It’s only been a few months since GSA opened the doors on our pilot / prototype network of Federal Cowork spaces and we’ve already:
Saved taxpayer money, reduced paperwork and reduced disruption for the U.S. National Park Service during a tricky transition.
Helped with disaster resilience / continuity of operations for U.S. Department of Agriculture when a storm damaged their office earlier this year.
I’m personally also excited that these FedCowork spaces are already working well enough that feds are telling their fed-friends. Net Promoter Scores are important for gauging success, which is why so many organizations ask customers “net promoter” questions in surveys and seek out “influencers” to help raise awareness with potential customers. In Silicon Valley, Net Promoter Scores and influencers are considered particularly essential in the early steps of a new project as you gauge market interest and rapidly adjust based on what you hear. Real time feedback like this helps you “design with users, not for them”. Seeing strong word of mouth referrals like this – especially so early in a pilot project – is just delightfully encouraging.
Full details on all of this are in GSA’s official post here. Also, if you work in federal government and are interested in working in, touring or just learning more about any of these FedCowork locations, you can find contact info and location specific details here.
Department of General Services (DGS) continues their work, helping more departments across the State of California include their telework data into this award winning dashboard. And they’ve made impressive progress.
In March 2021, this dashboard showed real-time telework information from 12 agencies with a combined total of ~11,244 humans. The latest data, from April 2023, now shows real-time telework information from 118 agencies with a combined total of 148,523 humans. With more still being added!
How telework combats climate change
This dashboard clearly shows the scale of the benefits of changing commute patterns using widespread, long-term telework. Because these 118 agencies are allowing employees to work from home, we can see that these agencies have reduced collective carbon emissions by 18,013 metric tons during the month of April 2023.
I still find it hard to understand a metric ton of CO2, so to get a sense of the scale of this impact, I turn again to CarbonFootprint.com. They calculate that flying a plane nonstop from San Francisco to Washington DC, land and then fly nonstop back to San Francisco generates 1.10 metric tons of CO2 emissions — the pollution that contributes to the problem of climate change. The 148,523 humans at these agencies who “worked remotely” some (or all) of April 2023 reduced the carbon footprint of their combined commutes by the same amount as NOT making 16,375 round-trip flights between San Francisco and Washington DC, In just the month of April alone.
Or to phrase it another way: canceling this telework policy and requiring those humans at these agencies to commute daily to their offices would add the same carbon emissions as a policy decision to fly 16,375 nonstop flights from San Francisco to Washington DC and back during the month of April. That’s a new round-trip flight taking off from San Francisco every three minutes — 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for the entire month.
Setting the standard for a cleaner future
Looking at just this one aspect of the potential environmental benefits of long-term telework can help inform next steps for government agencies who are thinking about their “telework” policies post-COVID. These 118 agencies are tackling hard climate change problems by:
Focusing on the largest segment of emissions in the state (commuter traffic pollution according to the California Air Resource Board), then measurably reducing those emissions today by eliminating the need for staff to commute daily from home to the office and back home again.
Empowering staff to work effectively and securely from their homes, using modern, consumer-grade technology.
Automatically and publicly tracking the impact of these actions in order to make informed policy decisions for the future.
The California agencies contributing data to the live dashboard are showing admirable leadership in tracking the potential benefits of long-term telework at scale in the public sector and I get more delighted by the results as this work continues to scale. These forward-thinking policies, along with the easily digestible info on the dashboard, are a powerful combination, with timely data helping inform smarter decisions and supporting a cleaner future for the government workforce. Thank you (again) to Andrew Sturmfels, Ann Baaten, Gary Renslo, Stuart Drown and many many others for their continued hard work scaling this dashboard.
Did you know the US Federal Government is the largest employer in the United States of America and hiring – with 460 “remote” positions open today?
If you want to work in a distributed team doing work that matters – and are eager to help improve a public service you personally care deeply about – have a look. To give you a taste of the vast range of open “remote” positions, here are some that caught my eye:
For the full list of 460 positions, click here. To apply, you’ll need to create a free account for yourself on usajobs.gov. And if none of those “remote” jobs interest you, just setup a recurring saved search so you get automatic daily/weekly emails as new “remote” job vacancies become available.
