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TELECOMMUTING: A 21ST CENTURY SOLUTION TO

TRAFFIC JAMS AND TERRORISM

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE FEDERAL WORKFORCE

AND AGENCY ORGANIZATION

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

JULY 18, 2006

Serial No. 109–230

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

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

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

DAN BURTON, Indiana

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

GIL GUTKNECHT, Minnesota

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

JON C. PORTER, Nevada

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio

BRIAN P. BILBRAY, California

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

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

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. DUTCH RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

DAVID MARIN, Staff Director

LAWRENCE HALLORAN, Deputy Staff Director

TERESA AUSTIN, Chief Clerk

PHIL BARNETT, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel

SUBCOMMITTEE ON THE FEDERAL WORKFORCE AND AGENCY ORGANIZATION

JON C. PORTER, Nevada, Chairman

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

TOM DAVIS, Virginia

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

EX OFFICIO

HENRY A. WAXMAN, CALIFORNIA

RON MARTINSON, Staff Director

SHANNON MEADE, Professional Staff Member

ALEX COOPER, Clerk

TANIA SHAND, Minority Professional Staff Member

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on July 18, 2006 ............................................................................... 1

Statement of:

Green, Daniel, Deputy Associate Director, Employee and Family Support

Policy, U.S. Office of Personnel Management; Danette Campbell, Senior

Telework Advisor, U.S. Patent and Trade Office; and Carl Froehlich,

Chief of Agency-wide Shared Services, Internal Revenue Service ............ 14

Campbell, Danette ..................................................................................... 22

Froehlich, Carl ........................................................................................... 32

Green, Daniel ............................................................................................. 14

Mularie, William, chief executive officer, the Telework Consortium; Joslyn

Read, assistant vice president, regulatory affairs, Hughes Network Systems, LLC, on behalf of the Telecommunications Industry Association;

and Jerry Edgerton, president of business and Federal marketing,

Verizon Communications .............................................................................. 45

Edgerton, Jerry .......................................................................................... 62

Mularie, William ....................................................................................... 45

Read, Joslyn ............................................................................................... 54

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

Campbell, Danette, Senior Telework Advisor, U.S. Patent and Trade Office, prepared statement of ........................................................................... 24

Cummings, Hon. Elijah E., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Maryland, prepared statement of ............................................................ 77

Davis, Hon. Tom, a Representative in Congress from the State of Virginia, prepared statement of ........................................................................ 10

Edgerton, Jerry, president of business and Federal marketing, Verizon

Communications, prepared statement of .................................................... 65

Froehlich, Carl, Chief of Agency-wide Shared Services, Internal Revenue

Service, prepared statement of .................................................................... 34

Green, Daniel, Deputy Associate Director, Employee and Family Support

Policy, U.S. Office of Personnel Management, prepared statement of ..... 17

Mularie, William, chief executive officer, the Telework Consortium, prepared statement of ........................................................................................ 48

Porter, Hon. Jon C., a Representative in Congress from the State of

Nevada, prepared statement of .................................................................... 4

Read, Joslyn, assistant vice president, regulatory affairs, Hughes Network Systems, LLC, on behalf of the Telecommunications Industry

Association, prepared statement of ............................................................. 57

(1)

TELECOMMUTING: A 21ST CENTURY SOLUTION TO TRAFFIC JAMS AND TERRORISM

TUESDAY, JULY 18, 2006

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, SUBCOMMITTEE ON FEDERAL WORKFORCE AND AGENCY

ORGANIZATION, COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM, Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2:24 p.m., in room

2247, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Jon C. Porter (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Porter, Davis of Virginia, Issa, Schmidt,

and Norton.

Staff present: Ronald Martinson, staff director; Chad Bungard,

deputy staff director/chief counsel; Shannon Meade, professional

staff member; Jessica Johnson, OPM detailee; Chad Christofferson

and Alex Cooper, legislative assistants; Tania Shand, minority professional staff member; and Teresa Coufal, minority assistant clerk.

Mr. PORTER. I would like to thank everyone for being here today.

With an increase in traffic congestion, fuel prices, time away

from one’s family, and terrorist and pandemic threats, the time is

right for the subcommittee to examine the Federal Government’s

use of telecommuting for our Federal employees. Years ago, many

of us used to watch with awe when a member of the Enterprise

crew from Star Trek would ‘‘beam them up,’’ thus, allowing them

to travel instantly from one location to another. Imagine how life

would change if you could literally be anywhere at one time.

Today, with affordable broadband access, Web casting, e-mail, Instant Messaging, and digital-quality video streaming, the only

thing which separates the fantasy world of Star Trek and our modern world is that no one has to actually travel anywhere. As technology races ahead, it has become necessary for the Government to

adapt and take advantage of these changes. Taking advantage of

available and reasonable technology has the potential to save millions of dollars in routine operations, as well as saving the Federal

Government from spending potentially millions more in the event

of a national disaster.

The effective use of telecommuting will provide for continued

Government operations during an emergency or disaster situation,

increased efficiency and productivity in the Federal Government,

and an increase in the quality of life of Federal employees. All of

this becomes more relevant when we consider the world in which

we currently live. To insulate the daily operations of the Federal

Government from the disruption caused by an emergency situation,

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it is imperative that the Federal Government have an effective

telecommuting policy that will allow employees to work offsite in

a critical time.

Considering the constant threat of terrorist attacks, natural disasters, and wide-spread sickness, for example, the Avian flu, the

Federal Government should be able to maintain operations even in

times of a crisis. The importance of continuity of operation planning was again underscored recently when the massive flooding

forced the Internal Revenue Service headquarters building to be

closed until next year, which I think everyone is happy about. No,

just kidding.

We will hear today from the IRS as to how they have responded

to the disaster. I know that my good friend and Ranking Member

Danny Davis has done a lot of work on improving the continuity

of operation planning for the Federal Government, and I look forward to learning from him in the future, if not today, with some

of his written testimony.

Telecommuting can also have a huge impact on the traffic problems plaguing the major metropolitan areas nationwide. In my

home State of Nevada, a Federal employee commuting from his or

her house in Green Valley to an office in Boulder City could take

over an hour. With the national price per gallon average of approximately $3 and energy costs rising everywhere in our Nation, consumers and various levels of Government are increasingly looking

at new ways to be more frugal.

While various solutions are currently being explored, such as hybrid cars, alternative fuels, and expansion of public transportation,

the simple reduction of the number of travelers on the road is an

idea that usually does not come up. Public transportation and hybrid cars are great, but nothing uses less fuel than not traveling

at all.

Of course, if people are not traveling into work, then they are not

in the offices. Office space, especially in major metropolitan areas,

is incredibly expensive. Not only must you pay for the actual space

itself, you must also pay utilities, purchase furniture, hire cleaners,

and, in many cases, maintain security. All of this adds up rapidly.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office [PTO], reduced annual real

estate expenditures by $1.5 million, as its aggressive telecommuting program for its trademark attorneys has reduced the need for

three floors of office space in its former Arlington, VA headquarters.

In addition, PTO has seen an increase in production and output

by 10 percent since implementing its telecommuting program. If all

functions of a particular employee’s job can be performed remotely,

and there is a clear means by which the employer can determine

that work is getting done to a measurable standard and even more

efficiently, isn’t it unfair to American taxpayers to not pursue telecommuting aggressively for the Federal Government?

The benefits of telecommuting are not strictly related to energy,

economics, and emergency preparedness. Numerous studies have

shown that teleworking employees tend to be happier in their jobs,

and more productive as a result. Telecommuting can be instrumental in serving the needs of the family. By allowing parents to build

their lives around their families and not their long commutes, the

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Federal Government puts productive parents at home to attend Little League games and school recitals.

I fully understand that every employee is not eligible for telecommuting. But the truth is that there are many employees in a

given office setting who are perfectly suited to be telecommuters,

yet agencies are not currently taking advantage of it. This may be

due to management fears, cultural change, or perhaps lack of

awareness of the available technology or even a lack of central

leadership pushing agencies and managers to the many advantages

of telecommuting.

Notwithstanding the excuses, this has to improve. In his testimony before the subcommittee last November, Congressman Frank

Wolf testified that ‘‘roughly 60 percent of the jobs in [the] region

are jobs whereby people could telework.’’ While 60 percent of all

jobs found with the National Capitol Region qualify for telecommuting, only 12 percent actually do as of today.

Therefore, nearly 180,000 out of 300,000 employees could work at

a location other than their official work site. Offices and cubicle

spaces can be eliminated, downsized, or shared as employees come

to the official work site less and less. It is absolutely essential that

all Federal employees and agencies implement an effective telecommuting policy to be prepared in the event of an emergency, to

increase production and efficiency, and to improve the quality of

life of its employees. The American taxpayers deserve nothing less.

I look forward to the testimony of all the witnesses that we have

today and I would especially like to thank the IRS for its willingness to testify on short notice, while under very hectic and, I know,

very difficult circumstances.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Jon C. Porter follows:]

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Mr. PORTER. I would now like to recognize the Congresswoman

from the District of Columbia for opening comments.

Ms. NORTON. Thank you.

I appreciate this hearing, Mr. Chairman, and believe that Mr.

Davis, who would otherwise be here unless unavoidably detained,

would say so as well, because it is vitally important, and increasingly so, to the future of the Federal work force in terms of emergency preparedness, keeping Federal employment competitive, and

making sure it evolves with new technologies and new times.

Representative Danny Davis could not be here, but this hearing

concerns a hearing of true importance to him in particular. Mr.

Davis’ pending H.R. 3566, the Continuity of Operations Demonstration Project Act, takes an important step in addressing the issues

we are here to talk about today.

The core issue is this: the great benefits—proven benefits—that

telework has to offer are simply not being realized by the Federal

Government.

