As the entire nation attempts to move their work lives home, the onus for keeping the federal government operating is falling on the federal IT workforce.
“The IT leaders in the federal community, our contractor partners and our vendors are stepping up in incredible ways,” Federal Chief Information Officer Suzette Kent told Nextgov Monday. “They are part of answering the question, ‘How can we?’ They’re being bold, they’re thinking forward.”
While the Office of Management and Budget provided top-level guidance, it is still up to the agencies to determine what workloads can be done remotely and which critical missions still require employees to physically show up to work.
In the past, at best, agencies have looked at telework as something to enable when possible. During this emergency situation, the OMB guidance is pushing them to reverse that thinking.
“Start with the frame of what mission—what thing—am I trying to do, and then let’s figure out how we get there,” Kent said. “Asking the question backwards: ‘Why can’t we do the thing that enables continuity and remote work?’”
Kent said, so far, there are only a handful of areas identified that cannot move to telework, such as health care workers on the front lines of the pandemic response.
Based on guidance from OMB and traffic trends, the federal teleworking bubble burst sometime last week, with most federal employees working from home, a senior administration IT official told Nextgov on background. However, the real “work” in telework is expected to begin this week.
“When we look at people signing on remotely, when we see people logging in through a VPN, when we see the number of tickets coming into the ..
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