Sen. Mitt Romney wants more oversight for federal employees who work from home
Should there be more oversight of federal employees working from home?
That was a question Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, had for the U.S.comptroller general and head of the Government Accountability Office, Eugene Dodaro, during a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security’s Emerging Threats and Spending Oversight Subcommittee.
Romney, who last week proposed a bill that would limit federal teleworking, made a point of saying at the Wednesday hearing that “the federal workforce is in many cases extremely productive, hardworking.” But he expressed concern others “are not working quite so hard, and all the burden is falling on the few rather than the many.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, “everyone went home and interestingly, not everybody’s come back to the office,” said Romney, the ranking member. He added that would have been fine if the response time to the public at agencies like the Internal Revenue Service returned to pre-pandemic levels.
“But in fact, the lines are longer. People are having a harder time getting in touch with the government,” Romney said. “And so, you wonder how well is teleworking working for us and do we need to oversee somehow in a better way, a more effective way, what happens when people are working from home?”
Dodaro said the GAO is already taking a look “across government, at a number of different agencies” to see what impact continuing to permit working from home is having on customer service as well as getting the job done. There’s also an impact on recruitment and retention of federal employees, he said.
“There’s issues there,” Dodaro agreed, suggesting that Congress should be looking at outcomes when it comes to telework. “I think more oversight would be effective. I think you’re right to be concerned about this. But the focus, in my opinion, ought to be on are they achieving their missions, and if not, why not?”
At the start of the hearing, Romney said he’s “concerned about the ability to maintain a strong and effective workforce at the federal government level, given the telework policies that we have,” citing the vacancies in government buildings and questioning “whether we’re really getting the productivity from our employees that we hope to do.”
He called the bipartisan bill he is co-sponsoring with West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat, an attempt “to ensure that federal agencies are operating effectively by placing reasonable limits on the use of employee teleworking.” A recent report by the GAO found that 17 of 24 federal agency headquarters were operating at an average capacity of 25% or less.
