Trump Nips Washington's Remote Work Advantage
The federal government, under the administration of President Biden, has faced criticism for inadequate oversight of telework, particularly within agencies like Veterans Affairs. A notable case involved an employee posting a bubble bath photo during a virtual meeting, highlighting the issue of telework abuse. Oversight was broadly criticized for laxity across various agencies, including the Department of Defense and others.
The era of widespread telework abuse in the federal government appears to be ending. President Donald Trump's return-to-office mandate, signed in March 2021, marked a visible break with the bureaucracy's pandemic-era culture. The mandate required employees to report to their official duty stations in person, reducing the opportunity for such abuse.
Several major departments, including Interior, Defense, Veterans Affairs, and Housing and Urban Development (HUD), had no system to verify whether remote employees were working at all. Roughly nine percent of the HUD workforce lived more than 50 miles from their assigned duty station, including about 30 staffers who were more than 1,000 miles away. Some were listed as commuting across the United States every week or from the mainland to Hawaii.
Another 21% had paperwork discrepancies, and close to 30% of employees were working on expired telework agreements. Fifteen percent had no approved telework agreements but were still working remotely. The Functional Government Initiative obtained an internal Health and Human Services report showing that about 25% of HHS employees were not logging into their agency's software suite on any given day.
However, a Gallup survey shows that the percentage of fully remote federal employees has decreased from 40% in 2022 to 26%. The share of fully in-person workers has increased from less than 20% last year to 46%. The number of hybrid employees has dropped from over 60% last July to 28%.
The federal government's shift towards in-person work has led to a decrease in official leave use after telework expanded. FGI's review of 24 agencies showed that annual leave fell by more than 15 percent, and sick leave by 30 percent, representing nearly $1.4 billion in base pay.
Despite these changes, watchdogs have documented widespread abuse of lax telework policies throughout the Biden administration. For instance, the FDA "lost" a 34-page whistleblower report warning of an impending baby formula shortage, a clear coordination failure in a remote-work environment.
HUD had already identified six cases where workers received inflated locality pay based on incorrect information. An October 2024 audit from HUD's inspector general found that up to 11 percent of telework agreements contained errors, including outdated duty stations, incorrect locality pay designations, and mismatched schedules.
Sarah Katherine Sisk, a master's student in economics at George Mason University, notes that the federal government under Trump is putting service to taxpayers first again, instead of accommodating remote perks. The end of widespread telework abuse and the return to office could signal a new era of accountability and efficiency in the federal workforce.
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