House Panel Approves New Federal Telework Bill

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In June, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform advanced the Telework Metrics and Cost Savings Act, H.R. 7951, along party lines, 23-17. The bill focuses on developing standards and guidance, training for supervisors, and ensuring transparency and accountability through reporting, including on cost savings achieved via agency telework programs. It would also require agencies to give a month’s notice to OPM and Congress before an agency changes its telework policies.

Reps. Gerry Connolly, D-VA, and John Sarbanes, D-MD, introduced the bill in early June. Connolly argued that Congress “must ensure that the federal government has the tools it needs to compete with the private sector for top talent.”

“The whole purpose of this bill is to expand telework, to encourage telework [and] to

build it into the architecture of the federal workplace,” Connolly explained at the hearing. “We can’t ignore the hard lessons that this pandemic has taught us. Enhanced need and demand for telework among federal employees and the national workforce should and will persevere. To remain competitive, the federal government has to keep up with the private sector. Telework saves money, helps recruit top talent, makes environmental sense, and it ensures a continuity of operations at agencies that families, businesses and veterans can rely on each day”

Sarbanes noted that telework during the pandemic provided much-needed flexibility to “heighten work productivity, improve employee retention and deliver high-quality government service for the American people.”

—BY JOHN ROBERT AYERS, POLICY AND PROGRAMS ASSISTANT