General Conversations

Ok...gotta learn the correct terms:

Full time Telework: You are still in the local area of your office and can easily go in if needed.

Remote Work: You live anywhere (typically somewhere in the US, there may be outliers where you could be overseas, maybe with Dept of State), and your locality rate is determined by your home not your office you report to. Typically, this type of position has to be determined to be in the best interest of the government (ie. If your office you report to is in Alamogordo, NM, but you want to live in NYC, Chicago or Los Angeles, then it would not be in the interest of the government as your locality pay would be higher if you were allowed to work remotely. The reverse may be better for Uncle Sam though). In this case, if the agency needs you at your office for any specific reason (ie Training, briefing senior staff, etc), they will pay for your travel, per diem, etc. This type of travel should be infrequent.

My agency is discussing remote work options as we consider returning to on site work for those who have not had to be on site for mission critical needs. We have had a year+ experiment where most people were 100% teleworking, and so we have an idea of what needs to be done in the office (but wasn't due to covid, but will need to be done once we are back on site once again) vs those positions that could be done anywhere. Add in the fact we have done some organizational restructuring, so many people are not simply working at a single location, but their customers are across the whole agency now, not just locally. This decreases the argument those people need to be on site. We already had some work remotely pre-covid. We are already seeing requests from more people after this past year.

Some agencies (and sometimes sub-agencies) have had quite a few remote workers. I know DoD Investigation and Resolution Division (they do the EEO investigations for DoD) investigators were mostly remote workers once they finished their initial probation period with a regional office as most of their work was travel to site to do interviews, write report and submit it to their supervisor for review and then to the agency for the record. As this required very little need to be in the office, they allow their folks to remote work.

Not much commute cost, as far as I know, many people working in DC metro area gets public transportation subsidy, which is enough to cover all commute cost (for many people), so it is more about commute time and life balance. A lot better life quality. It also saves some money on lunch:) I spent around $10 on lunch when in office. I don't like travelling to meetings too, keep virtual meetings.