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WHY THE CA STATE WORKER TELEWORK DASHBOARD MIGHT BE GONE SOON | SACRAMENTO BEE

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Monday, March 4, 2024

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The State Worker


CALIFORNIA’S MOST RELIABLE SOURCE FOR TELEWORK DATA COULD SOON VANISH AS PROGRAM
LOSES FUNDING

By Maya Miller
Updated March 04, 2024 9:19 AM

A Department of General Services employee telecommutes from her home office in
2021. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s budget eliminates funds for the California telework
compliance office, which shares data about remote work in state service. Paul
Kitagaki Jr. Sacramento Bee file


The future of California’s telework compliance office is murky as many state
employees — for many, much to their dismay — begin returning to their offices
this month.

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s 2024-25 budget includes no funding for the state’s Telework
Compliance Office, housed within the Department of General Services. The office
oversaw the rollout of telework during the COVID-19 pandemic and is best known
for publishing state telework data on an online portal.

The potential shuttering of the telework program office marks a stark reversal
for an agency and administration that once heralded telework as “the new normal”
and vowed to slash state costs by cutting leases and selling off state-owned
properties.



The closure comes as several departments and agencies — including those for
employment development, environmental protection and health and human services —
call their employees back to the office twice per week. Unions have vowed to use
what little legal power they have ever to prevent the return of in-person work.

When asked what the lack of funding could mean for the future of state telework,
both CalHR and DGS sent a vague written statement that claimed “the future of
the telework program is under consideration” due in part to the expiration of
funding for limited term positions at the end of the current fiscal year. The
agencies pointed to “the number of employees who have returned to in-person
work” as a second reason for weighing the future of the telework program office.

DGS did not answer questions about whether the department would continue to
maintain and update the online telework data dashboard — or if it would shut the
site down permanently.



The dashboard currently presents the most comprehensive picture of which
departments are teleworking the most, how many state employees are teleworking
each month and roughly how many days per week those workers are at home versus
in the office. Additionally, the webpage tries to quantify the upsides of
teleworking by estimating the number of miles, minutes, gallons of gasoline and
tons of carbon emissions saved per state employee.

Such a repository of telework data could present a challenge to an
administration that, despite the lack of an official mandate, has encouraged
state departments and agencies to reintroduce some in-person work as part of a
new hybrid model.

“Our office believes there is significant value from in-person work that should
be considered along with the benefits of telework,” Erin Mellon, the governor’s
communications director, said previously in a statement.


HOW THE STATE’S TELEWORK COMPLIANCE OFFICE CAME TO BE

Although the COVID-19 pandemic was the first major rollout of telework in state
service, California enshrined telework as an official state policy more than 30
years ago. The law instructed the Department of General Services to establish a
task force with the sole purpose of implementing, monitoring and evaluating the
state’s telework program.

It wasn’t until fiscal year 2022-23 that the team had much of a staff, though.



In a budget change proposal, DGS argued it needed $1.9 million and 10 full-time
positions to “ensure consistency across state government as we pivot to the ‘new
normal’ and deliver critical services for all Californians in a distributed work
environment.”

The request rehashed how Newsom’s office rubber-stamped an updated telework
policy in July 2020 and, in the following years, encouraged departments and
agencies to embrace telework as a cost-cutting method. It pointed out how the
Government Operations Agency used one-time funds in June 2021 to train more than
24,000 supervisors and managers on how to build a results-oriented culture and
effectively work with their remote teams. (CalHR also procured an outside
contract to provide continuing education to these managers at a reasonable cost,
the budget request said.)

“During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Newsom administration advised departments to
maximize telework to the greatest extent possible and ensure that post-COVID-19,
departments continue to embrace telework as part of the state culture to achieve
long-term efficiencies,” read the DGS budget request.



Newsom answered the call by earmarking slightly more than the requested $1.9
million for 2022-23 and 2023-24. But the funding does not appear in the 2024-25
proposed budget.

This story was originally published March 4, 2024, 5:00 AM.



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February 21, 2024 5:00 AM

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

MAYA MILLER

twitter email phone 916-321-1094
Maya Miller is The Sacramento Bee’s state worker reporter. Her stories take
readers inside the agencies and departments that keep California functioning.
She previously wrote about economic mobility for The Bee’s Equity Lab and holds
a degree in public policy from Duke University.



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