President Biden officially ended the national COVID-19 public health emergency one year ago, but federal agencies have struggled mightily to get employees back to their offices — and some are still trying to figure out how to monitor those working from home.
The White House has set a goal of 50-50, which means employees with office jobs are expected to spend at least five days out of every 10-day work period in the office. Agency chiefs say they are striving to meet that goal, though anecdotal reports suggest attendance is sparse.
Independent studies agree.
The Public Buildings Reform Board used cellphone location data to gauge the occupancy rates of agency headquarters buildings in Washington from January through September 2023 and found them at just 30% of their pre-pandemic levels.
Department and agency heads are getting an earful from lawmakers as they parade through hearing rooms on Capitol Hill this spring to defend their budget requests for 2025.
“What’s taking so long?” Rep. James Comer, Kentucky Republican and chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, challenged a senior official from the White House Office of Management and Budget. “Is this a weak president? I mean, if the president says for them to come back to work and they don’t come back to work, I mean, why are the civil servants disobeying the orders of the president?”
SEE ALSO: Billions in federal COVID money can’t save rural private colleges from shutting down
Rep. Michael Waltz, Florida Republican, said lives are on the line.
He said the pharmaceutical industry is struggling to get innovative new medications approved because of telework issues at the Food and Drug Administration.
“These are like, people are dying,” he said.
Commissioner Robert M. Califf rejected that notion. He said pharmaceutical approvals are at record levels and timelines are being met but the number of conference rooms at the agency’s suburban Maryland campus is a sticking point.
“There are limited number of meeting rooms that are completely up to speed,” he said, but he expressed doubt that the issue is delaying any drug evaluations. “The place is pretty darn efficient right now.”
“I’m just telling you what we’re consistently hearing,” Mr. Waltz said.
Some agencies said telework has been easy.
The Government Accountability Office said it has been deep into remote work since the anthrax attack on the U.S. Capitol in 2001. Lawmakers took over GAO space when the House shut down its office building.
Even before the pandemic, GAO allowed employees to work 66 hours out of every 80-hour work period remotely.
“I’ve done evaluations all along, very strict evaluations to make sure it doesn’t affect the quality of our work,” said Gene Dodaro, the U.S. comptroller general.
Other departments are struggling with those kinds of evaluations.
Heath and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra told lawmakers that his employees are following the standard 50-50, with five days in the office and five days teleworking every 10-day work period.
He acknowledged that the department does not have a good handle on levels of productivity for employees at home.
“Yeah, we could use your help because the systems we’re using to monitor [are] like from back in the 1970s and ’80s. So it’s been difficult to really get the dots connected,” the secretary told senators.
Republicans suggested that government work is performed better in offices but they were willing to be convinced otherwise by data.
They also were nonplused by the idea that taxpayers are funding empty office space.
The Public Buildings Reform Board calculated that the Agriculture Department had office space for nearly 7,500 employees at the southern tip of the District of Columbia but averaged just 456 workers last year. The Department of Veterans Affairs had space for more than 2,400 employees but averaged just 172.
The Energy Department, which the board said has space for more than 4,800 workers, averaged just eight employees on-site daily.
The watchdog attributed that number to a methodological glitch, but the department didn’t provide an explanation before the report was published.
Sen. Joni Ernst, Iowa Republican, questioned this month why the department was pushing for spending on energy efficiency upgrades to federal buildings when it was wasting so much energy keeping its building open and empty.
“If the administration is serious about practicing what it preaches on energy conservation, instead of spending more money, you could instead stop paying to heat, cool, light, and operate the ghost town of vacant buildings all around Washington, D.C.,” Ms. Ernst said.
The Energy Department didn’t respond to an inquiry from The Washington Times for this article but disputed the findings last month and said it is meeting the White House’s 50-50 goal.
Nuclear Regulatory Commission head Christopher Hanson said telework turned into a spiral.
He said the agency was among the first to return to work in 2021, albeit for just two days a week.
Employees were sitting in empty offices attending the same Zoom meetings with people who weren’t there.
“It generated a lot of frustration on the part of the staff,” he said.
His answer was to delegate telework decisions to lower-level managers.
“I didn’t want the commission to be in a position of having to negotiate with the union, for example,” he told senators.
Organized labor is also a sticking point for lawmakers.
Rep. Bob Good, Virginia Republican, was miffed by the scene outside a Labor Department office in Boston this spring when union employees showed up in person to protest having to return to work in person.
“I don’t know why they didn’t protest remotely,” Mr. Good told acting Labor Secretary Julie Su. “Do you see the irony in that?”
Ms. Su accused Mr. Good of trying to “ridicule the hard work of federal employees.”
She said the department is completing its work and excelling at its metrics, including reduced timelines for processing compensation claims.
The IRS, GAO and other agencies said high-quality employees demand telework as a job condition and the private sector is willing to offer it.
“We’re able to get people from the private sector that we couldn’t get without flexible work arrangements because we can’t compete on salaries,” the GAO’s Mr. Dodaro told lawmakers.
Rep. Mark Alford, Missouri Republican, said lawmakers have difficulty verifying agencies’ claims about their progress on returning employees to the office.
He said he visited the Small Business Administration in December and complained to Administrator Isabel Casillas Guzman about empty offices. After he left, he was told that even the desks occupied that day were manufactured.
“I was told that SBA employees were directed to consolidate their desks to mask the fact that only 10% of the 295,000-square-foot SBA headquarters was being used,” he said.
Ms. Guzman denied any staging.
Mr. Alford has proposed legislation to guarantee congressional access to federal offices.
In the Senate, Democrats and Republicans have linked arms on back-to-work legislation.
Ms. Ernst and Sen. Gary C. Peters, Michigan Democrat and chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, wrote a bill to force agencies to gather and report data to Congress on their telework practices.
Sen. Joe Manchin III, West Virginia Democrat, and Sen. Mitt Romney, Utah Republican, announced another bill last week requiring employees to work in person at least 60% of the time.
“It has been nearly a year since President Biden formally ended COVID-19 public health emergency declarations, yet most of our federal office buildings remain empty — wasting millions of taxpayer dollars every day,” Mr. Romney said.
Mr. Comer took his concerns over telework to Jason Miller, deputy director for management at OMB.
Mr. Miller said the White House’s “expectation” is that agencies are following Mr. Biden’s directive.
“Do you have data to support that?” Mr. Comer asked. “Because I don’t think they’re coming to work, and that’s what our sources tell us. … If you talk to any caseworkers, the people on our staff that do the work, they have had a significant difficulty getting people on the phone at the VA, at the IRS, at the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the agencies go on and on.”
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.