Telework is a prudent response to probability. With hurricanes

and other natural disasters, the threat of terrorism and a flue pandemic all on our radar, we must be prepared to continue operations

in the face of damage and disruption. Just this month we saw the

Internal Revenue Service headquarters close for 6 months as the

result of flooding from severe summer storms. I know we are happy

that apparently the IRS is open. I am not sure if the taxpayers of

the United States are as gleeful as we are.

To ensure continuity of operations in these situations, we need

a sound telework of telecommuting infrastructure. For an agency to

pick up where nature or an emergency made it leave off, Federal

workers must be able to work from other locations and must have

the technology practice and support necessary to do so.

This means investments in training, equipment, and facilities. It

means that workers should have telework experience, and, most of

all, it means that careful planning has to be done to ensure any

transition is a smooth and effective one.

Yet, despite how important telework is to the continuity of operations planning, agency plans continue to be underdeveloped, and

the necessary time and resources have not yet been committed.

Only 43 percent of agencies have telework integrated into their

COOP plans, and only 20 percent provide related training.

The problem is not only at this step in the chain. Government

studies have concluded that the specific guidance needed to incorporate telework into COOP plans is lacking and that this lack of

direction continues to hinder progress.

Such a status quo is unacceptable. While better guidance needs

to be provided, agencies should not have to be chided. Research

shows that program investments in telework will more than pay for

themselves.

COOP aside, telework brings a second set of benefits. Telework

benefits employers. It has been proven to boost productivity and reduce absenteeism. In its annual surveys from 2003 and 2004,

AT&T found that teleworking saves them approximately $150 million a year, and that it is a first-order recruiting tool. It also benefits employees. It saves commuting time and costs for workers and

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enhances family life and morale. And it serves the environment,

too, by reducing auto emissions and pollution.

But telework lags its potential here. For far too many employees,

their desire is met with resistance, and their desire turns to frustration. This is all in the face of the most significant congressional

mandate on telework, Section 355 of Public Law 106–346, which requires agencies to increase participation to the maximum extent

possible.

Despite requirements on each of these points, agency policies

have not fully evolved. Barriers have not been sufficiently identified, and steps to overcome them have not been sustained. Investment is under-provided and allotted in a manner that lacks a strategic focus. Agencies in charge of Government-wide implementation

have not gone far enough in pressuring agencies to comply with the

law, in collecting the data necessary to understand where we stand

and what needs to be done, or in helping agencies to get there.

In short, telework is essential for both emergency preparedness

and being prepared to build the workplace of the future. But these

are not two separate goals. Instead, COOP is yet another reason

to build a basic telework capacity, and telework must be structured

with COOP needs in mind.

I look forward to today being at the start of a real march toward

this type of integrated policy and toward realizing telework’s true

potential.

I also note, in closing, that Representative Davis is submitting a

statement for the record on these points further.

Mr. PORTER. Thank you very much.

Chairman Davis.

Mr. TOM DAVIS OF VIRGINIA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Telework leverages the latest technology to give significant flexibility to managers and workers alike. It can serve to reduce traffic

congestion, which, as we all know, is a major problem in this region. But telework isn’t just common-sense efficiency. It is also an

important national security consideration as well.

The decentralization of Federal agency functions inherent in a

healthy telework strategy can greatly increase the survivability of

those agencies in the event of a terrorist attack or other disruptive

crisis. Therefore, I have consistently advocated that telework needs

to be an integral part of every Federal Government agency continuity of operation plan [COOP].

To promote my strong commitment to telework and its inclusion

in COOP planning, the full Government Reform Committee has

held numerous hearings under my chairmanship. We have also engaged the GAO to evaluate the Government’s COOP planning process, the inclusion of telework in that process and the adequacy of

Government-wide exercises of COOP plans and telework.

Our efforts have focused on a number of aspects of telework. A

primary concern has been the status of telework in the Federal

Government. We have encouraged the responsible agencies for implementing telework policies for Federal employees, the Office of

Personnel Management, to increase its efforts to increase the availability of telework programs for Federal workers.

With regard to telework and the COOP planning process, we

have monitored agencies’ identification of their essential functions

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and their adherence to Federal Emergency Management Agency

COOP guidelines. We directed GAO to issue annual score cards to

assess how agencies were performing their COOP planning responsibilities. We also obtained GAO’s annual evaluations of agencies’

inclusions of telework in their COOP plans.

The findings consistently recognize that progress has been made,

but that most agencies needed additional guidance and should take

steps to assure that telework was a more prominent component of

their COOP program. Testing of COOP plans is an essential component of assuring that a plan is realistic and effective.

In June, 63 agencies engaged in a combined exercise to test the

Government’s readiness to respond to disaster, called Forward

Challenge 2006. I have a pending information request with the Department of Homeland Security to obtain extensive documents

about preparation of the exercise and Hotwash After-Action reports

for each agency’s exercise. I am also engaging GAO in expanded

post-exercise evaluation.

Post-Forward Challenge 2006 reports and evaluations will provide us with the tools to assess how effective that exercise was and

how effectively telework was utilized. Once I have received those

evaluations, we will be in a better position to determine the appropriate role that the committee and Congress can play in assuring

that telework is more effectively utilized by every Federal Government agency and is widely available to Federal employees.

Similarly, we will assess how the committee and Congress can

assure that telework becomes an integral part of every agency’s

COOP plan and that future exercises properly test their telework

capability.

I want to thank you, Mr. Porter, for convening this hearing. I

look forward to continuing to work with your subcommittee on expanding telework opportunities for all Federal employees.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Tom Davis follows:]

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Mr. PORTER. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. We appreciate it.

Mr. Issa.

Mr. ISSA. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for holding this

important hearing. You know, when you get to be the last one to

make an opening statement, you certainly don’t want to repeat everything that has been said so well, particularly by our chairman.

But I do think that there are some other important issues that

have not yet been brought up.

Obviously, we have talked about homeland security and the ability to have continuity of Government even if a physical facility has

been damaged. But I believe that when we speak about the congestion and the fact that you are going to get a one-time savings by

telecommuting out of Washington, DC, but if we continue to concentrate in and around the District of Columbia government agencies, we will revisit the exact same problem in the foreseeable future.

So as we look at telecommuting and the need for telework, we

need to also recognize, and this committee particularly needs to

recognize, that we have over-concentrated in the greater District of

Columbia area—northern Virginia, Maryland, and the District of

Columbia—we have over-concentrated the seat of Government.

There are agencies galore, including the Internal Revenue Service,

that did not need to be close to Congress or close to the President.

The work, in fact, of the Patent and Trademark Office, the work

of the Internal Revenue, both of them could be located, and I am

certain that Senator Byrd has planned to have them located in

West Virginia for some time. [Laughter.]

But in fact, as we look at that, we need to recognize that locations of the few workers—fewer, the better—that actually have to

be in a facility give us the flexibility to begin looking at decentralizing our facilities and having less and less people who call the District of Columbia and northern Virginia and Maryland their home.

This, in the case of an attack on America, would dramatically improve our ability to have sustainability of our critical people.

I certainly want to commend the work you are doing, though, on

the prime issue here today.

Two more anecdotal comments. One of them, of course, being

that except for that nasty Constitution, I would be advocating that

Congress start telecommuting a little bit. But unfortunately, we did

ratify in the Constitution the requirement that we meet together

and, in fact, meet here.

Last, but not least, as we are going into how, where, what, and

why we telecommute, I hope that we will all recognize that proper

telework technology employed broadly throughout the Government

would prevent the unfortunate, but fortunately no permanent damage, loss of that laptop by the Veterans Administration. Unnecessary for that kind of data to be compromised by being removed

from the secure location, and proper telework would not require

that tens of thousands of sensitive documents or sensitive Social

Security numbers be taken out of a facility. So hopefully that also

will fit into today’s hearing, and I look forward to listening to our

witnesses.

Mr. PORTER. Thank you, Mr. Issa.

I guess, as a side note, decentralizing Government because of——

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Mr. ISSA. Nevada ring a bell as I was speaking?

Mr. PORTER. I was going to talk about Yucca Mountain, but

maybe we can talk about that some other time. [Laughter.]

Mr. ISSA. You want it located here?

Mr. PORTER. I think it would be a great place for storage of nuclear waste. Anyway. [Laughter.]

Instead of Nevada. [Laughter.]

Again, thank you for your comments. I think this is of great interest to this committee, and we have brought some experts today.

But first I would like to do some procedural matters.

Ask unanimous consent that all Members have 5 legislative days

to submit written statements and questions for the hearing record

and any answers to written questions provided by the witnesses

also be included in the record. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Ask unanimous consent that all exhibits, documents, and other

materials referred to by Members and the witnesses may be included in the hearing record, all Members be permitted to revise

and extend their remarks. Without objection, it is so ordered.

It is also the practice of this committee to administer the oath

to all witnesses, so if you would all please stand and raise your

right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. PORTER. I also would like to have the second panel now

stand. And we are going to do this one more time. If you would

raise your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. PORTER. Let the record reflect that all the witnesses have

answered in the affirmative. You can, of course, please be seated.

The witnesses will each have 5 minutes, and we would like you

to please summarize your comments. As I note, you have submitted

full statements for the record.

Today we will be hearing from Daniel Green, Deputy Associate

Director for Employee and Family Support Policy with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management; Danette Campbell, the Senior

Telework Advisor for the U.S. Patent and Trade Office; Carl

Froehlich, the Chief Agency-Wide Shared Services with the Internal Revenue Service.

So I would like to thank, again, all of you for being here, and we

will begin with Mr. Green for 5 minutes. Thank you.

STATEMENTS OF DANIEL GREEN, DEPUTY ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR, EMPLOYEE AND FAMILY SUPPORT POLICY, U.S. OFFICE

OF PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT; DANETTE CAMPBELL, SENIOR TELEWORK ADVISOR, U.S. PATENT AND TRADE OFFICE;

AND CARL FROEHLICH, CHIEF OF AGENCY-WIDE SHARED

SERVICES, INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE

STATEMENT OF DANIEL GREEN

Mr. GREEN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, I am pleased to be here today on behalf

of the Office of Personnel Management to talk about telework. I

would like to start by expressing OPM’s continued support for

telework in the Federal Government.

