A lot has been said about remote and teleworkers in the media and by the current administration. They seem to use the two terms interchangeably. Yet none of them define or explain to the American people what remote and telework in federal government are and which law, and/or regulation govern their requirements. Yes, as it is with every government program, remote and telework too have their requirements. In this post, I will focus on the explanation of remote and telework and clarify the distinctions between the two. Finally, I will lay out their requirements and purpose then provide input on President Donald J. Trump's executive order's possible legality and/or illegality.
Remote and telework in federal government have been the center of the current administration’s initial reasoning for the deferred resignation proposal. The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, stated,
This is a suggestion to the federal
workers that they have to return to work and if they don’t then they have the
option to resign. And this administration is very generously offering to pay
them 8 months.
Is the President of the United States basically making a suggestion to the federal workers in the following executive order or is he ordering agency heads to terminate remote and telework despite possibly being in conflict with a law? She further argued,
The order simply directs federal agencies to come up with a return to work plan.
In the same interview, seconds later, the word suggestion turned into a direction. These are two very distinct words in the context of this executive order.
On the day of his inauguration, Jan 20, 2025, President Trump signed the following executive order directing agency heads to TERMINATE remote and telework:
Heads of all departments and agencies in the executive branch of Government shall, as soon as practicable, take all necessary steps to terminate remote work arrangements and require employees to return to work in-person at their respective duty stations on a full-time basis, provided that the department and agency heads shall make exemptions they deem necessary.
Clearly, this is an order from the President to the agency heads to terminate the remote and telework programs to the maximum extent.
Two days later, on Jan 22, 2025, Office of Personnel Management (OPM) issued a memorandum. After providing President Trump's reasons for the termination of this law while referring to the same law to justify this order's legality, OPM provided guidance on the steps for agencies to take in order to bring remote and teleworkers to in-person work. The agencies were ordered to take the outlined steps no later than Jan 24, 2025. The main given reason for return to in-person work order was focused on the empty buildings and their impact on the economy and government budget. The press secretary used this talking point as well. This talking point was derived from a report published on Jan 15, 2025 titled, The Lights Are on But Everyone is Home; Why The New Administration Will Enter Largely Vacant Federal Agency Offices. This report was published by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Majority Staff.
The OPM memorandum claimed the following statement and to support this claim referred to the Jan 15th report:
Virtually unrestricted telework has led to poorer government services and made it more difficult to supervise and train government workers.
However, the report did not provide any key findings about poor performance or quality of the remote and teleworkers' work. The report made following unfounded claim:
Federal employees were getting paychecks for sitting at home, while the American people showed up to work and struggled to pay for groceries and bills under the growing weight of inflation,
However, the committee neither provided any evidence to support their very own claim of all federal employees drawing paychecks without working nor of any negative impact of remote and telework on the mission sets of any agencies across the federal government. These claims are also in conflict with OPM's Dec 2023 report to congress titled, Status of Telework in the Federal Government.
COVID-19 restrictions started in March 2020 and officially ended in May 2023. That is more than 3 years of Federal government operating under maximum telework. This is more than a sufficient time to have a meaningfully measurable outcome of the remote and teleworkers' work and their contributions or lack of it, to be used in this report. If not in official terms, then in practical terms; the impact would have been felt by the American people who are recipient of these services. Therefore the committee could have used these as examples if they existed.
What is remote work? According to Public Law No. 111-292, Telework Enhancement Act of 2010 which became a law on 9 Dec 2010:
The term 'telework' or 'teleworking' refers to a work flexibility arrangement under which an employee performs the duties and responsibilities of such employee's position, and other authorized activities, from an approved worksite other than the location from which the employee would otherwise work.
Further Personnel Bulletin (PB) 20-06, Departmental Remote Work Policy, defines remote work as:
An arrangement under which an employee is scheduled to perform work within or outside the local commuting area of an agency worksite and is not expected to report to the agency worksite on a regular, recurring basis. For a remote worker, the approved remote worksite is the employee’s official duty station for location-based pay entitlements, even if that location is their home.
An employee and her/his supervisor sign an official government form (DD 2946, Telework Agreement) to outline the expectations and conditions of the telework agreement. If the employee does not abide by the set expectations, the supervisor can terminate the agreement. Any eligible employee has a right to request remote and/or telework but it is ultimately the supervisors who approve or deny the requests. Supervisors are expected to make their decisions based on the operational needs of the organization. The supervisors also have the authority to terminate the remote work agreement if they are not satisfied with the produced work of the employee or the operational needs change. The lawful point is, this arrangement is strictly between the employee and her/his first line supervisor.
