Happy Wednesday! Last month’s snow days that kept the federal government closed for almost a week cost taxpayers much less than
initially feared.
The government lost $71,074,495 worth of productivity for each snow day, according to updated estimates released Tuesday by the Office of
Personnel Management. The figure dropped from an estimated $100 million
because roughly 30 percent of federal workers in the Washington area
teleworked during the storm, OPM Director John Berry
told members of a House subcommittee.
OPM bean counters recalculated the losses by reviewing each agency’s remote network usage during the storm, analyzed savings from the
employees who teleworked and emergency personnel that were on duty and
then assumed that part-time employees were scheduled to work 80 percent
of the time during the closings.
“We believe that this is a conservative estimate and that the actual amount of employees working during this period may have been higher,”
Berry said.
As colleagues Jonathan Mummolo and Ann Marimow
write today, Berry said he is trying to increase the number of
federal workers eligible to telework by 50 percent from fiscal 2009 to
fiscal 2011.
“I believe we can move telework forward to the point where snow emergencies are a relatively small disruption, and instead of ‘closure’
we simply have a ‘mobile work day,'” Berry said.
Good to hear! However it’s not about just having 50% of Federal workforce “eligible” to telework, but “actually” teleworking on a regular basis. Why wait for a snow day to calculate those cost savings? Why not require that the eligible workforce do, at least, one day per week from home? That would show a much higher cost savings continuously throughout the year.
Mobile word days….hmmm, that’s a great idea!