Want to increase mobility in your agency? Be like the Pentagon!

In 2012, Congress passed a piece of legislation called the Telework Enhancement Act. This act was intended to move government agencies towards telework adoption, which could increase agency flexibility, cut costs, increase employee productivity and benefit agencies in a wide range of other areas, such as improving employee recruitment and retention.

To accomplish this goal, the Telework Enhancement Act called for government agencies to put telework plans in place for continuity of operations, designate a telework managing officer (TMO), put a policy in place that establishes which employees are eligible for telework, and communicate telework eligibility and provide training to employees.

Earlier this month, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) released the results of a study it conducted to determine how agencies have responded to the Telework Enhancement Act. The study found that 21 percent of eligible federal employees are teleworking. That’s an 11 percent increase from 2009, when 10 percent of the eligible federal workforce was teleworking.

Even with the gains being made, it’s safe to say that only a small percentage of the total government workforce is taking advantage of the mobility and flexibility that telework enables. Why? Responses to the study indicate that jobs requiring a physical presence in the office were the most cited reason for employees not teleworking.

Many government employees require access to physical documents to do their jobs, such as applications and forms being submitted via traditional mail by constituents. With these forms, applications, records and other documents entering the agency as a physical document, it’s impossible to access them from any location other than the office.

Or is it?

Agencies looking to embrace telework can simply take a great lesson from the Pentagon. A recent article from Federal News Radio, the Pentagon has begun to implement a system that will:

“…give roughly 27,000 employees in the building the ability to treat their incoming postal mail in much the same way they treat their email: open and read it, ignore it or throw it away — all with the click of a mouse…”

As per the article, the Pentagon’s Digital Delivery Mail Program will scan the 13,000 pieces of mail that enter the Defense Post Office every day. The scanned image of the envelope will then be sent to employees who can make the decision to have the physical piece of mail delivered, have it discarded or have a scanned image of the contents sent electronically.

The benefits of this system are numerous. In addition to the increased security that comes with mail screening and digitization, each employee can access their incoming mail from any location. Now, employees that needed to be physically present in the office to access incoming forms, applications and correspondence from constituents in the past can effectively work from anywhere.

For government agencies looking to embrace more workplace flexibility, this probably sounds like a good, but expensive, solution. Luckily, the construction of a system similar to the Pentagon’s doesn’t need to be paid for to have access to these capabilities. Private companies are offering capabilities such as document management as a service that federal agencies can utilize. This effectively delivers all of the benefits, without the extensive time and investment of building a proprietary system and could also free up space currently used for mail rooms.

Today’s government workforce is starting to perceive “work” as something they do, not a place that they go to. Today’s workforces demand mobility, flexibility and telework. To overcome the challenges facing a more mobile workforce and ensure that employees can take advantage of the telework craze, all agencies have to do is be more like the Pentagon.