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OPM continues to work with Federal agencies to support their efforts to implement telework to the broadest extent possible. OPM

staff members have provided agencies with individualized guidance

and technical support through onsite visits, as well as providing

one-on-one consultation to agency telework coordinators on an ongoing, as-needed basis.

We have revised the annual agency survey to streamline the

questions and enhance data collection, and are currently in the

process of gathering the data for our next report.

Continuity of operations and pandemic health crisis planning

have continued to increase interest in telework. As required by the

President’s National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza Implementation, OPM is updating its telework guidance to include information

about emergency planning. We are adding modules to the existing

online training courses for managers and teleworkers, and we are

substantially revising the telework guide that resides on the Interagency Telework Web site.

To assist Federal agencies with their emergency planning, OPM

is preparing a legislative proposal that would allow the head of an

agency to require employees to work from home or another alternate work site during a pandemic health crisis, if necessary, to

achieve the agency’s mission or a performance goal.

Some widely reported security challenges have also increased the

focus on telework. In our updated telework guide, we tell Federal

employees and their managers that they are responsible for the security of Federal Government property and information regardless

of their work location. When employees telework, agency security

policies do not change, and should be enforced at the same rigorous

level as when they are in the office.

Our plans for future activity include a redesign of the Interagency Telework Web site, continued agency visit, and continued

agency telework coordinator meetings addressing the developing

issues and questions. As part of the redesign of the Telework Web

site, we will be developing online telework materials designed to

assist telework coordinators in promoting telework in their agencies. We will also be adding to our training with the development

of classroom style sessions for managers and supervisors that will

be offered to all agencies and interactive Web-based courses facilitated by a telework expert.

All of this activity is in support of Federal agencies and agency

coordinators to provide them the information, materials, and training they need to grow effective telework programs. All of it is fairly

basic because telework is not really a complicated program.

Telework is simply an extension of what most employees already

do, which is to use technology for remote communications. The barriers are more perceived than real.

Management resistance is often cited as the reason that telework

is not working in an agency or workgroup. For some managers,

managing teleworkers may seem difficult or outside of their experience. In our guidance about telework, we tell managers that they

need to manage by results, not by presence. The same set of skills

that managers must develop in order to meet the goals of performance management is what they need to manage teleworkers. Managers who have mastered performance management techniques

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have the skills in place to easily manage a mixed or all-teleworking

workgroup without difficulty.

In summation, I would like to make two main points. First,

telework is not new or mysterious or difficult. It is simply a way

of getting work done that uses the same kinds of technologies that

enable work to be achieved in an agency office. Second, telework

is not a panacea for all our ills. It is certainly one way to reduce

traffic congestion, but it can only be one piece of a much broader

approach to the problem.

Similarly, for terrorism or other emergency situations, telework

represents one method of mitigating the impact of such events on

the ability of agencies to accomplish work, but can by no means be

considered by itself a solution. What telework can be, has proven

to be, is an effective tool to support Federal employees in balancing

their work life and to help Federal agencies meet their performance

objectives.

That concludes my remarks. I would be pleased to respond to any

questions the subcommittee may have.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Green follows:]

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Mr. PORTER. Thank you, Mr. Green. We appreciate your testimony.

Next we will hear from Danette Campbell.

Appreciate your being here, Danette. Thank you very much.

STATEMENT OF DANETTE CAMPBELL

Ms. CAMPBELL. Thank you. Chairman Porter, Ranking Member

Davis, and members of the subcommittee, my name is Danette

Campbell, and I would like to thank you for inviting the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to testify today. I commend you for holding today’s hearing and for working hard to ensure that our Federal Government is in the vanguard of telecommuting efforts.

As PTO’s Telework Coordinator, I am responsible for overseeing

the implementation and operation of telecommuting programs, and

I serve as a point of contact on such programs for the Committee

on Appropriations.

As you are aware, the workplace today goes beyond the walls

that surround an office building. Changing the boundaries of old

workplace patterns allows for decreased commute time, greater

control over workloads, and even a more balanced lifestyle. This all

translates into increased employee productivity and satisfaction, as

well as higher employee retention.

At the U.S. PTO, we are expanding our telework programs to

create a work force that can work anywhere, any time. We believe

that U.S. PTO’s decision to implement telework as a corporate

business strategy will help reduce traffic congestion in the national

capital region and, in a very competitive job market, allow the U.S.

PTO to hire over 3,000 new examiners in the next 6 years.

During my brief tenure at the Patent and Trademark Office, I

have had an opportunity to witness a commitment by PTO leadership to support the telework initiative, encourage employee participation, and supply remote workers with the tools they need to be

successful.

Prior to participating in a telework program, each employee receives instruction on how to access PTO systems remotely. We have

an extensive IT security infrastructure and strong security policy

that work together to ensure that both personally identifiable information and business sensitive information are adequately protected

from loss or theft. These protections have been implemented

throughout the PTO telework initiative and help to prevent the

possible occurrence of a sensitive information security breach.

Recently, the Trademark Work at Home program received the

Telework Program with the Maximum Impact on Government

award from the Telework Exchange. This award recognized that

Trademarks has created an extremely successful telework program

that can serve as a model for other Government agencies. This

telework program was praised as an innovative telework prototype

by showing other agencies how to incorporate measurable performance goals in evaluating the performance of its teleworkers.

As part of this telework program, 80 percent of eligible examining attorneys make electronic reservations for their time in the office and perform the majority of their trademark examination duties at home. Each employee is provided with the necessary equipment to establish a secure connection to the agency’s network and

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automated systems enable users to perform all of their examination

duties electronically.

Trademark Work at Home combines management by objective

with hoteling, which translates into documented space and related

cost savings for the PTO. By incorporating measurable performance

goals in the evaluation of worker performance, Trademarks has

created a model of extremely successful telecommuting programs

for Government agencies.

The Patents Hoteling Program provides participants with the option to perform officially assigned duties at home. Major elements

of this program include remote online access to all relevant PTO

business systems, job performance tools, patent information, patent

application documentation, and incorporates the use of collaborative communication technologies. Program participants can remotely reserve workspace for required time spent in hoteling suites

located throughout PTO’s Alexandria campus. To date, approximately 320 patent examiners have relinquished their office space

to work from home 4 days a week.

The Patents Hoteling Program positions the agency to hire new

patent examiners without incurring additional real estate costs,

eliminates 4 days of commuting time, and has made patent examining in the Washington metropolitan region more attractive to potential candidates who currently reside outside of the region. This

telework program will enable PTO to recruit from a highly qualified hiring pool and retain existing valuable employees.

I believe that the U.S. PTO telework programs are progressive

efforts that will continue to serve as models for Federal agencies

and that they are some of the best telework programs that the Federal Government has to offer.

In conclusion, a successful telework program can mean better

employee morale, higher levels of sustained performance, and reduce traffic congestion and air pollution. The U.S. PTO has demonstrated that telework works and is a winning proposition for our

employees, our agency, and for the American public.

We appreciate this opportunity to testify before this committee

on this important issue. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Campbell follows:]

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Mr. PORTER. Thank you, Ms. Campbell. We appreciate your testimony.

Next we will hear from Mr. Froehlich, who is the Chief of Agency-Wide Shared Services at the IRS. And, again, I understand you

have had some major challenges down the street, and I appreciate

all the efforts to get everything up and running again.

STATEMENT OF CARL FROEHLICH

Mr. FROEHLICH. Yes, sir. We have been quite busy, so thank you,

Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee for having me

here today to talk about the recent flooding in the IRS headquarters building at 1111 Constitution.

Just as background, as Chief of Agency-Wide Shared Services, I

manage a portfolio of shared services across IRS: real estate, procurement, employee support services such as timekeeping and payroll and travel, and also equal opportunity management and case

processing. That is how we provide our service to our clients, the

clients being the taxpayer-facing side of IRS.

What happened on June 25th and 26th, as you well know, we

had significant rains, turning Constitution Avenue essentially into

a river. That water came down Constitution Avenue and flooded

into the basement of the IRS. The IRS basement was flooded to a

depth of 5 feet. The sub-basement, which holds all of our infrastructure, was flooded to a depth of 20 feet. This is what has

caused the major damage. We pumped the first 2 days about 3 million gallons of water out of the basement of IRS.

The fact that IRS, as it was constructed in the 1930’s, placed all

the infrastructure in the basement, the electrical switchboards, the

air handlers, the chillers for the air conditioning, and what have

you, is the reason why we had the significant delay to move back

into the building. That is really the long lead element, to get the

employees back to work in the building.

We have completed the initial phase of clean-out and decontaminated. That was completed on July 15th. All the things, lessons

learned you have heard from Katrina, about moving drywall to prevent mold and what have you, all that effort was done. It was an

absolutely superb effort done by GSA to get their teams on there

on the third day of ripping out the drywall, the furniture, the carpets, the flooring to keep the mold problem down. As a matter of

fact, we have eliminated that now. We are in the dry-out mode of

what is going on.

GSA is in the process of completing their damage assessments

for the building. GSA is responsible for the capital investment side

of the building; the IRS is responsible for the maintenance and the

upkeep and the cleaning. That is our agreement. We will have

those estimates by the end of this month. We anticipate, however,

for the building to be 100 percent back, it will take, as you mentioned, until the end of the year, so January timeframe. We are

hopeful, however, that we will be able to do a phased return back

to the building for some of our employees as we bring some of the

systems back up again.

I would be remiss, however, to say that we are also very concerned that we preclude recurrence of the same incident. We know

basically the means of how the water got in is how the building

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was constructed was a contributing factor, and we are working

with GSA now on what are the options to guard against, either

harden the building or perhaps do some sort of mitigating thing to

move some of the infrastructure out of the sub-basement to prevent

such damage again.

