Tax Office Champions Teleworking, While Pentagon Backs Away

Less than 8 percent of those eligible to telework did so in 2007 and the total number declined by 14 percent from the preceding year, according to an Office of Personnel Management report. So what's happening? For one thing, the Pentagon is a big drag on the numbers. Defense officials decided to reduce teleworking for security reasons, and their numbers dropped by half. And NASA, with all those rocket scientists, previously hadn't counted their teleworkers correctly, so their stats fell when they finally figured out who was working where. Most federal agencies have expanded their telework programs, or at least they have held steady. 60 percent of federal agencies had "fully integrated telework into emergency planning" in 2007, compared with 42 percent in 2006 and 35 percent in 2005. Nonetheless, the number of teleworkers dropped from 110,592 in 2006 to 94,643 in 2007.