Remote work allows an employee to work
outside of the local commuting area of her/his government workstation which affords the federal agencies to hire talented workers across the United States without paying for their move, household goods, or travel. This is also a tool for the federal government to use to recruit talent around the country in a cost efficient way. Federal workers are public servants thus they do not receive pays that are comparable to the private sector compare to their workload. Particularly, for position which require higher level of education and professional work, it is harder to recruit people due to lower pay. Thus flexible schedule can attract talent.
Remote workers’ positions are coded in Federal Personnel and Payroll System (FPPS). The Telework Remote Worker options are as follows:
1 - No
2 – Duty Location is Employee’s Home
3 – Duty Location is a Govt. Facility
Option 1 means the employee's position is not eligible for telework. The employee reports to her/his work everyday. Option 2, Duty location is employee's home meaning the employee is permitted remote work. Option 3 is for employees who report to work but can telework based on their positions' eligibility. As mentioned earlier, remote and telework are two distinct options. Telework is usually available to majority of federal workers whom work administrative- desk jobs and report to their office regularly. However, they have either an option of regular telework or ad hoc (situational) telework. Similar to remote work, the positions are coded by the human resource representatives based on their positions' eligibility for regular or situational telework.
What is regular telework? Regular telework allows an employee to choose 1-3 days of a week to work regularly on an alternate work-site (usually home). It has to be the same days of the week every week. Ex. every Thursday employee X works from home or every Tuesday and Thursday employee works from home.
Situational telework allows an employee to telework based on situation. Employee X asks her/his supervisor if she/he can telework on Monday and the supervisor approves it. In situational telework, an authorization is required by the supervisor each time the employee requests to telework. These options are not based on the needs of the employee but based on the needs of the positions and those positions' operational needs. Termination of a regular telework may have some impact on the employee's daily schedule. She/he may have to adjust the hours of childcare, doctor's appointment, etc. This is seen as a low risk adjustment. However, OPM advises the agencies that remote work should only be
granted after careful consideration, especially if the employee lives out of the commuting area, due to possible bigger impacts of termination of remote work on the employee and the agency.
In its nature telework is designed to serve the government's interest and save money during the times of crisis by ensuring the federal employees still work during crisis whether be COVID-19 or something else. The employee has to have certain conditions established at home in order to have an approval for remote or telework. Employee is not authorized to provide childcare, or any other family care during work hours. Employee is required to work and be available for phone calls, meetings etc., during work hours (0730-1600). The duties and responsibility of a remote and/or teleworker does not end when she/he works
from home. The work she/he is responsible for still has to be
completed and completed satisfactorily to the agencies' needs. Remote workers are held to the same standards as their peers who work in the office. Their appraisals are reviewed and scored by their supervisors and second line supervisors bi-annually and annually similar to their co-workers'. There is a training every employee and supervisor have to complete prior to start of the telework agreement process. Individual agencies may have slightly different approaches to remote and telework based on their mission sets but general guidelines are applicable to all agencies.
That is not to say that the remote and telework are perfect and remote and teleworkers work efficiently. It can create hurdles for the people who are used to having people in an office to work together. It can impact the effective communication if some people are not willing to be available during work hours or do not take phone calls, etc. However, considering many of the federal agencies are large agencies with thousands of employees spread all over the United States, one way or the other, the employees have to work remotely with co-workers regardless of location of their worksite. According to OPM, majority of the teleworkers reported getting more work done while working remotely or teleworking.
Is remote work new? Actually, remote work’s history in the United States goes as far back as 1934. According to Wendell Joice in 1934:
When the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) was the Federal Credit Union Bureau, credit union examiners conducted their examinations at credit union sites and then completed their reports at home. Neither the NCUA nor its predecessor provided office space for credit union examiners. Without much fanfare, the NCUA implemented a work-at-home program for its auditors that is still operating successfully.
The progress of telework continued into 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s but it wasn’t until after 9/11, precisely, in 2010 that it was turned into a law with the Telework Enhancement Act of 2010.
COVID-19 caused the biggest jump in remote work. According to OPM, before March 2020 only about 3% of federal workforce was teleworking. It is not clear if any of the 3% workers were actual remote workers. However, considering, only 39% of all federal employees was eligible for telework in 2019, it is doubtful that remote workers were a big part of the 3%. In July 2021, the percentage of teleworkers reached 60. Although the exact percentage of remote workers among the 60% teleworkers in July 2021 is unknown, some of them were definitely remote workers. OPM collected data from agencies on the amount and productivity of the remote workers:
Among the 69 agencies able to provide remote work data for fiscal year 2023, 186,397 workers, or approximately 7% of the Federal workforce, were remote in fiscal year 2023.