Of note, we have never had, in the 70-some odd years of this

building’s existence, this type of flooding. But that doesn’t mean we

will just assume it doesn’t happen again. We will take that further

action.

That is where we are in the building.

As far as business resumption, Agency-Wide Shared Services, as

I mentioned, is a portfolio of those services. As such, we also provide the cross-business work on a routine basis, geographically

based. In other words, if a business unit in Philadelphia has an

issue, we provide the what is it we need to do with the union negotiations, what do we need to do with real estate, what do we need

to do with procurement. We provide that service inside AWSS.

As such, when this incident happened, we established an incident command center in our new Federal building in New

Carrollton. We have 14 buildings in the D.C. area, and that is one

of them. The command center was charged and provided the authority to make very quick decisions on what is needed for business

resumption, to implement the COOP plan for the short-term continuity of operation, and then bring in the business needs as far

as prioritizing our resources as we apply to the casualty to bring

the business of IRS back up again.

We have been fairly successful with maintaining continuity. As

a matter of fact, the taxpayer-facing aspects of IRS are not

headquartered in the IRS building at 1111 Constitution; those are

out in the field. Those were unaffected, obviously, by the flood.

Even so, by January 5th, which is the next week—or, excuse me,

July, we had 1142 employees back up to work, about 50 percent.

And that included all of our critical employees that were on the

COOP operation plan.

On Monday, yesterday, as a matter of fact, we had 96 percent of

all our employees back to work. Of those, 873, or about 29 percent,

were via telework, which provided a wonderful flexibility for us as

far as bringing those people back that were already equipped with

the laptops and the infrastructure. The telework brought them

back immediately, so it was not an issue with them.

I am sure we will have some questions, but I just want to give

you a couple of quick lessons learned.

As we learned from Katrina, COOP is but one element, and that

is the near-term continuity of operation. The business resumption

side is really the hard slug of work, and that goes on what is best

planned and then do you have the right people in the right place

to make the business decision. We will learn that again on this one

and we will get better, and hopefully, if this ever happens again,

we will be better again.

That concludes my opening remarks. I am available for questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Froehlich follows:]

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Mr. PORTER. Thank you. We appreciate all your testimony.

Where are your auditors located, are they out in the field?

Mr. FROEHLICH. They are out in the field, exactly correct.

Mr. PORTER. We appreciate, again, being able to pick on you,

since you’re the IRS. We want 10 percent improvement in efficiency

at the IRS.

Mr. FROEHLICH. Yes, sir. Revenue that runs our country. That is

what we do.

Mr. PORTER. Thank you. And, again, not to make light of a very

serious situation. We appreciate all of your efforts. Again, thank

you very, very much.

I have a question or two. I will begin with Mr. Green.

You said there is 12 percent of the potential 60 percent of Federal employees in the national capital region telecommuting. How

do you suggest the agencies increase their telework numbers? Do

you have a plan in place? What are you doing now?

Mr. GREEN. We are there to help them. We have a plan for the

year. We are starting off. In 3 weeks we will be issuing a new

guide to Federal agencies that is coming out concurrent with the

guidance from OPM on pandemic influenza and personnel issues

stemming from that, from the potential from that.

Our new telework guide gives guidance on that and to all Federal agencies on how best to, in our estimation, implement telework

programs that involve management and employees, and the planning and development of those programs, and it can be sustainable

programs that not only help in the situation of a COOP planning

for a pandemic or for a terrorist attack, but also to help with worklife balance, to help productivity, and to help further the mission

of the agency, because, after all, that is what each agency is primarily interested in, is meeting its mission objectives.

The second thing that we will continue to do is to offer onsite visits in consultation to Federal agencies. We conducted 20 such visits

in the past year, and my staff is available to help any Federal

agency that requests it. In fact, we go out of our way to offer our

services to agencies to help them implement their programs effectively.

We are also going to be revamping our training. We are, right

now, working on adding a pandemic module to our online telework

training program, which will soon be available on Go Learn to all

Federal agencies on a free basis while they develop their programs.

Then we are going to look into, as you know, OPM puts on a

wealth of management training. We are going to work with those

program managers to add robust telework guidance and management training, because we think that is where the biggest bang for

the buck, reaching out to local managers and helping them understand how telework works, how it works in coordination with performance management, and help ease them through what they may

see as a mysterious process. It shouldn’t be anymore, it has been

around a while, but I think that is where—another cliche—the rubber hits the road, is between the manager and the employee.

All agencies have telework policies. We think that by reaching

out to managers and helping telework coordinators at agencies

reach out to managers and employees is the way that we can most

effectively increase the numbers of teleworkers.

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Mr. PORTER. Do you think that agencies have enough legal authority, assuming there was an emergency, to require employees to

telecommute in a state of chaos, possibly?

Mr. GREEN. There are programs available currently which would

help agencies manage to continue operations and continue employees working. There is evacuation pay programs and all. Nonetheless, we believe that after consultation with the CDC and understanding about, should a pandemic occur, the need for social

distancing, the experts call it, not having people congregate together in an office or other setting, that it would be appropriate to

give individual agency heads the authority to require employees to

work at home or in some other distributed location. So we are preparing legislation right now that we are going to offer to you that

would help accomplish that goal.

Mr. PORTER. Congresswoman, questions?

Ms. NORTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

It is hard to know how to approach what would seem to be a natural desire of employees, to avoid the traffic, the hustle of getting

on that highway. You know, for those of them who don’t live in the

District of Columbia, I don’t know how they can resist it. But according to the GAO report, there have been problems on all ends.

Just let me say to my good friend from California, while I was

out of the room, I understand there was some Capital lust expressed. [Laughter.]

Don’t start me on what would happen if you moved substantial

parts of the Government to California, with its earthquakes. Even

my good friend, the chairman, who would have the IRS employees

off gambling in Reno. [Laughter.]

Mr. ISSA. You know, there is a reason that the pioneers kept

moving West.

Ms. NORTON. Yes. But, indeed, I just want to say that George

Washington and Thomas Jefferson would turn over in their graves

if they thought anybody would want to take the Capital and piece

it out to the provinces. [Laughter.]

Mr. ISSA. I note that you noted two prominent Virginians. The

Bostonians may have disagreed even at the founding. [Laughter.]

Ms. NORTON. You notice they didn’t get the Capital of the United

States, though.

Mr. PORTER. Of course, she missed the part about Yucca Mountain. [Laughter.]

Ms. NORTON. You wanted to move the Capital there, Mr. Chairman?

Mr. PORTER. No, we were going to move Yucca Mountain here.

Ms. NORTON. Oh, I see. [Laughter.]

I do want to say for the record, because I think it would bring

some comfort to my two friends to know, that while there are about

2 million Federal employees, most of them are out there. There are,

you know, perhaps 200,000 or so in this region. That leaves the

rest of the country with all the rest of them. This is a profoundly

decentralized Government, but no great country fails to have its

own great capital where, yes, it keeps and husbands its great agencies. So you all are going to have to live with it. Get over it.

We all agree that, in the abstract, this is a wonderful thing and

we would like to see it happen more often, and two parent families,

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one parent families, everybody hustling. Golly, you would think

people would hurry to do it. And there are many reasons, frankly.

Because the incentives to do it are so great on the employee end,

there is no question where the problem lies. It has to lie on the

Government end.

You say to a mother who has to leave her child off at day care

and then get on these roads, 295, 395, 95, to get to Washington.

She would rather die than do that. If she does it, there has to be

some sense that she doesn’t know what would happen, she doesn’t

have enough incentives. So I just want to say there is no way for

this not to be working if the Government were pressing it—Federal

Government, OPM and company, including OMB—were doing all

they were supposed to do.

Now I fear the opposite. It does seem to me that there is going

to be a huge chilling effect. If you were thinking about teleworking

and you heard about what has just happened to these laptops, you

would think again. First of all, I am sure, I am almost positive that

these were employees who, like many professionals in the private

sector, were just trying to do their work and to just take work

home, or perhaps even to do teleworking.

Lo and behold, something happens to the computer and it is

front page news. And in the age of identity theft, everybody can understand why. And when our soldiers in Iraq are among those who

have had their identity gone, you can understand how this employee must feel.

Well, my question is really a single question to all of you. I think

that most employees have every reason now to say just one moment, I am not going to be involved in this; can’t be sure this stuff

is secure, can’t be sure that my laptop won’t be stolen. And yet,

really, in your testimony I didn’t hear—that is why I ask the question—much to assure their confidence that it is all right, it is all

right to do.

For example, in the testimony of Mr. Green, we learn that when

employees telework, agency security policies do not change. Hear

that? They do not change, and should be enforced with the same

rigor as when in office. Well, that is bull. That, if anything, says,

OK, tell me how to do that. And who is going to be blamed if there

is either a theft or a security risk?

Then it says we refer to guidance from the Office of Management

and Budget and NIST for further explication of security requirements and their application to the telework environment, like look

it up, employees, and then you will understand what to do.

For PTO, even more serious. You are dealing with people’s intellectual property, you are dealing with patents. And I was very impressed with how much computer work goes on. And, indeed, you

say on page 2 we are expanding to create a work force that can be

anywhere at any time. Well, before I submit my patent to the PTO,

I want to know all about that.

Ms. CAMPBELL. OK.

Ms. NORTON. And before I take home any work, I want to make

sure that if my patent gets stolen inadvertently because of security

problems, either there in the Government, you are going to take

care of me.

Ms. CAMPBELL. Let me——

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Ms. NORTON. No, ma’am, I am just going to make the point, then

you all can answer.

Ms. CAMPBELL. OK.

Ms. NORTON. Mr. Froehlich, am I pronouncing that correctly?

Mr. FROEHLICH. Froehlich.

