]The General Services Administration put together a task force to help the agency decide when and how to reopen its offices as counties and states across the country begin to reopen amid the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.
While GSA is preparing to eventually reopen, the agency is in no rush, according to Deputy Administrator Allison Fahrenkopf Brigati.
“We’re not in any hurry at GSA,” she said during a remote interview Thursday with Dcode, a D.C.-based tech accelerator focused on government. “We can do this remotely; we’ve done it remotely now for going on eight weeks. We’re not going to just bring people back in just to do it. It’s got to be right and it’s got to be safe for our workforce.”
Brigati said GSA’s transition to maximum telework has been relatively smooth, as the agency was well-positioned for the new normal.
“I think it was 85% of our workforce was already telework ready,” she said. “By that I mean they had the training and they had the agreement in place to telework. For us, we already had the majority of our workforce that, at least, teleworked occasionally, some all the time.”
But having all 11,000-plus employees teleworking at the same time was a new challenge.
“About a week before we went to mandatory telework … we did a practice day,” Brigati said. “We wanted to try to break the system to ensure that, if ..
Support the originator by clicking the read the rest link below.
