Page 116 - Managing the Mobile Workforce

strategic leadership in a Virtual world � 95

ernment was closed, it really meant closed in the Washington,
D.C., area because technology and security didn’t allow people
to telework. Teleworking 15 years ago meant going to a telework
center—not really working from home. People now have at their
home computer or portable work station more memory capacity
than those telework centers had 15 years ago. I told the president
I could tell [that] during the storm just my agency and GSA—and
we are getting this across the government—we had between 30
and 35 percent of our employees directly accessing the main-
frame using our secure access system. Here we are: in 12 years
the government has gone from 1 percent being able to do their
work in a closure event [from a location other than the govern-
ment offices] to almost 35 percent. What the president and I dis-
cussed was [that] our goal should really be 80 to 90 percent. That
should be the standard.
—John Berry, DireCtor of the U.s. offiCe
of Personnel management 2

Berry is not the kind of person to wait for change to happen either,
as we saw right off the bat when he sat down (virtually) to talk with
us. He’s one of the few people who have stood on both the North and
South poles and he’s been to all seven continents. He doesn’t seem at
all daunted by the telework expedition he’s on. As the federal govern-
ment’s “Chief People Person” he is responsible for recruiting, hiring,
and setting benefits policies for two million federal civilian employ-
ees. Unlike the mountain named after him, the Berry Bastion, he isn’t
icy most of the time; instead, he is more temperate. We found he fits
his nickname, “Cool Czar,” very well. In fact, just after he was sworn
in as director of the OPM he declared that he was going “to put some
giddy-yap into telework.” 3
And he has. Three weeks after being sworn in he announced im-
plementation of proposed legislative provisions to expand telework in
the federal government. He briefed cabinet secretaries about making