The federal government employed over 4.3 million federal employees throughout the United States and abroad in 2010.perform functions across a multitude of sectors, from those vital to the long-term well-being of the country—such as environmental protection, intelligence, social work, and financial services—to those directly charged with aspects of public safety—including corrections, airport and aviation safety, medical services, border protection, and agricultural safety. In the event of any emergency, federal employees responsible for their agencies’ mission essential functions will be expected to continue them in order to sustain agency operations. Unlike incidents that are discretely bounded in space or time (e.g., most natural or man-made disasters), an influenza pandemic is not a singular event, but is likely to come in waves, each lasting weeks or months, and pass through communities of all sizes across the nation and the world simultaneously, as we have witnessed with the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic. While a pandemic will not directly damage physical infrastructure such as power lines or computer systems, it threatens the operation of critical systems by potentially removing the essential personnel needed to operate them from the workplace for weeks or months because of illness, the need to care for family members who are sick, or fear of becoming infected. In response to concerns that the emergence of H5N1 avian influenza (or bird flu) in Asia in 2003 would mutate and result in a human influenza pandemic, the President and his HSC issued two planning documents. Issued in November 2005, the National Strategy for Pandemic Influenzaprovides a high-level overview of the approach that the federal government will take to prepare for and respond to an influenza pandemic. The Implementation Plan issued in May 2006 lays out the broad implementation requirements and responsibilities among the appropriate federal agencies, including that agencies have operational influenza pandemic plans that address the protection of federal employees, and clearly defines expectations of nonfederal entities. To help federal agencies plan for and respond to an influenza pandemic, the HSC issued the Key Elements of Departmental Pandemic Influenza Operational Plans (Key Elements), a checklist for federal agencies to use in planning their influenza pandemic preparedness. The checklist includes elements covering plans and procedures, essential functions and services, safety and health for their employees, communications, human capital, and information technology (IT) capabilities. The Key Elements also reference Federal Continuity Directives 1 and 2, which guide the and instructs agencies to identification of mission essential functions,include functions that cannot be deferred for 12 weeks or more without impact to an agency’s mission and nonessential functions that can be suspended temporarily during an influenza pandemic. We reported in June 2009 that the HSC requested that federal agencies certify to the council that they were addressing applicable elements of the Because Key Elements checklist in December 2006 and October 2008.the certification process, as implemented, did not provide for monitoring and reporting as envisioned in the Implementation Plan, we recommended in our June 2009 report that the HSC request that the Secretary of Homeland Security monitor and report to the Executive Office of the President on the readiness of agencies to continue their operations while protecting their employees in the event of an influenza pandemic. In commenting on our report, the Acting Executive Secretary of the HSC noted that the report made useful points regarding opportunities for enhanced monitoring and reporting within the executive branch concerning agencies’ progress in developing plans to protect their workforce. The official also noted that the council would give serious and careful consideration to the report findings and recommendations. We will discuss HSC and DHS’s efforts in more detail later in the report. As shown in figure 1, almost all of the agencies we surveyed—or an increase of three agencies since 2009—reported in 2012 that they have completed influenza pandemic plans that address the operational approach for how they would protect their federal employees in the event of an influenza pandemic. HHS reported that while they will continue to work towards a final document, they recognize the need for continuous improvement and incorporation of lessons learned. They describe the draft influenza pandemic plan as a “living document” that allows for continuous updates. Because of that, they do not have a target date for when a final plan will be completed. Additionally, HHS is supporting a series of research studies on the effectiveness of respirators or surgical masks to prevent influenza infection and to better understand their role in workforce protection. HHS reports that pandemic planning is an ongoing process that is shaped by lessons learned in the field as well as improvements in the medical and scientific research base. In addition, 20 agencies reported that their influenza pandemic plans addressed how they would protect federal employees who maintained mission essential functions that could not be performed remotely during an influenza pandemic. Of the four remaining agencies, three of them— including the Department of Education (Education), General Services Administration (GSA), and Small Business Administration (SBA)— reported all of their mission essential functions could be performed remotely, and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) reported that its plan was being updated to include this information. According to OSHA guidance on