Telework Exchange

No one could have predicted that a series of major blizzards would shut down the Federal government for nearly a week in February, but fortunately many agencies were well prepared, having decided to integrate their telework programs with their continuity of operations (COOP) plan and putting their teleworkers through robust COOP exercises.

Some of those involved in the most successful of these efforts agreed to share their experiences at the Spring Town Hall Meeting in a session focused on "Making the Connection – Business Continuity Lessons from Management and IT Perspectives." moderated by Jennifer Thomas Alcott, Telework!VA Program Manager for the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation.

Len Blasiol, Director of the Marine Air-Ground Task Force Integration Division for the U.S. Marine Corps, opened the discussion by detailing the set of business continuity exercises he had planned to test the readiness of every branch in his division to telework during a crisis. The tests included a preplanned one-day exercise, followed by a no-notice, two-day exercise.

"We had a big campaign to do this, but unfortunately, the big snowstorm happened before we got to the end," Blasiol recalls. "So we had in place of our no-notice exercise, the no-kidding, no-notice government shutdown."

The event provided a number of findings, however. About 40 percent of the workforce, all regular and frequent ad hoc teleworkers, quickly connected to the division network and got to work. "The others, we had to find them and drag them in, which took a little bit more time, so there was a training lesson there," Blasiol noted.

The biggest lesson, however, was that telework cannot operate inside a vacuum. Even though Blasiol's group was able to continue to work on existing projects via its telework program, employees eventually ran out of things to do. Blasiol likened the larger Marine Corps division to a production environment, which requires raw material to keep the line going. "Because we're the only organization within our larger organization that has a robust telework program, there was no one feeding us more raw material," he explained.

The Navy, by contrast, managed to fully put telework through its paces a few months before the snowstorm, according to panelist Capt. James Oakes, Director of the Navy's N1 Business Transformation Office. Set up like a traditional military exercise complete with an operational order, the test involved 174 participants, or half of the N1BTO staff, and was designed to see how competent teleworkers were when it came to accessing required network systems and tools, including the virtual private network (VPN) connection, Defense Knowledge Online and Jabber, an instant messaging tool.

A key finding in the after-action review was that employees who teleworked on an ad hoc or infrequent basis did not perform well during the exercise. "They could not access the systems initially, we had to hand-walk them through," Oakes explained. "Those people who teleworked on one or more days a week had no problems with the exercise, whether they were using a government laptop or their own computer."

The correlation between frequent telework and success during the Marine Corps and Navy practice runs was affirmed by Donald Bathurst, Chief Administrative Officer for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, who noted, "When we look at continuity, it's not something that we do—it's got to be something that we live."

To support that belief, Bathurst set up a robust telework program three years ago and required that everyone in his agency telework on at least an occasional basis. The program was piloted and tested over the next two and a half years and went live at the beginning of FY2010. Bathurst noted that 90 percent of his staff telework at least one day per pay period and many work remotely two to three days a week.

The early experience turned out to be good practice. When the 2010 snowstorms hit, Bathurst's office had immediate communication with its teleworkers. "We were able to check on everybody, see what was going on and take care of our people," he recalled. "Then we got to work. And it was a great exercise. We ran it out for five days, got a lot of stuff done, and when we all got back to the office, we were ready to go, we were still up to speed. Now, everyone else was backed up (on work) but we were good."

One takeaway from the event was a realization that more VPN capacity is necessary to support large business continuity events, Bathurst stated. "The work that we do daily in our own networks is one thing, but if we had everybody out in a continuity event and really working and stressing the system—how do we do that? I think that's going to be the next challenge."

The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) also tested its business continuity capacity by holding its first-ever telework exercise in late October, with more than 4,000 employees participating over a five-day period.

"We wanted to make sure that our managers and employees were aware of what their responsibilities were if we needed to do something in response to a possible H1N1 flu outbreak," explained panelist Aaron Glover, Special Assistant to the Director of Manpower, Personnel, and Security at DISA. "We wanted to make sure that everyone knew what to do and we wanted to test our IT infrastructure to make sure that it could handle it."

Glover said that agency employees gained a lot of practice and know-how as a result of participating in the exercise and were able to apply those lessons when real-life hit with February's snowstorm. Employees were immediately put on notice that work would continue despite a possible shutdown when General Ronnie Hawkins, DISA Vice Director, put out an edict that he would still be holding his scheduled meetings that week—whether he was in the office or snow-bound at home. "There were lots of folks scrambling, getting themselves ready," Glover said with a laugh.

However, the disaster soon proved a showcase for DISA's successful telework preparations. "Having just gone through the exercise in October, people remembered how to take their laptops out, how to connect," Glover recalled, noting that calls for help were almost non-existent during the inclement weather. "During the exercise, I think we had about 95 or so help tickets that week. During the snow week, we had about 15, so that learning curve went down—folks knew what they were doing."