Ms. NORTON. Froehlich. Now, nobody, of course, wants anything

to happen to their income tax returns. That is guarded with very

heavy penalties. So my question to you, of course, largely has to do

with can anybody even take home anything that could lead back

to one’s tax returns? And how does teleworking work in an agency

where that kind of security is almost like the security we attach

to secure agencies that guard us against terrorism?

So, Mr. Green, I will just ask, beginning with you, why should

anybody take any work home, given what looks to be rather vague

notions that if they would read the regulations, they would understand how to keep their work out of the office secure? And I want

to know how do they. I take my work home; I am a supervisor; I

want to get it all done. How am I assured that it will be secure?

Mr. GREEN. Thank you. Every agency has its own security policies in place and every Federal employee is required by law to have

security training every year.

Ms. NORTON. But the GAO just told us that—first of all, we know

that teleworking and taking home work, simply as a professional

matter, is probably going on where neither you or others don’t

know about it. I understand what the requirements are, Mr. Green.

I am asking you another question.

Suppose a hard-working Federal employee looks to the manual,

does what the manual says, takes her work home. I am going to

give you the hard question about it being stolen. There are ways,

of course, to protect work that is stolen by the way it is—what do

you call it?

Mr. GREEN. Encrypted?

Ms. NORTON. Encrypted. But leave that aside for a moment. I

simply want to know if I take it home to some part, to my own

home, how do I know it is secure? Is it secure is what I really want

to know.

Mr. GREEN. It should be secure if the agency’s security policies

are in place and if the employee——

Ms. NORTON. What are those policies? There are no Governmentwide agency security policies, is that your answer?

Mr. GREEN. No, ma’am. There are——

Ms. NORTON. Should there be? Should there be, Mr. Green?

Mr. GREEN. And there are. There are standards. The NIST has

issued several sets of standards and guidance on how to encrypt

data, how to have the inflow of electronic information and

exercise——

Ms. NORTON. Well, if the data is not encrypted, you are saying

that the employee should not take the work home?

Mr. GREEN. I am saying that employees should follow the security policies, the securities in place depending upon the type of data

that they have, and if they do that, then the data should be safe.

Nothing is 100 percent safe in this world.

Ms. NORTON. So there is no agency-wide policy and each agency

can decide for itself what that policy could be?

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Mr. GREEN. Each agency has its own policies, yes, ma’am.

Ms. NORTON. I want to just go on record right here saying you

take home your work at your own risk. And I also want to know

if an employee can be punished if in fact something happens.

Mr. GREEN. I am sorry, I don’t think I said that, ma’am.

Ms. NORTON. I am saying it.

Mr. GREEN. OK.

Ms. NORTON. This is the Congresswoman saying, warning, all

Federal employees, if your agency does not assure you, one, that

everything you have has been encrypted and, two, that you will not

be personally punished if there is a security breach, then you are

forewarned that you should not take your work home. And I think

you should issue them that warning. Since you say each agency has

the right to do it, you ought to tell employees up front, the ones

who are in fact reaching out to do work, what their responsibility

is and what they should do if the agency has not in fact met its

responsibility.

Mr. GREEN. OPM has done that to its own employees. We were

all issued such a policy statement just a couple of weeks ago and

given guidance on how to handle data when they are teleworking.

Ms. NORTON. Ms. Campbell, perhaps you can talk about intellectual property.

Ms. CAMPBELL. I can speak to our telework programs and how

the information is secure. Our telework systems have many features that ensure the security and the protection of sensitive data.

However, to address your concern with employees simply taking

hard copy information home, that is a very difficult thing, I would

think, to control unless in fact——

Ms. NORTON. I wasn’t talking about hard copy. I am talking

about taking a computer home.

Ms. CAMPBELL. Again, I can speak to the telework initiative at

the Patent and Trademark Office and tell you that our servers are

connected to a series of network switches and routers that are connected to a virtual private network which protects the servers from

outside attack.

Ms. NORTON. So if an employee were to take work home, would

it be on a disk or something, that would be encrypted? Or how

would an employee take work home from PTO?

Ms. CAMPBELL. Well, when our workers telework, they are actually remoting into their system at the Patent and Trademark Office, so they are not transporting a disk, they are not transporting

a file, per se. They are remoting in.

Ms. NORTON. OK, this is important to note. So nobody at PTO

can just take their own laptop home and do work there out of their

own laptop, but they have to have a secure computer at home that

in fact links in to PTO?

Ms. CAMPBELL. Well, actually, we provide the employee with the

laptop. When they are working at home and they remote in to this

system at the office, their hard drive is in, sometimes it is called

a rack and stack, so that when that information is coming through,

it is not residing on that laptop, it is just passing through. So if

that laptop were stolen——

Ms. NORTON. So your own rules—not the rules, excuse me. What

is important about what you are saying——

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Ms. CAMPBELL. Our systems?

Ms. NORTON. Your systems, as opposed to your rules—because

we heard from Mr. Green about the rules—you are saying your systems do protect against security breaches.

Ms. CAMPBELL. Yes, ma’am, as much as can possibly be in place.

Ms. NORTON. If in fact people are using only your systems, I

would agree. And it does seem to me that is the kind of thing, particularly after the recent thefts and problems, we don’t want to

have.

Now, Mr. Froehlich, you work in an atmosphere that has always

been extremely high security. Would you tell me how, particularly

people’s income tax returns, are protected? Can anybody telework,

telecommute, whatever, on anybody’s income tax material from any

date forward or back?

Mr. FROEHLICH. As you point out, this is not a trivial task. At

IRS, it is taken very seriously. Taxpayer information is all classified as sensitive information. We do have a fairly lengthy period of

time, however, of experience on this because we have field agents

that work in small businesses and work in, you know, General Motors and what have you, that are used to remote.

Those applications, as pointed out by Ms. Campbell, are run

encrypted. They are exchange information encrypted.

Now, the slug of work that is important and, really, lessons

learned from Veterans Administration are where are the gaps. Payroll, for example. Are payrolls encrypted with National Finance

Center. Are those transactions encrypted? Are Equal Opportunity

case files, are those encrypted? And as we go through a very systematic approach of all the information that one of our employees

could touch, are we taking precautions?

The utopia where every hard disk is fully encrypted is where we

need to go. At some point we are going to get there. I think we are

going to get there pretty soon.

Ms. NORTON. Very important what you are trying to do, Mr.

Froehlich, but you are saying to me that all the financial information is encrypted, except perhaps for payroll information?

Mr. FROEHLICH. Payroll information right now is all encrypted,

yes, ma’am. That is one of my personal operations and I have verified that.

Ms. NORTON. Personal information,

Mr. FROEHLICH. These are for employees.

Ms. NORTON [continuing]. Once that information goes to you

from me, is encrypted?

Mr. FROEHLICH. For taxpayer information the answer is yes. The

question is where are the gaps. And, you know, for employee

records, do we have those fully encrypted? Are those removed from

hard drives, where they shouldn’t be? Those types of guidance, it

is a mixed approach. We have technology as far as one solution, but

there is also operator requirements, what are you allowed to have

on your laptop; what are you not allowed to have on your laptop?

There is a shared responsibility between agency and employee,

and how that is defined is really the training piece of work that

is so critical so people know their roles and responsibilities. That

effort has gone underway with IRS and continues today. To say

that we are done on that would be premature, but we have gone

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a long way down this road, learning lessons from the Veterans Administration.

Ms. NORTON. So you are saying that your goal at IRS, you have

a plan to encrypt all of your records and material?

Mr. FROEHLICH. That is the ultimate goal. What I can’t tell you

today is when we will get there and——

Ms. NORTON. You have a plan to do—I can understand that will

take a very long time. But I am saying is there a plan that says

the IRS has a plan—I don’t know, 10 years from now, whatever it

is—to have encrypted all of our records?

Mr. FROEHLICH. Right. You have gone about three layers out of

my area of jurisdiction in IRS, but I would be happy to come back

with a formal question on that.

Ms. NORTON. Would you submit to the chairman within the next

30 days whether there is a plan? I think they will be particularly

interested to the IRS to encrypt all your work. I appreciate what

you are saying, because sometimes you can get tax information on

other than somebody’s tax form. So it does matter that your records

be encrypted to the greatest extent possible.

Mr. FROEHLICH. And we have had several years of managing the

paper, how is that coded, how is that managed, how is that destroyed. So there is some, you know, process behind this, and the

question is how do we now apply that to the electronic side, especially in the world of telecommuting, where we now have far more

people carrying information with them on a routine basis. It is not

a trivial problem.

Ms. NORTON. Thank you very much.

And thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. PORTER. Mr. Green, Ms. Campbell, Mr. Froehlich, we appreciate your testimony today. Thank you very, very much.

Mr. GREEN. Thank you.

Ms. CAMPBELL. Thank you.

Mr. PORTER. Mr. Froehlich, don’t worry about losing alphabet P,

it is OK.

Mr. FROEHLICH. I don’t do taxes, I do everything else.

Mr. PORTER. Thank you.

If the next panel, please, could come forward.

The witnesses will now be recognized for approximately 5 minutes of testimony. On our second panel today we will hear from Dr.

William Mularie, who is chief executive officer of the Telework

Consortium; Joslyn Read, assistant vice president of regulatory affairs, Hughes Network Systems, a Limited Liability Co., who will

be speaking on behalf of the Telecommunications Industry Association; and finally hear from Mr. Jerry Edgerton, president of business and Federal marketing, Verizon Communications.

Doctor, welcome.

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STATEMENTS OF WILLIAM MULARIE, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER, THE TELEWORK CONSORTIUM; JOSLYN READ, ASSISTANT VICE PRESIDENT, REGULATORY AFFAIRS, HUGHES

NETWORK SYSTEMS, LLC, ON BEHALF OF THE TELECOMMUNICATIONS INDUSTRY ASSOCIATION; AND JERRY

EDGERTON, PRESIDENT OF BUSINESS AND FEDERAL MARKETING, VERIZON COMMUNICATIONS

STATEMENT OF WILLIAM MULARIE

Mr. MULARIE. Thank you. Chairman Porter and members of this

subcommittee and your excellent committee staff, too. They were

very helpful. I thank you for this opportunity to share my perspectives. I have submitted my written testimony, so I will expand on

some of the main points.

