The Office of Personnel Management just announced the federal government will open under a two-hour delay on Friday. Anyone who can’t make it into work can take unscheduled leave.
If you get to work any more than two hours late, you’ll be charged annual leave or leave without pay for the additional period of absence. But if you take unscheduled leave, you’ll be charged leave for the entire day — you won’t get the same two hours’ grace period other feds will get.
If you telework or are an emergency employee, you’ve got to start working on time.
OPM Director John Berry also issued a statement this evening that stressed most of the government is still operating, and many Washington-area feds are getting their jobs done through teleworking. Full statement after the jump:
“First and foremost, I want to assure every American that their government is working for them, as it has been throughout the snow emergency. Over 87% of government workers live and work outside the National Capital Region, and the vast majority of them are functioning normally. Within the National Capital Region, emergency and mission-critical staffers are at their posts or teleworking. We are receiving daily reports from across government that many thousands more are also teleworking.
The decision to close government buildings in the National Capital Region has two components: first, the safety of our employees and the public. Second, maintaining government operations to the greatest extent possible. As Director of OPM, this decision rests with me, and I will always accept responsibility for it.
The Federal government has plans and systems to maintain operations during emergencies like this one. We are still digging out from a blizzard of historic proportions, and some work has doubtless been delayed, but all the work will get done. Some buildings have been closed, but the people who do the work have been open for business. We’ve equipped many of them with tools like notebook computers, Blackberries, and secure Internet connections that allow them to work from almost anywhere.
Traditionally, OPM has calculated the cost of closure as the cost of giving all Federal workers in the National Capital Region a paid day off. But with so many emergency and mission-critical personnel reporting to work as scheduled, and so many others teleworking, that calculation is outdated. With the new data that agencies have been reporting to us throughout the week, we will be able to update this calculation.
The new cost calculation will be one component of a larger assessment of lessons learned that we are already working on. The data and experience gained from this emergency are helping the government to be even better prepared for future storms and other events that might cause widespread disruptions in the National Capital Region.
