House committee approves telework bill

 

By Ben Bain
Published on March 18, 2008

Legislation that would force agencies to focus on their telework programs and expand them as well as establish governmentwide rules for federal telecommuting is on its way to the House Floor after the House Homeland Oversight and Government Reform Committee approved it by voice vote Mar. 13.

The Telework Improvements Act of 2007, introduced last November, would require agencies to allow authorized employees to telework at least 20 percent of the time during a two-week period. It would also require the General Services Administration, in consultation with the Office of Personnel Management, to be responsible for helping implement a telework policy by providing advice, assistance and guidance to agencies.

Every agency would also be required to appoint a telework managing officer and the comptroller general would submit an annual report to Congress rating agencies on their telework practices.

The chairman and ranking members of the committee sponsored amendments, which were approved, to the original House legislation.

The committee's chairman, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), substituted language that would require mission-critical employees at each agency to be equipped to telework. He also amended the measure to add telework to the list of issues that the government's Chief Human Capital Officers Council deals with in its meetings.

Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.), the panel's ranking member, added an amendment that would allow agencies to have their chief human capital officers or an appointed career employee fill the role of telework manager if no telework managing officer is appointed.

In November, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee approved a bill with similar provisions. That bill will be on the Senate Floor after that committee issues its report on it.

 

Case in Point: SOME people just don't get IT!

Mar 11, 3:31 PM EDT

Bill on Capitol Hill: Gates Wants Visas
By DIBYA SARKAR AP Business Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Bill Gates is coming back to Capitol Hill with the same wish list he's had for years: more visas for highly skilled workers, more math, science and engineering in schools and more money for technology investment.

On Wednesday, Gates' scheduled testimony before the House Science and Technology Committee will amplify the call for major overhauls in education and immigration laws to help the U.S. technology industry stay competitive globally.

Congress has heard the requests before, especially about increasing the cap on H1-B visas, which are granted to skilled foreign professionals. While a Microsoft spokesman said there's been a "real effort" by Congress and the Bush administration to move the ball forward on broad immigration reform, they have failed.

Gates, who visits Washington about once a year, is also expected to meet privately with policy makers during his visit, said Jack Krumholtz, Microsoft Corp.'s managing director for government affairs. He declined to identify them.

The Microsoft co-founder has long championed such reforms - especially raising H1-B visa cap - and made a similar case before a Senate committee a year ago.

"We have to welcome the great minds in this world, not shut them out of our country," Gates said last year in testimony. "Unfortunately, our immigration policies are driving away the world's best and brightest precisely when we need them most."

Krumholtz thinks the changing political climate makes for a more responsive audience this time around.

"He sees this (appearance) as an opportunity in the political season ... to put out a call to both the Congress and to the current administration with an eye toward the new administration," Krumholtz said.

Not everyone sees the climate as warming to Microsoft's position. Roger Kay, a technology analyst with Endpoint Technologies Associates, said an election year may be a difficult time to advance the issue, as it could be labeled a threat to American jobs. Democrats, relying on support from labor groups, might not want to push for legislation that lets more foreign professionals in this country.

The hot-button issue for the technology industry has been to find high-skilled workers in the United States and overseas.

The industry has long pushed for the H1-B visa cap to be raised from its current level of 65,000. In 2007, the quota was filled on the first day applications were accepted.

Krumholtz, who expects the same thing to happen this year, said it's an issue on which Microsoft and its rivals, including Google Inc., Oracle Corp., Sun Microsystems Inc. and others agree.

Microsoft last year wasn't able to get the visas for roughly a third of the people it had planned to hire, he added.

Gates will also urge for educational reforms to encourage more students to get into math and science. Last year, Gates said American high schools have one of the lowest graduation rates among industrialized nations.

"It's not an either or proposition," said Krumholtz. "We need to do both."

But Gates will also touch on positive developments, such as a Philadelphia high school that focuses on using the latest technologies and another effort to provide tech skills to the U.S. work force, Krumholtz added.

While Gates is expected to devote most of his time toward his philanthropic foundation starting in July, he will remain chairman of the company he founded.

Krumholtz said he doesn't know what Gates plans to do in the future, "but I can speak to the fact that I know these are issues that he is very passionate about."

He does know what Gates is doing one day into the future. On Thursday, he will deliver a keynote speech to a sold-out Northern Virginia Technology Council.

INQUIRY: Has it occurred to anyone that the flattened-world GLOBAL Network (of various permutations) just doesn't care WHERE we are?

Telecommuting is a win-win deal

By Allan Appel

Monday, March 10, 2008

A compilation of academic studies has been released to support the many benefits of telecommuting. It generally involves someone working at a location other than the standard place of work (such as at an employer's office) for a few days a week.