I’m excited to announce that my training video “Distributed Teams As Distributed Economic Development” is now available in “The Business and Management Collection” from Henry Stewart Talks. If you care about the economy of your jurisdiction or community, I think you’ll find this video to be immediately practical and helpful.
Since COVID-19 hit, the large scale shift to “WFH” / “Remote work” has changed the economies of many jurisdictions (in good and not-so-good ways). This shift is now getting lots of media coverage, which is new – even though dealing with these changing economic realities for jurisdictions is not new.
Traditional Economic Development is when you give incentives to corporations so they will relocate to your jurisdiction and bring jobs with them. While this worked well in the past, it has become less and less effective over the last few decades. The last few years have rapidly accelerated this trend. Large corporations know how valuable they are, so now jurisdictions have to bid against each other to attract the relocating corporation with larger and larger incentives (usually money or money-like tax breaks). And when one corporation employs the majority of the workforce in your jurisdiction, everyone is impacted if that corporation is lured away elsewhere. Changes in social contract and corporate tax handling further complicate this situation.
What if there was another way? What if you gave incentives to humans not corporations?
I asked this question during testimony sessions with the State of Vermont Senate in 2017 and 2018 as we worked towards what became Vermont’s “Remote Worker” Law. After this bill was signed into law in June 2018, it was wildly successful, and this Distributed Economic Development model is now being used by multiple jurisdictions in the US and internationally.
As more people work in Distributed Teams, encouraging people to move to your jurisdiction, bringing their own *existing* job with them has become a popular alternative to Traditional Economic Development. This Distributed Economic Development has some significant benefits, but requires careful attention to many subtle details to succeed. I first described these details in my book “Distributed Teams” (2018, 2021) and this training video is another step to help jurisdictions do this well. After watching this video, if you still have any questions on how Distributed Economic Development would be helpful to your community or jurisdiction, please do let me know.
This training series includes other experienced long term “remote work” advocates and researchers like: Kate Lister, Rowena Hennigan, Pilar Orti and Lisette Sutherland. Over the years, I’ve enjoyed collaborating with each of these fine humans, so I recommend watching their videos (and listening to their podcasts) too!
Lastly, I want to thank Nacho Rodríguez, Aaron Bolzle and Gonçalo Hall for the many brainstorming sessions and lively discussions over the years. And of course, special thanks go to Rowena Hennigan and Gal Lahav for creating the vision for this entire video series before COVID-19 hit in early 2020 and having the tenacity to make this vision become reality despite the turbulence of the last few years.
The US Federal Government is the largest employer in the United States of America, and is hiring. Did you know they have 563 “remote” job vacancies open right now?
If you are looking for work that matters – or eager to help improve a government service you personally care deeply about – have a look. Here are (in no particular order) some examples of “remote” job vacancies that caught my eye:
For the full list of today’s “remote” vacancies, click here. To apply, you’ll need to create a free account for yourself on usajobs.gov. And if none of those 563 “remote” jobs interest you, just setup a recurring saved search so you get automatic daily/weekly emails as new “remote” job vacancies become available.
It’s no secret that the US Federal Government is the largest employer in the United States of America. It’s also no secret that they are hiring. But did you know they have 529 “remote” job vacancies open right now?
If you are looking for work that matters – or eager to improve a government service you personally care deeply about – have a look at some examples that caught my eye (in no particular order):
For the full list of today’s 529 vacancies, click here. Or of course, create a free account for yourself on usajobs.gov, with a recurring saved search so you get automatic daily/weekly emails on “remote” jobs as they become available.
Since then, Department of General Services (DGS) has continued working with different departments across the State of California to include their telework data into this award winning dashboard. And they’ve made impressive progress.
In March 2021, this dashboard showed real-time telework information from 12 agencies with a combined total of ~11,244 humans. Today, ~18 months later, this dashboard now shows real-time telework information from 99 agencies with a combined total of ~133,045 humans. With more still being added!
