Why the Federal Government Will Not Be America's Next Top Model. For Telecommuting. Yet.

When the Obama administration announced plans to make telecommuting a priority and declared that the government would seek to become the model (or supermodel) for successful teleworking programs, I was postively giddy. 

However, it's hard to determine a supermodel without effective criteria to go by, therefore one can fairly suggest, via crass metaphor, that as a model, the fed is coming up a little short. It has the height, the confidence, the class, but its catwalk skills are a little iffy.

The potential for a pandemic looms again in the minds of many Americans and once again, there are a fresh round of news stories and press releases about organizations beginning to think seriously about telecommuting for the sake of emergency preparedness.

In a post about emergency preparedness and telecommuting earlier this week that came in the wake of the initial panic over Swine Flu, I discussed how companies cannot wait until people are already ill (or for that matter, to take it out of the swine flu context--or already facing dangerous weather) and need to get policies in place now so they can be monitored and tested for success or failure. 

I talked about how the federal government, in its effort to become America’s Next Top Model of Telecommuting, has taken steps, if only for the sake of emergency preparedness in the wake of dramatic events or even for dangerous driving conditions.

According to the interagency federal telecommuting website that offers reports based on each year of information it gathers from various agencies within the government, telecommuting is seen as an overall beneficial practice, but they have yet to develop any monitoring program to evaluate real success.  In other words, they have a sound set of telecommuting policies in place but few ways to monitor and report on the effectiveness.

Wait a minute—the federal government is not monitoring something? This strikes me as odd and a little out of character…

In order to truly be crowned the top model for companies seeking to implement teleworking solutions, it is imperative that they pump more research and energy into coming up some firm numbers to back up their claims about the multi-agency success.

According to their annual report on telework from 2008 (which looks back over the previous year), the government states that even though they have seen general benefits from a shift to telework whenever it’s possible for a specific agency, “few agencies are actually measuring outcomes for their telework programs” (Telework.gov, 2008). Those who have instituted some form of measurement claim that there was improved morale (32 percent), human capital (recruitment/retention, etc at 29%) and a tie in productivity/performance and transportation (27 percent)” (Telework.gov, 2008).

Those are some rather low reporting numbers there, wouldn’t you say? I just cannot seem to understand why, with all of the publicity and attention on this subject the federal government, out of all organizations, cannot seem to offer something more concrete. Especially since they wish to pave the way for companies who are going to be looking hard for some valid, verified and strong numbers.

While I certainly applaud the federal governments push to increase the number of telecommuting employees, out of all organizations, this is certainly one that should be keeping far better track of how the program is working, especially since they have admirable goal (albeit lofty—considering a lack of overall organization as an institution) of having 50 percent of those working in the General Services Administration teleworking by 2010. I’m sure that sounded like a long way off when they devised that goal a few years ago but 2010 is right around the corner and without solid measurements, it might end up a bit of a disaster when they finally try to mitigate any issues.

As it stands, there are a number of privately-held companies (see the case study of Hewlett-Packard and their telecommuting program here at RemoteRevolution) that might not be doing things on quite such a grand scale but who are doing one hell of a lot of research about the true effectiveness of their teleworking programs.

I understand that reporting and assessing data on telecommuting is incredibly difficult, I do recognize this and have discussed the problem of telecommuting statistics here (and will continue to do so based on organization-specific issues) but really, federal government, if you’re striving to become America’s Next Top Model (for telecommuting success, it’s high time you leave the self-reported data streams and halfway assessment efforts aside and show some real numbers—some real proof –of the reported success of this program.

I believe you can win the crown, feds. You just gotta work it a little harder.