, like you are suggesting, saying everything is WashVerDate 11-MAY-2000 14:00 Sep 15, 2008 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00163 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\43599.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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ington; that it doesn’t matter if you want to live in a low-rent district or a high-rate district, you should all be paid the same. And

that is the way it is right now.

Mr. ISSA. I guess I will go to my comparatively private sector

panel. He was very fair, considering it is his paycheck. That is very

hard to do in Government. But how would you see that as national

policy for the Federal Government? How should we work with the

differentials we pay when, in fact, that differential may not exist

if someone is allowed to not come in at all? We are talking about

people who are full-time commuters? Mr. O’Keeffe? And I will accept how people do things in their own company if that is the best

reference.

Mr. O’KEEFFE. I think PTO talked about this notion of moving

to a nationwide work force, and that is coming, and this is one of

the issues that has to be addressed as we move to that. But I think

looking at the pay differential, clearly it has to be addressed today,

but there are other factors that need to be considered, as well.

Say, for example, we are looking at in many circumstances the

agencies don’t allow this type of distributed work, and so as those

agencies need to—we talk about continuity of operations, we talk

about the challenges of recruiting, and what you will, and so I

think this needs to be factored. This is one factor that needs to be

considered as we look at a broader remaking of the definition of

duty station and the work environment.

Mr. ISSA. Ms. Bamesberger.

Ms. BAMESBERGER. Mr. Issa, what we do at SUN is we have differentials based on geography. I also happen to do site searching

for the company when we plan expansions or retrenchments, and

part of the exciting move to the countries that are lower cost had

a huge wave of interest on the part of the company in order to save

money. What we found is that hiring people in India has not necessarily proven to be so beneficial in the long run, although the

whole total cost of being somewhere physically and then paying the

salaries is taken as a composite.

So when someone chooses to go from a high-salary location and

then they move to a lower salary, then they do actually get the

lower salary, whatever the salary is in the geographic area they

move to. If it goes in the other direction, that is up to the manager

and the employee.

Mr. ISSA. OK. Mr. Talcove, how do you do it at Juniper?

Mr. TALCOVE. From our perspective I think there are two issues.

First of all, regardless of where the employee is located you need

to make sure that they can actually perform their job, so if we have

an employee that is located in Washington, DC, that may be settling into the Federal Government and they decide that they wanted to move to a place that wouldn’t be possible, obviously that

wouldn’t be something that we could accommodate.

The second, and just like SUN, we do have geographical pay differences, so the higher-cost areas, folks do get paid more than in

the lower-cost areas. In my team, I have had people move in and

out, and we change their salaries accordingly.

Mr. ISSA. Mr. Chairman, thank you.

My question was actually because this feeds into another hearing

we had, which was where we found that people would accept a

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duty station, for example, with the Border Patrol or some other

group, that was more expensive, and then TDY to a lower expense.

Or in my case, in southern California if you get a duty station in

San Diego you get paid more than in, let’s say, Los Angeles, well,

in fact, you and your neighbor with the Border Patrol might both

live in Temecula, and we deal with the fact that we get that complaints all the time in my office that these differentials get gamed.

Hopefully as we go through this and write legislation, we write

it so that we in the Government can keep from having it gamed.

I appreciate the indulgence on my question. Thank you.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you very much.

Mr. Sarbanes.

Mr. SARBANES. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I am intrigued by the theme I hear from I think all of you that

teleworking is not an end, it is a means to some other new, nontraditional workplace. I wonder, you know, when we consider the

legislation one of the things we are going to be doing is asking

agencies to articulate a policy and implement it and try to facilitate

telework.

But I guess we could include the notion that as we do that they

should take pains to identify what goals of their agency are going

to be fulfilled or advanced by teleworking to make them more conscious of its benefits—in other words, not to simply assume the

goodness of teleworking, although intuitively we are all attracted

to that, but to really think through how this is going to benefit the

agency and get it to a new place, and telecommuting is simply a

means for doing that, so maybe you could just comment on that approach?

Ms. BAMESBERGER. If I may start on that one, since that is really

my theme du jour, I have worked in this domain now for a long

time, and I really have seen a huge change in terms of resistance,

in that the resistance is rapidly going away as the benefits that are

direct outcome results of what you are being managed to do actually improve.

I mean, I have a lot of data on that. I don’t know if I have time

to get into it. What we do is we don’t measure the participation;

we actually measure the business outcomes, and we will do surveys. We had data for the last 8 years on all of our pilots, and the

pre and the post-data is quite astonishing with regard to managing

to your objectives and the business outcomes. So managing by

walking around is not necessarily an attributor to that; managing

to result and having employees feel good about the fact that the

managers trust that they are getting their work done adds a tremendous amount of loyalty and self respect to the equation, which

has incredibly positive impact on the outcomes.

