Activity

The last three days have been interesting.

My office put telework agreements in place several years ago, and we built our systems to be accessible through VPN software. As such, when we saw the forecast, every employee was contacted last week and instructed to take their laptop home and told to telework in event of a Government closure. The cost impact for this setup was not significant. It exists for most Federal Agencies already.

Good news story: We have 120 government employees from my office successfully teleworking during the blizzard of 2010. In fact, I’d say that I seen several examples of increased productivity this week, as well as giving people time to finally get to some of those admin tasks (e.g., online training) that most employees neglect in the office.

Bad morale story: Aside from the obvious (no snow days to go sledding with the kids), we do have muddle through potential union issues, special circumstances for individuals without power, internet, etc.

I tried to use “I have to work” as an excuse to get out of shoveling, but the wife doesn’t buy it.