I was really interested in the title of this hearing, and I suspect

a year or two previous to this, when you talked about telework and

terrorism in the last sentence, nobody would really understand.

But I think through the work of the Committees on Government

Reform and Chairman Tom Davis and yourself, and my Congressman, Frank Wolf, that the public better understands now the connection.

So I represent the Telework Consortium. I am funded by the Department of Commerce to accelerate the adoption of telework in

Government and in business sectors. And although we have been

involved in the advocacy issues in telework, most of our focus has

been to advance the practice of telework through pilot demonstrations, using advanced technologies, with Federal agencies, some

local and State governments and businesses.

So today I would like to speak briefly on three issues. One is

briefly on the financial burden upon automotive commuters and

taxpayers. And, Mr. Chairman, I think you fundamentally stole my

punch line on this, but I will go through with it anyway. The second, telework is the core of continuity of operations planning; and,

last, based upon our experiences in the Telework Consortium pilot

demonstrations, the imperative of broadband access to homes, certainly for all the Government workers, to every manager and every

worker who is tasked with maintaining the delivery of goods and

services in an agency.

So, the financial burden of commuting. I had the privilege of testifying, Mr. Chairman, before your subcommittee on November

16th on the issue of mitigating the impact of high gasoline prices

on the American work force. And I did orally a calculation there,

and it is in the written record, but for someone with a salary of,

say, $65,000 commuting 40 miles round trip, that at $1.25 a gallon,

the worker has to spend 2 months of his take-home pay—takehome pay—to pay for the cost of commuting. At $3 a gallon, it

takes a few weeks more.

Now, the purpose of that testimony was to show that it is not the

cost of gas, per se, but it is the act of commuting. And as you have

said, Mr. Chairman, in your opening statement, not traveling is

really the right solution to this. And also the taxpayer obviously

gets stuck with supporting these commuters. Road capacity now is

really built to try to accommodate this morning and evening commute, and I think we, for example, the Wilson Bridge here locally.

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We funded a study by Professor Tony Yezer, of George Washington University, that concluded the taxpayers subsidized each commuter in the northern Virginia area about $3,000 a year through

the additional infrastructure building and maintaining necessary

for these people to commute. So the taxpayer gets stuck with this

issue of commuting, not only individual.

But as the subject of this hearing is there is a more critical reason than cost to rethink our commuter society, namely, continuity

of operations. Washington, DC, area is a target-rich environment,

and the targets not symbolic like the Washington Monument, but

they are the human lives here in the District, and disrupting the

functioning of this Government. I was just noticing in the paper

this morning that they said, for example, half of the riders, the

commuters on the Metro are Federal employees, and there are 50

agency buildings within—on the Metro stops.

So it is a tremendous presence in this beautiful Washington, DC,

city. So the core of the continuing of operations problem is that the

daily population of Washington, DC, increases by over 70 percent

each day, and the preponderance of the Federal agencies, the judicial branch, legislative and executive branches here in the District.

The World Trade Center in New York was not hit in 1993 and

2001 because it was symbolic, but that because, on the average, it

housed over 40,000 people daily in key services like our key financial institutions. And, likewise, the Pentagon was not hit here because it was symbolic, but because it held tens of thousands of people whose critical mission in the Department of Defense was important to this country.

So my views are that in the aftermath of a terrorist attack in the

District, we have really two problems. One is an evacuation plan,

getting these large number of Federal employees, legislative and

executive branch personnel, out of the District safely. The second

problem, though, is really the continuity of operations problem,

having dispersed now, what means do we have for intra and interagency communication so that the critical work of this Government

can continue.

And how long will this have to continue? As we heard in the

opening statements, a terrorist attack, the time scale is probably

unknown with respect to recovery. A pandemic, perhaps up to 6

months. Or in the case of a very simple radiological dirty bomb, a

pea-sized grain of cesium 137 and 10 pounds of dynamite in the

wind, and you can make parts of the District here uninhabitable

for decades.

And so I am concerned that the evacuation of the District is

problematic and that the current continuity of operation plans, the

Federal agencies are not adequate for the disruption.

Now let’s talk about solution. And, again, rather than calling it

telework, let me call it a distributed government. And it sounds

very much like decentralization, so I apologize. But I think I can

best explain a distributed government by an example.

In 2004, actually, in preparation for Congressman Tom Davis’

hearings, I talked to the chief technical officer of a New York financial institution which, before September 11th, occupied 23 floors of

the World Trade Center. And I said, well, what is your reaction

now? He said, post-September 11th, they understood that to ensure

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continuity of operations, they had to disperse their people geographically, out of Manhattan, into several adjoining States, and

also have data, their records in redundant locations on separate

power grids, tied by robust communications.

And his claim now is that any one of their nodes can be hit and

put out of business for whatever reason, and it is business as

usual. He said, our old model used to be that after an event, the

plan was quick recovery. He said that is no longer possible in this

world.

So business as usual. And I wish this would be the motto of our

Government agencies.

So how do we proceed? Well, call it telework or distributed government, but we need a pre-event-wide geographical dispersion of

a critical asset of agency workers, home-based assets, broadband.

And I think that eligibility has to be looked at in a different way.

Eligibility by the agency heads, they have to ask themselves a

question: do I have remote to this site I am sitting in now, sufficient people with sufficient knowledge, with sufficient assets and

data to sustain the operations of this agency if this building disappears now or if this building is no longer accessible? I think that

is a criterion for eligibility for telework.

And the technology here exists to do all of this in a very secure

manner. The way we started with the Telework Consortium was

with pilot demonstrations. From our experience, you cannot institute a successful telework program without a small-scale project.

We have been at this 5 years now, and I am a technologist, but

what I did not understand is that telework is disruptive to organizations.

And thinking about it, since the industrial revolution, management science has been well studied. You go into a bookstore and

you see thousands of books on management science. And I remember when I was active in corporations, they even had a book called

Dress for Success. What does dress for success mean in a telework

environment? Or management by walking around.

So my claim is that it disrupts organization in the sense that it

changes our notion of what work is, particularly people my age. So

we have to have pilot demonstrations to develop metrics to look at

processes and change organizational processes to accept this new

way of doing business.

The last thing is the imperative, which is broadband access. In

our pilot demonstration projects, mostly in northern Virginia, the

surprise that we had was the lack of broadband access to homes.

So we would get an agency and we would try to outfit people with

the telework equipment, and we found out that they only had dialup access. So I would suggest and I would hope that the Federal

Government would step in and really push ubiquitous broadband

as an important element of continuity of operations.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Mularie follows:]

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Mr. PORTER. Thank you very much for your testimony.

Next we will have Ms. Read, again, assistant vice president of

regulatory affairs at Hughes Network Systems, Limited Liability

Co., who is speaking on behalf of the Telecommunications Industry.

Thank you.

STATEMENT OF JOSLYN READ

Ms. READ. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the subcommittee. I would like to thank you for holding this hearing today

on telecommuting and for inviting us to share our perspectives for

your consideration.

My name is Joslyn Read. I am here to speak on behalf of the

Telecommunications Industry Association, as well as Hughes Network Systems.

TIA provides a forum for over 600 member companies, the manufacturers and suppliers of global communications products and

services, including telecommuting. Broadband access can be provided over a number of different technologies, including satellite,

cable, fiber, DSL, and terrestrial wireless technologies, all of which

hold great promise and in various stages of development and deployment. Although TIA members are involved in all of these technologies, I am most familiar and active in the satellite area and

will focus my remarks regarding telecommuting to the benefits that

satellite broadband offers.

As background, Hughes Network Systems is the global leader

today in providing broadband satellite networks and services for

large enterprises, governments, small businesses, and consumers.

Throughout the United States today, there are approximately

300,000 consumer and small business subscribers, and over

200,000 large enterprise and Government locations using Hughes

satellite broadband technology for day-to-day networking.

So, Mr. Chairman, my testimony, simply put, today is as follows:

First, teleworking is critical to American productivity and, as part

of continuity of operations plans, is critical to American readiness

during emergencies.

Second, satellite communications is an essential element to successful implementation of teleworking, as it is the only communications vehicle that can reach anyone, anywhere, any time.

Third, Government should support teleworking and do so in an

inclusive manner that recognizes the unique contribution that satellite has and will continue to make in this effort.

Recent reports have estimated that 28 million Americans telecommute in some form today. The author of a recent study has defined teleworking as an advanced form of telecommuting, which

goes beyond simply allowing employees to work from home or an

alternative location a couple days a week and, instead, enables

them to work at any time or place that allows them to successfully

complete their work. The benefits of teleworking to organizational

efficiency and long-term effectiveness for both Federal and nonFederal enterprises has been well documented by this panel, and

I won’t go into those today.

Attaining the benefits of teleworking is only possible, much as

Dr. Mularie has just stated, if teleworkers have access to high

speed broadband communications where they need to do the work.

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Satellite broadband is uniquely positioned to solve many of the

teleworking needs of today. Satellite broadband network infrastructure serves rural, suburban, and urban customers ubiquitously and

equally throughout the United States. Our speeds today are very

comparable to terrestrial offerings. High speed broadband services

by satellite are reliable, scalable, and cost-effective.

Teleworking plays a critical role, as we have heard today, in the

continuity of operations planning [COOP], for the Federal Government and non-Federal enterprises. During emergencies, managers

and workers need to maintain critical functionality from highly distributed home offices and alternate locations. Teleworking by satellite provides an additional layer of vital diversity in communications modes to ensure continuity of operations in business.

Let me explain a little about satellite communications. Satellite

networks are comprised of spacecraft orbiting 22,300 miles above

the Earth, with ground-based switching stations, a few of them,

dispersed throughout the United States or relevant service areas.