How telework combats climate change
This dashboard clearly shows the scale of the benefits of changing commute patterns using widespread, long-term telework. Because these 99 agencies are allowing employees to work from home, we can see that these agencies have reduced collective carbon emissions by 15,434 metric tons during the month of October.
I still find it hard to understand a metric ton of CO2, so to get a sense of the scale of this impact, I turn again to CarbonFootprint.com. They calculate that flying a plane nonstop from San Francisco to Washington DC, land and then fly nonstop back to San Francisco generates 1.10 metric tons of CO2 emissions — the pollution that contributes to the problem of climate change. The 133,045 humans at these agencies who “worked remotely” some (or all) of October 2022 reduced the carbon footprint of their combined commutes by the same amount as NOT making 13,421 round-trip flights between San Francisco and Washington DC, In just the month of October alone.
Or to phrase it another way: canceling this telework policy and requiring all staff at all these agencies to commute daily to their offices would add the same carbon emissions as a policy decision to fly 13,421 nonstop flights from San Francisco to Washington DC and back during the month of October. That’s a new round-trip flight taking off from San Francisco every three minutes — 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for the entire month of October.
Setting the standard for a cleaner future
Looking at just this one aspect of the potential environmental benefits of long-term telework can help inform next steps for government agencies who are thinking about their “telework” policies post-COVID. These 99 agencies are tackling hard climate change problems by:
Focusing on the largest segment of emissions in the state (commuter traffic pollution according to the California Air Resource Board), then measurably reducing those emissions today by eliminating the need for staff to commute daily from home to the office and back home again.
Empowering staff to work effectively and securely from their homes, using modern, consumer-grade technology.
Automatically and publicly tracking the impact of these actions in order to make informed policy decisions for the future.
The California agencies contributing data to the live dashboard are showing admirable leadership in tracking the potential benefits of long-term telework at scale in the public sector and I get more delighted by the results as this work continues to scale. These forward-thinking policies, along with the easily digestible info on the dashboard, are a powerful combination, with timely data helping inform smarter decisions and supporting a cleaner future for the government workforce. Thank you (again) to Andrew Sturmfels, Ann Baaten, Gary Renslo, Stuart Drown and many many others for their continued hard work scaling this dashboard.
1) Organization vs individual: There are many ways for an individual to track the climate impact of their commute; mileage reports when buying a car, emissions impact from driving vs taking public transit, emissions impact from flights, etc. This puts all the responsibility for action onto the individual human – who may have limited choices depending on their role and the employer’s telework/”remote work” policies. California’s telework dashboard measures the climate impact of an entire organization’s commuting staff and helps inform organizational leadership on whether their organization’s “telework” / “remote work” policies are effective. As far as I know, this is the first dashboard tracking organizational-level commute savings.
2) Annual reports vs live data: Typically in government, people track progress by writing annual reports. These reports take time to write, time to proof-check for errors, time to print (on paper!) and distribute – and finally time to read. Given the weeks of work involved, writing these reports once a year is hard enough. However, these delays add up – making annual reports far less actionable. By contrast, the DGS telework dashboard uses real-world data updated each week. This live data, updated every week, helps leadership track the effectiveness of decisions made in recent weeks, and help make more informed decisions. This is a great example of measure what matters. Oh, and it’s also public.
Congrats to Andrew Sturmfels, Ann Baaten, Gary Renslo, Stuart Drown and many many others for all the hard work leading up to making this live tracking dashboard a reality. The award is well deserved. With any luck, the first of many awards for this innovative work!
Exciting news! The State of California just publicly released their new telework policy which is strategically important in tackling the hard problems of workforce hiring/diversity/retention, climate change, disaster planning and distributed economic development. This is the first major update to the telework policy in 10 years, and I’m delighted to have been one-of-many who helped make this happen.
Here’s a detailed interview I did which went live yesterday as the headline on GovReport.org.
In summary, the four biggest highlights are:
Diversity: Long-term wide-spread telework helps remove the barrier of the commute, which helps with many workforce diversity, equity, hiring and retention issues. This new policy signals a mindset shift from “emergency-telework-at-scale-because-of-COVID-19” to “long-term wide-spread telework as part of normal business going forward”.