protecting workers, the best strategy to reduce the risk of becoming infected with influenza during an influenza pandemic is to avoid crowded settings and other situations that increase the risk of exposure to someone who may be infected. If it is absolutely necessary to be in a crowded setting, the time spent in a crowd should be as short as possible. Some basic hygiene and social distancing precautions, such as encouraging employees to wash their hands or use a hand sanitizer after they cough, sneeze, or blow their noses, can be Figure 2 shows progress agencies implemented in every workplace.reported to have made incorporating various protective strategies since 2009. Specifically, all of the agencies reported that they developed policies or procedures consistent with this strategy such as telework and avoiding all unnecessary travel. They have also planned for the distribution of hygiene supplies to protect employees whose duties require their presence at an assigned workplace during an influenza pandemic. Moreover, as shown in figure 3, agencies reported an increase over 2009 in a variety of other actions that could reduce the risk of exposure for federal workers, including the use of flexible schedules to reduce the number of employees who must be at work at one time or in one specific location and implementing pandemic influenza-specific office protocols such as no-handshake policies. However, not all of these actions may be applicable to all workplace settings. According to Federal Continuity Directive 1, agencies must implement a process to communicate human capital guidance for emergencies, such as pay, leave, staffing, and other human resources flexibilities, to employees to ensure continuity of mission essential functions during an emergency. Given the potential severity of an influenza pandemic, it is important that employees understand the policies and requirements of their agencies and the alternatives, such as telework, that may be available to them. While a majority of agencies surveyed in 2009 reported they had made information available to employees on how human capital policies and flexibilities would change in the event of an influenza pandemic, figure 4 shows that all surveyed agencies reported in 2012 that they have made such information available to their employees. As noted earlier, all of the agencies reported that they developed policies or procedures for using telework in the event of an influenza pandemic. In our 2012 survey, we asked agencies if they had tested the various modes of IT and telecommunications capabilities to ensure that they would be capable of handling employees working remotely during an influenza pandemic. As shown in figure 5, almost all of the agencies reported to have tested e-mail, teleconferencing, intranet access, and access to vital records or files. Desktop videoconferencing was the least tested mode because a majority of federal agencies reported that they did not have such capabilities. We previously reported that it is important to recognize that agency influenza pandemic plans will continue to be revised and improved with additional time and information regarding influenza pandemic preparedness. One recent event that prompted agencies to consider such revisions to their plans was the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic, which was the first human influenza pandemic in more than 4 decades. Seventeen agencies reported in 2012 that they updated their influenza pandemic plan to include lessons learned from the pandemic. The Department of Energy (DOE), for example, reported that it had revised its plan to recommend that precautions and safeguards be based on the local prevalence of influenza at a specific DOE site rather than applying assumptions used for its headquarters location. HHS reported that following the first wave in the spring of 2009 and in anticipation of the second wave in the fall of 2009, HHS’s Assistant Secretary for Administration convened a human capital task force to provide real-time solutions for key workforce related issues, including identification of departmental preparedness requirements and institutionalization of process and procedures. HHS also reported that after the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic, it had incorporated lessons learned that the task force identified as areas for improvement related to human capital into its draft influenza pandemic plan’s human capital management and workforce protection annex. The areas where HHS has emphasized process improvement include the identification of mission critical employees that could work remotely and prompt communication of HHS’s recommended actions for workforce protection and human capital plans to supervisors and employees. Three agencies—the Department of Defense (DOD), Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), and National Science Foundation (NSF)—reported that they were planning to update their plans to include lessons learned from the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic during 2012 and 2013. In contrast, the Department of Agriculture (USDA), Department of Commerce (Commerce), SBA, and USAID, concluded that they did not have lessons learned from the 2009 H1N1 influenza pandemic specifically related to workforce protection that warranted an update to their influenza pandemic plans. We reported in June 2009 that because the primary threat to continuity of operations during an influenza pandemic is the threat to employee health, agencies’ plans to protect their workforce need to be operational at the facility level. In addition, we reported that filtering influenza pandemic plans down to individual facilities and making them operational presented challenges for the agencies.