Mr. SARBANES. Mr. Talcove, the whole continuity of operation aspiration and goal is one that, by itself, could drive a lot of the telecommuting progress.

Mr. TALCOVE. Absolutely. I totally agree with that. Having been

a former public servant—I was a city manager after I graduated

college—one of the things that struck me when I was in that position was for the most part citizens didn’t need my services until

there was a situation, a snow storm, they couldn’t get to work, they

couldn’t get to the hospital.

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Citizens need Government most when there are surprises. It is

incredibly important, particularly in this era, that we have the

ability to communicate. Right now when you look at some of the

statistics from the different surveys that were mentioned today,

that is not available. Quite frankly, that is scary.

It is more important now than it ever was before, particularly in

the world that we live in, that we have the opportunity to communicate and serve citizens during times of natural disasters, or manmade disasters.

Mr. SARBANES. Mr. O’Keeffe, you expressed impatience and frustration with how quickly or slowly the Federal Government is moving to where it ought to be with telecommuting. What industry is

where it should be at this point? What workplace is the absolute

model? Or does the whole society need to get moving faster in that

direction?

Mr. O’KEEFFE. I’m not sure there are any perfect models, candidly. I think that the information technology marketplace where

companies trade on their intellectual property provide an interesting example. Clearly, there is not a one-to-one comparison map between what the Federal Government does and what technology

companies do. I think that some of the roles that have been designated or functions that historically have been considered off the

table in terms of telework are being challenged.

JetBlue, for example, an airline carrier, has inbound call centers

which are distributed. So the notion of if you work in a call center

and you are accepting calls you have to come to work, well, that

is not necessarily true. You can do both inbound and outbound

work in a distributed fashion.

Mr. SARBANES. Thank you.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you very much.

Mr. Cummings.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much.

Mr. Wilke, you thought we forgot you?

Mr. WILKE. Yes.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Let me ask you this. To set up this process, I

mean, what do you go through? I mean, what is entailed in this

and who sets it up? In other words, to create this ability for you

to communicate with your fellow employees?

Mr. WILKE. Well, the office provides me with a laptop computer,

two screens that I work from, two plasma screens. We have a VPN.

We work through a land-based cable, Comcast, that has a line in

to the office. Every day I go through a secure changing number to

log in to the servers at Alexandria, VA. All the information is

there. Really, this is like being at my desk at home working from

here.

Mr. CUMMINGS. So then you see all these airplane commercials

that says that you can be right there because the price is so cheap.

I mean, do you see any disadvantage in not having the face to face

interaction? Well, I guess you do have face to face, but, you know,

being in the presence of another person, of other people?

Mr. WILKE. Well, there are some disadvantages to it, because a

lot of times you want to discuss various cases and what decisions

should be made with your co-workers and with your manager and

senior attorneys. In most cases it is easy enough to just pick up the

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phone to talk to them or send them an e-mail. It is not as good,

but it is just about as good.

As I was mentioning, I was a mentor for young attorneys, and

that is all done by e-mail and by phone, and it seems to work very

well.

The times you really need to come to the office are for training,

maybe trading in your equipment, or upgrading, whatever. Maybe

you have to do an argument before the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board. Maybe you have to meet with your law office in a

group meeting for everybody to touch base once in a while. So it

is really important to get back to the office.

What is not important is just to come in as a pro forma sort of

tag-the-base kind of requirement where you come in, stop in for the

15 minutes or half hour, and then leave, because that requires you

to take a plane trip that uses fossil fuels. It is expensive, and essentially it is a waste of time because you are not being productive

on those days when you are coming into the office without a real

reason to be coming into the office.

Mr. CUMMINGS. So I take it that you, while other people may

clock in, I guess you just kind of walk down the stairs and sit in

front of your computer and turn it on, and you are instantly at

work?

Mr. WILKE. Yes. Yes, as a matter of fact. The office can keep

track of how long I have been on my computer every day if they

want. But mostly our work is tracked by how much you do.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Yes.

Mr. WILKE. You have requirements, and if you don’t get down

here and work, every 2 weeks your manager looks at that and says,

what have you been doing? So nobody really looks over my shoulder all day.

Mr. CUMMINGS. How long have you been doing this, this telecommuting?

Mr. WILKE. Just for about a year now.

