During a recent trip to Spain, I became painfully aware how devastating the coronavirus is in terms of human life and the economy. Shortly after our arrival by cruise ship, seeing no traffic on the streets of Barcelona and with all public buildings and museums closed, it was obvious we needed to leave as soon as possible. With every flight we booked seemingly cancelled, we felt fortunate to eventually find a flight to London. Upon arrival in England, we realized the situation was deteriorating and similar conditions were materializing. Once again, after multiple flight cancellations, we finally booked and boarded a flight back to the USA.
During my 14-day quarantine, I realized massive challenges were on the horizon for our country. I knew we needed to practice social distancing like Europe. Watching the news in amazement at my home in Florida, I found the beaches were open and spring break revelry was at its zenith. No one was staying home from work yet, but my neighbors reported the shelves were thinning of items like bleach, toilet paper and hand sanitizer.
I discussed work situations with my friends, many of which are civil servants and government contractors. Everyone was preparing for work at home. As Florida Governor Ron DeSantis finally shut the beaches down, MacDill AFB and the associated COCOMs began sending most employees home to telework.
Enhancing the Telework Enhancement Act
Federal Civil Service has matured the Telework Enhancement Act (TEA) for about 9 years. The act was signed into law by President Barack Obama in late 2010. It required the executive agency to establish policy for authorizing eligible employees to telework. The policy applies to all federal executive agencies and federal employees, while providing a statutory definition for telework. The law requires written telework agreements between employees and managers, prescribes conditions for participation, associated requiring training, responsibilities and expectations.
In 2018, the RAND Corporation published a study that examined TEA, titled Understanding Government Telework. The Rand study defined telework as, “all assigned work activities performed outside a person’s assigned place of work.” Not surprisingly, their research demonstrated that many government organizations were at different maturity levels. By 2015, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) had 89% of its workforce teleworking at some point during the month. Whereas only 61% of the workforce within Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) was conducting telework, according to RAND. No discussion of the Department of Defense (DoD) was given in the RAND study, even though DoD has been developing the TEA program for federal employees.
One of my main concerns is the DoD contractor. Just weeks before, most DoD task work required site or contract facility work only. Unfortunately, much of this work is referred to in DoD industry jargon as a “butts in seats” contract. Remote work or working from home was an extraordinary situation for most DoD contractors and rarely practiced.
In many cases, government contractors could not bill unless government supervision was on site. Often, if the government is not going to be on-site, contractors were generally not allowed in the workplace. A few exceptions existed, but if contractors are not allowed in the workplace, they generally are not allowed to bill. We see this annually during winter storms and hurricanes. In various adverse situations, the government has given civil servants and military the opportunity to work from home. On multiple occasion, I unfortunately was forced to tell contract personnel on task that they had fallen into a gap; they could not work from home and they must take paid time off, if they desire to get paid.
I am very pleased to say, the paradigm has changed dramatically the last few weeks. I know of numerous contract personnel that are working from home, an activity which was generally frowned upon, and almost never allowed previously. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act created provisions allowing for contract adjustments for intelligence and defense work.
In the future, the bigger question is how the new standard will change the work at home paradigm for DoD contracts and contractors. I can already hear the substantiating rebuttal, “But, we worked from home during the coronavirus!”
Stay safe, my friends. Washy, washy!