This distributed national, space-based network service architecture

makes satellite networks extremely durable and reliable during

manmade and natural emergencies.

Satellite communications played a critical role during the response and recovery efforts resulting from the manmade disasters

of September 11th and the natural disasters we witnessed last year

in this country and abroad. When the terrestrial Internet, telephone, and broadcast networks went down, satellite communications maintained business and residential connectivity for weeks

until other damaged communication systems were restored.

The Federal Government clearly and urgently needs to accelerate

the realization and investment in continuity of operations plans for

working from diverse and alternate locations. For many employees

within the Washington metropolitan area and beyond to achieve

the benefits of teleworking, a highly effective option is to utilize

high speed broadband services by satellite.

Many, many customers in this area still do not have access to

high speed services, as Dr. Mularie mentioned. Satellite broadband

services constitutes a critical and often sole option for many workers in the Washington area to participate in emergency-based

COOP preparedness, as well as teleworking during non-emergency

times.

So, in conclusion, we fully endorse the steps already taken by the

Federal Government to introduce teleworking programs for ongoing

operations and emergency preparedness. We emphasize the high

speed broadband connections are critical to effective teleworking

and that broadband by satellite is one of the key high speed technologies available to teleworkers everywhere throughout the National Capital Region right now.

In closing, we would like to make the following recommendations: that the Federal Government agencies accelerate the implementation of teleworking programs and that the Congress and the

Federal Government define and expand teleworking programs to

include satellite communications as a required element in all formal teleworking and COOP plans; compensation to teleworkers for

their monthly high speed broadband services, this would upgrade

customers from dial-up to alternative technologies; compensation to

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teleworkers for the broadband customer premises equipment needed to perform their online duties; and, last, tax credits for non-Federal employers and employees who engage in teleworking programs.

Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee, I would like to

thank you again for inviting the Telecommunications Industry Association and Hughes Network Systems to present today. Thank

you.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Read follows:]

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Mr. PORTER. Thank you, Ms. Read. We appreciate your testimony.

Next, Jerry Edgerton, president of business and Federal marketing, Verizon Communications. Welcome.

STATEMENT OF JERRY EDGERTON

Mr. EDGERTON. Thank you, Chairman Porter and members of the

subcommittee. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you today

on the teleworking solutions for the Federal Government. I am

pleased to tell you that fast, reliable, secure telecommunications

technology is in place today for the National Capital Region. At the

opportunity to be quite controversial with my colleagues at the

table, we believe that this capability will further deploy of teleworking throughout the Federal Government.

I am president of the Verizon Federal, which is a unit of Verizon

Business that is dedicated to serving the Federal Government.

Verizon Business was created through the merger of MCI and

Verizon, and is focused solely on the enterprise customer, including

the Federal Government. We are one of the three business units of

Verizon Communications.

Verizon Business today supports more than 75 Federal agencies,

and we have designed and deployed some of the most complex government networks in the world. Through the FTS 2001 contract,

we are the premier provider of advanced communications solutions

to the Federal Government. And through the Washington Interagency Telecommunications Systems [WITS], Verizon Business delivers voice, video, and data solutions to the Federal agencies in the

Washington, DC, area.

We are proud of our track record in helping Government agencies

meet the business requirements, and look forward to working with

our Federal customers and the GSA to implementing teleworking

solutions that are reliable, secure, and cost-effective to a greater

number of Federal employees.

The need for teleworking in the Federal Government is greater

than ever before, and it goes far beyond enabling employees to

work remotely. Teleworking should be the cornerstone of every

agency’s business continuity plans, especially here in the National

Capital area with its high concentration of Federal employees.

It doesn’t take a major national disaster or national emergency

to close down a Federal office building, as was witnessed in the last

weeks when several days of rain showed us what can happen at

the IRS. It is important that the agency’s have a well defined and

executed business continuity plan so that operations continue

seamlessly and that Federal employees, regardless of where they

are located, are able to perform critical job functions.

Through the evolution of traditional communication services,

wireless communications and advanced applications, the definition

of teleworking is rapidly broadening. Agency specialists can handle

constituent calls from their own homes. Federal employees can attain training sessions via Net conferencing. Large agency meetings

can take place via collaboration capabilities.

The tools available today make these important functions entirely possible, helping to improve productivity and reduce cost, and

many agencies are already using these capabilities. Through our

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FTS bridge contract and ultimately, and ideally, through the networks contract, we will offer additional collaboration services that

will further enhance the teleworking experience of Federal workers.

Technology is leading to a virtualization of the Government work

force that will yield tremendous pay-backs and reduce direct costs,

recovery of lost time, favorable environmental impacts, reduced infrastructure costs, and, more importantly, improved service to the

citizens. Done properly and with the right technology solutions,

teleworking Federal employees will function as well or better than

they would in their agency’s offices.

Undoubtedly, barriers remain that prevent agencies from reaping

the full benefits of telecommuting, but technology is not one of

those barriers. Existing technology fully enables workers to work

remotely today.

Verizon recognizes the vital role that communications technology

continues to play in sustaining our Nation’s economy, improving

productivity, and providing Federal agencies with the tools needed

for effective constituent services and efficient operations.

Broadband technologies enable many new applications that are

revolutionizing the workplace. Nationwide, Verizon has made billions of dollars of network investments that have resulted in new

products, services, and integrated services over fiber optic cables,

wireless networking, and digital subscriber services that enable

high speed connections.

Our services include fiber to the premise, or what we call FIOS;

a personal broadband wireless service, or EVDO; and DSL, or digital subscriber lines, all of which are available today and making

ubiquitous high speed access a reality. Our wireless, wireline, and

global networks create a web of connectivity that supports Federal

employees as they move throughout their day through the different

roles in all of their different environments.

We believe that the keys to success for any Federal teleworking

program are security, reliability, and agency endorsement.

Security must be a top priority for agencies, for employees and

for service providers. At Verizon, we deploy end-to-end network security, meaning that no matter where the work is located, no matter what information they are seeking, no matter how they are getting online, we provide the same high levels of network security for

teleworking employees.

Establishing and managing high security levels eliminates the

need for teleworkers to keep confidential data bases on their workat-home computers, making data more secure and employees more

effective while working remotely.

A telework employee is only as effective as his or her broadband

connection, so network reliability is critical to the success of any

teleworking program. These new communications technologies are

highly reliable and cost-effective means of increasing employee productivity by using high speed broadband access.

A successful teleworking program is one in which remote working looks no different than the time spent in the office, where a

teleworker’s day is spent in meetings, doing research, using the

phone or the computer, the same tasks that they would be doing

in the office. For those workers with a need for the social interVerDate 11-MAY-2000 09:16 Jul 16, 2007 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00067 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 C:\DOCS\34546.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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action that an office provides, collaboration tools, such as instant

messaging and video conferencing, are helping fill that gap, as well

as serving as an effective management tool.

Teleworking is the right thing to do for the greater good. To

name a few, it increases employee productivity; it helps protect the

environment by reducing traffic congestions and demands; it helps

agencies retain seasoned workers by providing an alternate workspace and a quality of life; it provides disabled workers with increased ability to work from remote locations; and, finally, it provides a basis for continuity of operations by dispersing the work

force.

When savings on office space and utilities and so forth are

factored in, I believe that the cost to agencies is more than offset

by the benefits. In fact, I would urge the subcommittee to continue

to conduct regular oversight on agencies’ teleworking initiatives

and conduct periodic reviews on their process. A teleworking and

continuity of operations scorecard will continue to be an effective

tool to help ensure that the potential benefits of teleworking are

fully realized by the Federal agencies and their employees.

At Verizon Business, we are committed to working with our Federal customers to make continuous improvements in the delivery of

governmental service. We look forward to working with the Congress and our agency customers to drive innovation in the business

of Government.

Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Edgerton follows:]

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Mr. PORTER. Thank you very much. The three of you are very

lucky today, since the balance of the panel isn’t here, so I promise

I will be easy on you, OK?

Is there a profile—maybe that is not the right term, but is there

a particular type of employee that we should be looking for? I know

we are talking numbers. There are 300,000 whatever numbers and

12 percent—and I am not going to quote the numbers right—that

probably could telecommute, but is there a certain employee we

should be looking for that should be doing this? Because I know

some folks today that work via technology, and they are not very

happy with this type of arrangement. I think they are more on the

people side and prefer to have the atmosphere.

But is there a profile, is there a type of person we should be looking for? Or is there a science yet to help us determine who that

person is?

Mr. MULARIE. I interviewed yesterday Mr. Joe Hungate, who is

CIO of the Department of Treasury Tax IG, and they have had a

tremendous successful telework program. Ninety-five percent of

their people are eligible for telework, and not only workers in the

sense of GS–whatever, but also managers and directors telework.

So the culture of the agency is really being transferred from sort

of coming to a place to really a virtual agency organization. In this

case they do audits, so this is a reasonable thing to do in a distributed manner.

Mr. PORTER. A reasonable thing to do what?

Mr. MULARIE. To have a dispersion of these people, because they

are out usually in the field doing audits. But as a result of this,

they have been able to shrink their space here within the District;

they don’t need the space they originally did. And I think that the

lesson I learned from the Treasury Department is that the managers, the executives should be out as part of the telework experience. So in answer to your question, I think the total agency should

view itself as eligible in that sense for telework.

Mr. PORTER. And I have to come back to this, but it seems to me

the manager is really the hub of this, to make sure that they are

comfortable also, and understanding how to do appraisals and performance standards. I think that would be critical. But has there

been research done—and, again, not that I am opposed to this; I

am just asking questions, because I think there are a lot of folks

that would probably flourish in this environment.

But are there studies that have been done as far as performance?

Again, I don’t necessarily think that 95 percent really would be eligible from that type of personality without the proper coaching, the

proper encouragement, the hands-on management. Some individuals need that, and left on their own, aren’t necessarily going to

be as efficient. So have there actually been studies done?