Mr. CUMMINGS. OK. If you were trying to set some policies, you

know, as one who has managed people, I think one of the things

that people fear, management type fear, is that they will lose supervisory contact with the employee, you know, the employee go off

and have a 3-hour lunch or something like that, or goof off. I think,

because it has been our tradition to operate with folks in the office

and to know that they are there, I think it is kind of hard for some

people to accept the fact that this can work, and work very effectively.

But having had the experience that you have had, if you were,

say, one putting together a program like this, what things would

you be most concerned about? And what kind of things would you

caution, say, the Congress to be careful about? You may not have

anything. I don’t know. I am just curious.

Mr. WILKE. Well, I think that any agency that has a mission that

can be quantified where the employees have a set amount of work

to accomplish have an easy time converting to this sort of system.

That is exactly what the Patent and Trademark Office has. Everything we do is quantifiable and measurable, and it has been established over a number of years how much really can be done in a

reasonable time.

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So getting rid of the soft requirements might be one of the first

things an agency would have to do. You would get down to things

that really have to be objectively measured as far as work at home

or telework employees would be required.

But I think that there should be some requirement that employees come back and meet with their team members and their other

co-workers and their management to make sure everybody is on

the same page and moving forward. That is what we are required

to do, too.

So just actually scattering people across the county and saying,

OK, we will see you next year, is probably not the best policy.

Mr. CUMMINGS. And so just one last question, Mr. Chairman. I

just find it so fascinating that I am sitting here, and where are

you?

Mr. WILKE. I am in Long Grove, IL, just north of Chicago.

Mr. CUMMINGS. It is fascinating that we are sitting here and

having this hearing with you on the screen, and I guess we saved

some money today, huh?

Mr. WILKE. Well, I saved some money because I didn’t have to

get on United or Southwest and come into town.

Mr. CUMMINGS. All right. But your testimony has been very helpful, and obviously it is working for you. I take it that it sounds like

your employers don’t have any complaints with what you are doing.

I think you said you won all these awards and everything. That

says a lot.

Mr. WILKE. Well, it has actually improved my performance to be

able to be here where I can also have access to my family when

they need me. I am not worried about taking a day’s leave every

time I have to meet with a contractor or have a doctor’s appointment. I can work around it from here. But the geographic extension

is the real icing on the cake, and that is the kind of thing that our

agency is really in need of, especially on the patent side, to allow

people to work really where they can best work and stay there.

Mr. CUMMINGS. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. WILKE. Thank you.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Thank you, Mr. Cummings.

You know, it sounds like the environment probably has a great

deal to do with his productivity. I mean, he is in Illinois.

Mr. WILKE. The city of big shoulders.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Well, let me just ask you one question,

Mr. Wilke. It is pretty obvious from your responses and your productivity that this opportunity has in many ways enhanced your

own quality of life, increased perhaps your own productivity, and

worked extremely well for you and your family, so it has done a

great deal, I think, in that sense.

What does it do for the agency?

Mr. WILKE. Well, for the agency it gives the agency the ability

to keep people that it takes years to really train a trademark examining attorney or a patent attorney, patent examiner, and,

frankly, the private industry pays more than the Patent Office

does, so it is such a benefit to a worker to be able to work from

home that the retention rate has increased dramatically—I think

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Ms. Peterlin can speak to that—since telework was rolled out. The

more it is implemented, the more effective that is.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Would you say it is also cost effective in

terms of, I think one of our witnesses mentioned containment, cost

containment, earlier. Do you think that when you add it all up and

get the bottom line that it has been more cost effective for the

agency to have you work the way that you work than to have you

come into an office every day and do what it is that you do?

Mr. WILKE. Absolutely. Absolutely. The trademark examining operation, we have over 500 people, almost 400 attorneys, yet we only

occupy three floors out of those six buildings over in Alexandria.

Everybody, if we were in the office, we would still have the same

computer equipment that we are set up with at home, so there is

no difference there. But there are about 200 to 300 offices that are

not used or not needed in the Alexandria campus because of the

telework program. I am just speaking for the trademark side. It is

even larger, of course, on the patent side.

Mr. DAVIS OF ILLINOIS. Well, let me thank you very much. We

appreciate your being with us. And I want to thank all of our witnesses. I think we have had a very productive morning. I want to

thank our staff for the tremendous outreach that they have had

and the recruitment that they have gone through to make sure

that we have had witnesses that could give us great insight into

this issue. We appreciate it very much.

With that, this hearing is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 12:45 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

[The prepared statement of Hon. Frank R. Wolf follows:]

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