The Telework Improvement Act to increase teleworking among federal workers was signed into law today.

Congressman Gerry Connolly joined Federal Workforce Subcommittee Chair Stephen Lynch (D-MA) and Representative John Sarbanes (D-MD) in the Oval office of the White House Thursday when President Obama signed the bipartisan Telework Improvements Act legislation into law.  Connolly, Sarbanes, and Frank Wolf (R-VA) sponsored the legislation.

The goal of the new law is to jumpstart the federal government’s telework program, which lags far behind the private sector and local governments.  “There is no workforce on the planet that lends itself better to telework, yet the federal government lags behind the private sector and local governments in implementing this common sense program.  This legislation will change that and prepare the federal government for the future,” Connolly said.

The legislation meets several critical policy goals including: reducing traffic congestion and associated air pollution from vehicle emissions, particularly in the Washington metropolitan area; lessening dependence on foreign oil; ensuring the federal government can recruit and retain highly-qualified employees at a time when 48 percent of the federal workforce is eligible to retire in the next decade; and improving federal agency’s Continuity of Operations Plans (COOP) to cope with natural disasters, terrorist incidents, and other emergency situations, Connolly said.

“We can get people out of their cars and increase productivity at the same time with a robust federal telework program,” Connolly said.  “We saw the benefits earlier this year during the back-to-back snowstorms when federal workers who teleworked while the federal government shut down for four-and-a-half days reduced productivity costs by $30 million a day.”

Connolly said it took more than 22 months to work the bill through the House and Senate.  “We hit some roadblocks along the way, but we were confident the bill had merit, and that in the end a bipartisan majority of representatives and senators would join us in supporting the measure.”  The legislation had strong support from the Office of Personnel Management, federal employee organizations, and groups advocating Telework.

The legislation expands telework in the federal government, requires every federal agency to designate senior-level employees as Telework Managing Officers to implement telework, makes telework a central element of federal agencies’ COOP to cope with a natural or manmade emergency, and requires a study to gather data on telework’s benefits to insure it is meeting expectations.  Connolly said he hoped the new law will change the mindset of some federal managers who have not embraced the concept of Telework.

As Chairman of the Fairfax County, VA, Board of Supervisors, Connolly championed Telework for government and private sector employers in the county of 1.1 million people.  He also used his bully pulpit as Chairman of the Metropolitan Council of Washington Governments to increase telework across the region.  He applied that expertise in telework to seek expansion of the program in the federal government.