Mr. MULARIE. Well, there are two ways to view that. One is current telecommunications technology and, as Mr. Edgerton said,

services. From my laptop, Mr. Chairman, I can talk to you, I can

see you with full video, I can hear you, obviously, good voice, and

we can collaborate on a document or show the latest in cartoons

or whatever. So technology allows for a great degree of socialization, as opposed to the old way of telework, where you had a fax

machine and a telephone and your computer. So the advances in

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technology make this remote experience more real and more like it

would be in an office environment.

With respect to studies done with this, the study I saw talked

about this cultural issue with respect to telework and really destroying this whole idea we have built up since the industrial revolution of what work is, and I think that is the core reason for managers being resistant, because that is not the way they were

trained and raised. Management science is 150 years old. So I

think that is why we talk about pilot demonstrations so they can

look over their shoulder and really experience this new world.

Mr. PORTER. I just think it would be difficult for Coach Tom

Osborne, when he was with the Cornhuskers, to telecommute from

a coaching perspective from a football team.

Mr. MULARIE. I think Coach Tom Osborne could have won at

home from a telephone. [Laughter.]

Mr. PORTER. Well, probably a bad example. [Laughter.]

Tom could do it well.

But I think that there is a certain science, and I expect that, as

it evolves, we will learn. And I would expect that the telecommute

individual is going to be—in my opening comments—in many cases

coming into a bricks and mortar office periodically. But I do know

that there is a certain amount of that interaction, and motivation

I think is critical. I would hope we wouldn’t swing too far away

from the hands-on coaching that I think is critical on performance.

Mr. MULARIE. Yes, mentoring is important, sir.

Mr. PORTER. The rest of you, what do you think?

Mr. EDGERTON. Well, I would like to contrast this to today’s office

environment, which basically is a series of cubes filled with terminals. And I don’t think that is necessarily a conducive environment

for work. I think the advent of applications and computer technology and so forth have changed the metrics by which we measure

and manage the work force. So I think a cube at home would certainly be a more desirable environment than a cube in the office.

So I think there is a lot to be said for——

Mr. PORTER. Especially if you saw the movie Office Space.

[Laughter.]

Mr. EDGERTON. Well, same concept, except on the words.

Mr. PORTER. I understand. Thank you.

Ms. Read.

Ms. READ. Yes, thank you. I actually would probably come in between the answers here on both of my flanks, in the sense that,

speaking from Hughes’ perspective, we are a global company. I

can’t speak exactly to the personalities of individuals, but the personality of companies, and certainly companies are becoming more

and more global, so I believe that ours is not a bad example.

We have offices in Beijing, in India, in Brazil, in London, in Germany. We are in many, many countries. Our offices, our sales force

is always on the run. Everybody is moving, everybody is communicating. Even our operations center is fully redundant. If something were to happen in one place, we can operate from another.

And we are very well connected.

I have been with the company for 6 years now. There are some

people that I have collaborated with substantially on projects who

I have actually never seen; wonderful people. We produce great

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things together, but we do this all by telephone, computers, whatever.

So I think as companies become more dispersed and more in—

at least I can speak for the enterprise side, not so much, perhaps

the Government side—that the telecommuting is actually just another step of the same thing.

Mr. PORTER. I guess I should probably have a picture taken of

my office at home and carry it with me wherever I go, make sure

that the camera is always on the picture I carry with me to the

beach or whatever. [Laughter.]

And I make light. I think this is a tremendous tool with some

obstacles because of a cultural change. But technology is in dog

years, as you probably know better than I, and it is changing rapidly, as are the techniques and tools. But I see this as a great opportunity for us to be more efficient. I hope we don’t lose that

hands-on management skill that I think really can make or break

a superstar.

But from the technology side, what are some of the things that

are on the horizon to even help more? I know we talked about the

two-way cameras and having the interaction, but what else is on

the horizon, from a technological standpoint, that is going to make

it even easier to do telecommuting and advancements? Is there

something that is happening we should know about?

Mr. EDGERTON. Well, I think the Verizon commitment to its fiber

to the home and fiber to the premise project is probably the best

example of that in the sense that we have made a corporate commitment to build to over 6 million homes in the next year, and that

basically is putting I guess the fastest possible service to the home

level, which really now enables the capability not only from video,

but the fastest possible applications. It should be no different than

sitting in your office or sitting next to the mainframe, exactly. So

just that kind of capability and investment.

The applications will then follow. Then the work suites that have

to then accommodate the higher speed. I am not sure what the

weakest link in the chain here is, but we have certainly made that

investment and are encouraging it. We see that as a significant opportunity, a significant change.

Mr. PORTER. Ms. Read.

Ms. READ. Yes. I would echo that, again, broadband is really the

backbone of this whole experience. If you can’t communicate,

whether it is by fiber or DSL or satellite or what have you, cable

modem, it is all-critical to have that connection or mobility. And we

haven’t mentioned BlackBerries, but, of course, that has been pretty significant as well.

Mr. PORTER. Terribly. [Laughter.]

Ms. READ. But in terms of advancements coming on the horizon,

we do see a lot of retrenching additional infrastructure being built

on the terrestrial side. Satellites cover the entire country. What is

interesting and we are very excited about at Hughes is a new satellite system that is about to be launched in the first quarter of

next year. This is a program called Spaceway; it will bring dramatically higher speed broadband service to the entire country by

satellite. So for those homes that find that the options in front of

them are not suitable, for whatever reason—can you hear me?

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Mr. PORTER. Speaking of technology. [Laughter.]

Ms. READ. Technology, yes.

Mr. EDGERTON. I think that is a satellite connection. [Laughter.]

Ms. READ. You have my mic. [Laughter.]

Certainly, we have the new technologies coming in for satellite

broadband as well. So there will be great complementary services

coming out in the satellite arena within the next 6 months, 6 to

12 months.

Mr. PORTER. Doctor?

Mr. MULARIE. Mr. Chairman, I shall not be deferred from my excitement over video, audio, and electronic whiteboard on your PC

over the public Internet the same way you can send an e-mail. I

look at and I speak with and I share the morning cartoon out of

the Wall Street Journal or New York Times or something with my

colleagues in Northern Sweden, and they are there. I meet their

children.

And as Ms. Read said, I had the experience of having this relationship with a physician at Tulane University for many months,

where we would look at different medical applications, and I went

down to Tulane, physically walking down the hall and I said, hi,

Bill. He said, we haven’t met formally. What he meant is we

haven’t shaken hands.

Seventy to 80 percent of what human beings transmit is nonverbal, so seeing is really an important part of this. And the

broadband technology as an enabler allows you to do this thing just

beautifully now.

Mr. PORTER. Well, as we talk about telecommuting, my wish is

that, as the business community is advancing its technology, that

our educational community would also latch on. As you mentioned,

the office space has not changed in 150 years. The classroom has

not changed in 150 years. And I think to be competitive—and this

is just editorial comment—for us to be competitive in the global

market, we are going to need to do more of this.

And I would hope that your companies and your associations

could get more engaged, if you are not already, in the educational

community and helping some cultural changes there, which comes

back to the satellite access and the broadband access is limited for

education as it is, I think, in the business community parts of the

country, but you see satellite becoming a more and more beneficial

part of this.

Also, from a security perspective, I know the problem we faced

with September 11th, when the only things that worked here was

BlackBerries. My fear, again, without a redundant system, is what

happens if a substantial part of our work force is in fact telecommuting and the systems are down. Then what happens? Please.

Mr. MULARIE. The public Internet is a wonderful robust infrastructure, if our friends at Verizon can get us the broadband reach

to that infrastructure. The Internet worked beautifully on September 11th. We were doing video conferencing from California to the

Naval Research Lab here in Washington. So you are right, the

things that are—the public telephone systems, which are oversubscribed, are useless in terms of emergency, but riding this Internet

is really a robust communications infrastructure.

Mr. PORTER. Ms. Read.

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Ms. READ. I would like to echo the points of Dr. Mularie. During

September 11th, the satellite networks were absolutely functional.

The Internet was functioning perfectly well. Our plug-ins to the

Internet were no problem and our customers were finding seamless

communications. So, again, it wasn’t an issue of the particular link

that satellites provide as being something that was congested or

disrupted as a result of emergencies.

Mr. EDGERTON. It probably is not well known, but there has been

a significant effort throughout the National Capital Region to improve the wireline and the fiber optic infrastructure servicing most

of the buildings. Most Government agencies now have multiple access and fiber rings serving their facilities so that you are not limited to single points of failure.

Also, a significant development has occurred in the area of what

we call broadband wireless, or EVDO, where about 161, 180 metropolitan areas now have PC-accessible broadband, which is not like

BlackBerry and is not like cellular, but runs on similar systems.

So we actually have broadband access available now in those locations. So there are significant ways, other than what we saw in the

last few instances for alternative services.

I am reminded of the fact that I may be a technology freak, but

I do have satellite at home. I have Direct TV, I have satellite access for data, but I also have cable. And I do have BlackBerry.

[Laughter.]

Ms. READ. Which do you like better?

Mr. EDGERTON. Well, I like them all. And my wife still uses dialup. [Laughter.]

She is the Luddite in the family.

Mr. PORTER. Well, I appreciate your testimony today, the first

panel and the second panel. And I mentioned hopefully into education we can learn and the cultural change, also into the area of

health care. Technology can save so many lives, especially in rural

parts of the country. But also I want to make sure that, as we

move forward, we do it for the betterment of our customer service

as Federal employees and the Federal Government. And I know

that our constituents are demanding faster and more efficient, accurate service. I think this can be a great tool and this is a part

of that process.

So let me again say thank you very much for your testimony. I

see great things happening for the Federal Government.

Thank you all, and the meeting is adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 4:07 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

[The prepared statement of Hon. Elijah E. Cummings and additional information submitted for the hearing record follow:]

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