According to Ivanhoe Broadcast News, citing the Journal of Applied Psychology, researchers at Penn State University confirmed that telecommuting results in higher employee morale and job satisfaction. At the same time, employee turnover and job stress decreased.

It seems these benefits were also reflected in the attitudes of supervisory personnel. The research reported how the work of telecommuters was rated higher on their personnel performance reports. These results went hand-in-hand with accounts of an increased balance of work and family issues of employees.

The key factor that led to these conclusions was the degree of employee control over how they do their work.

The practice of telecommuting is growing exponentially. As of 2004, it is estimated about 45 million people have such an arrangement with their employers.

There were some negative factors reported in these studies. Predictably, employees reported relationships among co-workers tended to suffer. However, supervisory personnel did not reflect any adverse effects on job performance because of telecommuters working off-site. In fact, the telecommuters did not believe that working away from their offices would have any negative effect on their careers. Furthermore, the studies reflected that women were the most likely to benefit from telecommuting. Additional responsibilities for children and the home may be factors in that conclusion.

With all this good news about telecommuting, it would be wise to remember that there are exceptions to this experience. If such an arrangement is to be successful, there must be a great deal of coordination and regular, periodic "face-time" with supervisors and co-workers. Future raises, promotions and favorable job performance reviews may depend on it.  (Shouldn't future raises, promotions and favorable job performance reviews be based on performance and not "face-time"?)

Thinking of this arrangement as temporary may also be useful to protect a career, according to Denise Rousseau, PhD, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, as reported by Ivanhoe.

© 2008 Scripps Treasure Coast Newspapers

How to get tax incentives in Georgia...

March 2nd, 2008 (2:00pm) Mike Gunderloy 4 Comments
A recent column in the Wall Street Journal pulls together a series of
reports on retrenchments in telecommuting policies: AT&T, Intel, HP,
and the federal government have all pulled some employees back into
the office from existing telework programs. Business consolidation,
security worries, and a desire for more face-to-face interaction all
played a part in these widely-publicized losses for telecommuting.

And yet, the telecommuting landscape is not entirely bleak. Last year,
135 employers in Georgia instituted new telework programs, helping to
cut down on traffic and pollution and improve the quality of life for
the affected employees.

The difference? Georgia has a cutting edge tax credit program[PDF] for
employers who move employees to telecommuting. Employers can get a tax
credit of up to $1200 per employee for expenses incurred in setting up
equipment, including computer hardware and software, internet
connectivity, installation and maintenance fees. There's a further
credit for the assessments needed to determine how telecommuting can
fit into a company's operations - an up-front cost that can be a
stumbling block.

In the face of economic pressures, especially with the threat of a
looming recession, businesses are naturally driven to evaluate their
operations strictly in terms of their own bottom line. From that point
of view, the savings to society generated by telework are easy to
ignore. The Georgia program recognizes these savings (employers in
heavily polluted areas can get larger credits) and shares them with
the employer: a fairly typical use of tax policy to influence
behavior. The success and spread of such policies could do a lot to
ensure a bright future for telecommuting.

Reducing our carbon footprint one Watt at a time.

The American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy rocks. They have
put numbers to what I have long expected to be true. Folks who
complain about how much energy computers waste are crazy. Computers
save tons of energy, while, themselves, using less energy than the
lightbulb used to light the workstation. And now we know how much.

The study focused on a metric called "energy intensity." Basically,
that's the amount of energy necessary to produce a dollar of economic
output. The first major drop in energy intensity occured after the oil
crisis in the 1970s. That was a cost-based drop, not generally the
ideal.

Then, after OPEC lost its stranglehold, energy intensity stopped
dropping because energy was once again cheap. But then, starting in
the late 1990s, energy intensity began to drop significantly again.
This drop was unrelated to energy costs and was, in fact, a
technologically spurred change.

Computers were helping us become more efficient. First, by using their
power to design more efficient practices. And second, and much more
significantly, by allowing people and things to travel digitally,
instead of physically.

Telecommuting a couple days per week, reading news online, emails,
document downloads, and instant messages all allow people and things
to travel while consuming much smaller amounts of energy. What's more,
online shopping has reduced trips to retail stores, resulting in
significant energy savings.

Energy intensity has continued to drop more than 2% every year since
the Internet first appeared. Without the Internet, the paper's authors
suggest that we would need one billion more barrels per oil per year!
Indeed, ever kilowatt/hour we spend on the Internet looks to have
saved about 10 kilowatt/hours of energy.

Not that I need another reason to spend time online