Page 115 - Managing the Mobile Workforce

94 � mAnAgIng the moBIle workForCe

sworn in as director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM)
just nine months earlier.
John Berry was the man on the hot seat (or should we say “cold
seat”?) that day. Though his telework efforts were just getting
started at the time, about a third of the employees at the OPM
and the General Services Administration (GSA) logged onto their
agencies’ computers during the storm, probably from home. The
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, which has emphasized telework
for years (more than 80 percent of its eligible staff regularly do some
telework), reported production at 85 percent of normal levels during
the blizzard—when the government was officially closed. Instead of a
total snowpocalypse, the government’s work was being done.
Can you imagine how little real impact a blizzard would have if
every federal employee were teleworking? Can you imagine how the
ability to telework might mitigate the risk of losing critical govern-
ment operations during crisis situations such as a pandemic, natural
disaster, or attack? Continuity of operations for all federal agencies
is a strategic imperative for the protection and health of the coun-
try. Telework, Berry believes, is one important element that can keep
things going. And he’s not the highest level person in the federal gov-
ernment who supports it as a workforce strategy. So does the president
of the United States, as Berry mentions below.
▶

The Czar of Cool, John Berry, Director of the
U.S. Office of Personnel Management
During our interview, John gave us examples demonstrating
why telework is such an important government initiative.

The president had called me during the blizzard this year, and we
discussed that the last blizzard of similar size and magnitude was
in 1996. Probably less than 1 percent of the government at that
time was able to work from home. When we said the federal gov-