Telework Exchange

The Obama administration is committed to Federal sustainability. On October 5, 2009, the President signed an Executive Order that set sustainability goals for Federal agencies and committed the Federal government to lead by example. As part of its bottom-up approach, the administration hosted the GreenGov Challenge, a month-long participatory Web page that encouraged Federal employees to weigh in with opinions and solutions.

Participants had the opportunity to submit environmental sustainability ideas and review the ideas submitted by others. If interested, participants could vote on their preferred suggestions, causing the most popular ideas to rise to the top of the list. More than 14,000 Federal employees submitted in excess of 5,000 ideas and cast 165,000 votes in the following categories:

• Conserving Energy
• Conserving Water
• Eliminating Waste
• Reducing Carbon Emissions
• Sustainable Buildings
• Sustainable Products and Purchasing

Of note, telework was included as a top ten suggestion in every category except Conserving Water and Sustainable Products and Purchasing. In the Reducing Carbon Emissions category, telework was included in six of the top ten suggestions. Significant telework suggestions included:

• "Allow employees to work remotely from home for a set amount of time each week/month. This reduces gasoline consumption and carbon emissions." [Kansas City, MO]
• "Enforce teleworking in all agencies across government. Establish measurable plans (First year = One day/week for x% of employees; second year = two days/week, etc.) so that agencies see the economic and environmental impacts. Impose consequences for not enforcing telework." [Reston, VA]
• "Maximize the use of modern videoconferencing to minimize and eliminate unnecessary air travel. Upfront capital costs will be repaid many fold within three years." [NASA Ames Research Center, CA]
• "Identify positions that can be performed remotely and transition them to permanent telework. This has the added benefit of reducing agency space needs and, if the employee lives outside a metro area, eliminates locality pay and transit benefit expense." [Washington, DC]
• "Enforce teleworking options to reduce use of petrochemicals and emission of greenhouse gases." Bethesda, MD

On November 5, the top ideas were presented to the Steering Committee on Federal Sustainability, and they will be included in a final Council on Environmental Quality report on the government's environmental sustainability later this year. For more information on the GreenGov Challenge, visit www.whitehouse.gov/GreenGov.