The provided reviews and data on
productivity from agencies for remote and telework showed no signs of performance issues and/or lack of
productivity. Thus 40% percent of federal workers reported to work everyday and 53% of federal workforce was reporting to the office at least 2 days of a week during peak of the COVID 19. It can be concluded regardless of the location of the workstations of the workers the work was getting done.
Due to Telework Enhancement Act of 2010, during COVID 19, the federal government agencies ran as smoothly as before COVID 19. There was a little stumble initially for those agencies which didn't utilize the telework before COVID -19 but after a little getting used to, the telework worked. No one missed her/his social security check, no one missed her/his doctor's appointments due to medicare/medicaid issues, and/or missed their veterans' benefits. Despite the negative feelings about the withdrawal from Afghanistan, this was done relatively successfully during COVID-19, invasion of Ukraine, etc., The federal government stood still and did the required work. This was all because of remote and telework opportunities.This saved government billions of dollars during the closure of the offices due to COVID-19. The very purpose of telework was achieved during COVID-19.
It is important to state that the uniformed services are also federal employees and they too have used the remote and telework options under the same law. Were there any inefficiencies connected to military members including guard and reserves who were brought on active duty orders and received all of their pay and entitlements while on active duty? Will there be any conversation about service members drawing paychecks while sitting at home?
Although they provide direct services to Federal government, the contractors are private sector employees, and are not covered under the Telework Enhancement Act of 2010, yet they remote and teleworked during COVID-19 and still continue to remote and telework for government contracts. Contractors are hired to provide a certain service and many of them provide administrative desk jobs as well. Usually, contractors make twice and sometimes three times as much as a civilian and/or military member for the same or less amount of duties and responsibilities. Will there be any conversation about contractors drawing paychecks while sitting at home?
The OPM memo referred the Telework Enhancement Act of 2010
to justify President Trump's directive for termination of remote and telework agreements. It is hard
to clearly put a finger on which part of the Telework Enhancement Act of
2010 allows a sitting president to order the termination of all
telework agreements in all agencies except in the case of some exemptions.
Did President Trump overstep his authority and try to override an existing law? Was his executive order within the confines of law as his press secretary claimed? Are we going through a constitutional crisis as the media claims? These are serious legal issues and can only be answered by the legal professionals and the system. However, for private citizens, it is not impossible to draw parallels and conclude that there may be a significant conflict between the executive order and the existing law. Existing law was designed to enhance, encourage and make the remote and telework more main stream so that to save money during crisis by creating an alternative work space. On the contrary, the executive order terminates them all. Existing law gives the agencies freedom to make their decisions over a period of time based on operational needs whereas the executive order abruptly orders the termination of remote work without any meaningful research, study or findings for all agencies indiscriminately. The existing law places the decision making authority to the agency heads and individual supervisors; the executive order takes away the agencies ability to make the decisions about their own employees and as an extension the success of their missions.There is a significant indication that the order is not in compliant with the law but as stated before legal review is needed.
Will a remote and/or teleworker(s) have a case against the administration?
What are your thoughts? Please provide questions, concerns or comments below and please like and subscribe.
WBNS 10TV. (January 29, 2025). Federal employee buyouts: White House pushes back on suggestion that buyouts are 'a purge.' Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=714gl-FS7W4
Further Personnel Bulletin (PB) 20-06, Departmental Remote Work Policy, (2023, September 20) U.S. Department of the Interior. https://edit.doi.gov/document-library/human-resources-policy/pb-20-06-departmental-remote-work-policy
Guidance on Presidential Memorandum Return to In-Person Work.(2025, January 22) Office of Personnel Management (OPM) https://www.opm.gov/media/q0tbu2eq/guidance-on-presidential-memorandum-return-to-in-person-work.pdf
How To Code A Remote Worker in The Federal Personnel and Payroll System (FPPS); U.S Department of The Interior. https://www.doi.gov/sites/doi.gov/files/coding-remote-work-in-fpps-final.pdf
Joice, W. (2000) The Evalution of Telework in the Federal Government; Office of Governmentwide Policy U.S. General Services Administration. https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/14140
Return to In-Person Work (2025, January 20). The White House, https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/return-to-in-person-work/
Status of Telework in the Federal Government Report to Congress (Dec 2023), Office of Personnel Management (OPM) https://www.opm.gov/telework/documents-for-telework/2023-report-to-congress.pdf
The Lights Are on But Everyone is Home; Why The New Administration Will Enter Largely Vacant Federal Agency Offices (2025, January 15) The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform Majority Staff. https://oversight.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/011525_Telework-Staff-Report_FINAL.pdf
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