The Testimony of William Mularie, Ph.D.Chief Executive OfficerTelework Consortium Inc
Herndon, Virginia To Committee on Government ReformSubcommittee on Federal Workforce and Agency OrganizationCongress of the
United StatesHouse of RepresentativesJuly 18th, 2006
Chairman Porter and Members of this Subcommittee:
I thank you for this opportunity to share my perspectives on an extremely timely and important subject “Telecommuting: A 21st Century Solution to Traffic Jams and Terrorism.”
I represent the Telework Consortium, a non-profit Virginia 501(c) 3, funded by the Department of Commerce (NIST) to accelerate the adoption of telework in government and business sectors. Although we have been involved in advocacy issues for Telework over the past 4 years, our principal focus has been to advance the practice of Telework, through pilot demonstration projects, using advanced telecommunications technologies.
Today, I would like to speak briefly to three issues:
First, from the previous testimony to this body, we have heard from major
US corporations who have quantified the benefits of Telework, such as increased productivity, office space savings and employee retention. I would like to affirm these but leave for this record a sense of the tremendous financial burden that commuting to work places upon individuals and the American taxpayer.
Secondly, I will say a few words about the “telework and terrorism” relationship explicit in the title of this hearing, particularly in the context of Continuity of Operations (COOP) for the Federal government. It should be noted that, previous to the efforts of Congressman Tom Davis’ Committee on Government Reform and the efforts of Congressman Frank Wolf, the juxtaposition of “traffic jams” and “terrorism” in a title of a hearing would make no sense.
Now people see telework as a critical component in addressing both of these problems.
Lastly, based upon our experiences in our Telework pilot demonstrations projects, in Federal and local governments and in businesses, I would like to address an imperative without which significant Telework and COOP initiatives are not possible—that is broadband access to the home, government office and business.
The Financial Burden of Commuting:
Mr. Chairman, I had the privilege of testifying before this subcommittee on November 16th, 2005 on the issue of “Mitigating the Impact of High Gas Prices on the American Workforce”. From an affordability standpoint, one can do a back of the envelope calculation to examine the costs for a commuter with the following profile:
· Commutes 20 miles one way (40 miles roundtrip)· A salary of $65,000, 23% Federal tax rate, 9% state· Take home about $750/week ($1250 gross)
Using AAA’s most recent “Cost of Driving” figures and assuming gasoline costs of $1.25 per gallon, it takes the worker two months of take-home pay to pay for commuting…At $3.00/gallon it takes over 9 weeks take home pay to cover his commuting costs. So we are placing a tremendous financial burden upon our commuting workforce.
From a taxpayer perspective, the Telework Consortium has funded a study by Professor Anthony Yezer of the
George
Washington
University that concluded that taxpayers provide a subsidy of over $3600/year for every commuter car that daily uses the
/ I-66 corridor.
Terrorism, Pandemics and Continuity of Operations:
Washington DC is a target-rich environment. It is not only the symbolic center of the country—indeed of the Free World—but it is where the work of our Federal Government and government-provided services emanate.
It is my opinion, based upon the history of terrorist attacks on our military, embassies, and our nation, that the underlying assumptions of current government COOP plans–principally “quick recovery” and “maintenance of minimal critical services” of agencies–are perhaps valid for snowstorms and other natural disasters, but not for terrorist attack, pandemics or other disasters in this Washington Capitol region. The impacts of these events and the time scale for recovery are greatly underestimated in these plans.
While the Federal COOP plans generally call for resumption of critical services within 12 hours and the ability of agencies to sustain remote emergency operations for 30 days, the experiences of the recovery time from terrorist attacks from the 9/11 World Trade Center were months, years and, in some cases, never. We also understand that there is the capability in WMD attacks to make areas uninhabitable for decades.
It is improbable, in the wake of a terrorist attack, that a large urban area like
Washington, DC can be evacuated according to any pre-determined plan and timescale. After my retirement from the civilian sector in 1996, I had the privilege of serving with outstanding military officers at the National Imagery and Mapping Agency and DARPA. They counseled me, from their warfare experiences, that the first causalities of engaging the enemy were the “plan” and the ability to “communicate” with each other. I suggest that this will be case in this area in the event of another terrorist attack.
The Strategy for COOP: Distributed Government
There are excellent models for Government COOP in some of the post-9/11 plans of the financial Institutions who were tenants of the WTC at the time of the disaster. These companies have since geographically dispersed their people and critical records, have established redundant communications systems, and eliminated dependencies on common power grids. Talking to one of the chief architects of this transformation in preparation for this testimony, he said that 9/11 changing the fundamental strategy from “quick recovery” after a disaster to “business as usual,” i.e., that a localized event will not perturb the operations of the business.
I suggest that the Government COOP plans focus on “business as usual” and not the heroic deeds necessary to get the government functioning again. This requires a culture shift, by decoupling the concept of “work” and “place”. It requires the adoption of the concept of a “distributed government”, so there are not single points of failure (like co-location in common building).
The Role of Telework: Getting serious about implementing telework would substantially reduce the risks associated with the current COOP. Elements of a fundamental COOP and Telework have common implementations:
- Pre-event wide geographical dispersal of a critical set of agency workers, with preferably home-based assets (the virtual office);
- Provide Broadband (non-dial up) home access;
- Geographical dispersal of server sites for data, records;
- Pilot Demonstration Projects: From our experiences in the Telework Consortium, www.teleworkconsortium.org, the successful implementation of Telework in any organization starts with small-scale pilot projects. Telework is disruptive in the sense that it changes our notion of work as being associated with a “place,” it changes the organizational work processes (usually toward greater efficiency) and it values results rather than process. It also has a technology component that requires new IT training. The pilot allows “lessons learned” by the organization to be integrated into larger-scale deployments.
I believe that a model for Federal agencies is that of the Treasury Department Inspector General (TIGTA), where, through adoption of these principles, they currently can “reconstruct’ their agency from laptops.
Lastly, an Imperative: Broadband
The ability for remote workers to communicate and collaborate using desktop PC multi-media services and other applications is essential for carrying out the mission of any agency or business for events which deny access to the workplace. The global Internet is the fundamental communications infrastructure that we will rely upon to insure COOP for government and business.
This requires a broadband “last mile” reach to the Internet from the home of every worker involved in critical work for government or business.
Unfortunately, the lack of broadband access and/or high cost of bandwidth to home workers in the Washington Capitol Region are the most difficult problems with which we have dealt in our many Telework Consortium pilot demonstration projects over the last four years. Many of our local urban, suburban, and rural areas are “third world” in terms of continued reliance on dial-up Internet access. No serious Telework or COOP effort can succeed without addressing the issue of home-based broadband access for employees.
These conclude my comments.
Mr. Chairman, Committee Members and Staff, I thank you for this opportunity to share these perspectives with you today.
Respectfully submitted,
William Mularie, PhDTelework Consortium Inc.July 18, 2006