Climate: Instead of manually-written-annual reports, this emphasizes the use of an automated dashboard with live data. Being able to see the reductions in commuter traffic emissions based on live week-by-week data is inspiring. You can view the live dashboard here. As far as I know, this is the first live dashboard publicly measuring how *organizational leaders* can help reduce the commuter emissions of their own staff.
Long-term Disaster Planning / Continuity of Operations: Did you know the State of California was running its first large-scale telework pilot experiment in 1989-1990, when the 1989 earthquake hit? That large scale real-life experiment measurably confirmed how valuable “telework” was for resilience of government operations and the State of California has supported telework ever since. However, even earthquakes and wildfires usually only close offices for a month-or-two. As far as I know, the last ~19 months has been the longest period of office closures and restricted access in the history of the state. The difference between short-term disaster planning (which is common) and long-term disaster planning (which was all-too-rare) is important. People need government services to keep working, even when a government employee/contractor cannot enter a government building. This new policy shifts default assumptions, clarifies equipment policies, digital signature policies and many many other tactical details to help ensure long-term continuity of operations.
Scale: The State of California directly employs ~239,000 people, plus additional contractors, so this policy touches a *lot* of people across California. These people work on a (very!) wide range of roles across all parts of state government, so there are a lot of complex edge cases to account for. At this scale, this policy also helps with distributed economic development across California.
You can read the full text of California’s new policy here, along with guidance, training materials, and the live telework dashboard.
Thank you to Andrew, Ann, Gary, Stuart and the many other people who worked on making this a reality. As we emerge from this pandemic, this policy is an important and practical step towards creating this new future of work.
How California agencies are tracking reduced carbon emissions from their remote-friendly workforce policies
Six months ago, the State of California’s Department of General Services (DGS) created a live public dashboard tracking their agency’s widespread use of telework, partially spurred by office closings in response to the pandemic. DGS saw an opportunity to use these metrics to inform a longer-term strategy around remote work for the state, and started working to include live data from other agencies on the same dashboard. This dashboard now shows real-time telework information from twelve agencies across the State of California, with more being added!
How telework combats climate change
This dashboard clearly shows the scale of the benefits of changing commute patterns using widespread, long-term telework. Because these twelve agencies are allowing employees to work from home, we can see that these agencies have reduced collective carbon emissions by 521 metric tons . . . last week alone.
To understand what a metric ton is, and get a sense of the scale of this impact, I turned to CarbonFootprint.com. They calculate that flying nonstop from San Francisco to New York City and back to San Francisco generates 1.15 metric tons of carbon emissions — the pollution that contributes to the problem of climate change. The 9,093 humans at these agencies who “worked remotely” at least some of last week reduced their combined carbon footprint by the same amount as NOT making 453 round-trip flights between San Francisco and New York City, in just one week.
Or to phrase it another way: canceling this telework policy and requiring all staff at these agencies to commute daily to their offices would add the same carbon emissions as a policy decision to start flying 453 planes each week from San Francisco to New York City and back. That’s a new round-trip flight taking off from San Francisco every twenty-two minutes — 24 hours a day for an entire 7 day week.
Setting the standard for a cleaner future
Looking at just this one aspect of the potential environmental benefits of long-term telework can help inform next steps for government agencies who are thinking about their policies post-COVID. These twelve agencies are tackling hard climate change problems by:
Focusing on the largest segment of emissions in the state (commuter traffic pollution) according to the California Air Resource Board – then measurably reducing those emissions by eliminating the need for staff to commute daily from home to the office and back home again.
Empowering staff to work effectively and securely from their homes, using modern, consumer-grade technology.
Automatically and publicly tracking the impact of these actions in order to make more informed policy decisions for the future.
The California agencies contributing data to the live dashboard are showing admirable leadership in tracking the potential benefits of long-term telework at scale in the public sector and I’m delighted by the results of this work so far.
These forward-thinking policies, along with the easily digestible info on the dashboard, are a powerful combination, showing a cleaner, smarter future for the government workforce.
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