A new watchdog report details how employees in the Biden administration’s Department of Health and Human Services abused remote work.
The HHS inspector general released a report last month detailing the proliferation of remote work at the agency as of May 2024. More than half, 52 percent of employees, routinely teleworked or remote worked, with more than 45 percent of the Washington, D.C.–based workforce having a telework agreement, the report indicates.
Similarly, more than 45 percent of the HHS workforce in Alaska and Missouri had arrangements to telework. As of May 2024, approximately 29,000 HHS employees had telework agreements, and 18,000 employees had remote-work agreements, the watchdog found.
The percentage of employees with either telework or remote-work agreements varied by HHS division. Up to 73 percent of employees in certain divisions had telework agreements, and up to 61 percent had agreements to work remotely.
HHS lacked a centralized data-collection system to collect the hybrid work data, so it relied on a variety of sources to do so. Data calls were the main source that HHS used because of its failure to develop an electronic, agency-wide system.
“Once again, the Biden administration has been exposed for hiding the true extent of just how bad telework abuse was,” said Senator Joni Ernst (R., Iowa), a champion of returning federal employees to in-person work.
“The public health of our nation is a serious matter that cannot be phoned in from a couch, bubble bath, or beach. Working with the Trump administration to get bureaucrats back to work was Step One, but too many federal buildings are still virtual ghost towns costing billions to maintain. We must begin to condense underutilized office space to save tax dollars and increase efficiency in Washington.”
Ernst previously requested data from the Office of Personnel Management on the increase in remote work among federal employees during the Biden era. OPM sent her a memo last month showing that the Biden administration oversaw a 500 percent increase in telework. Ernst has also led the push to sell hardly used government buildings rather than paying for expensive maintenance. Her office released a report in December describing how only 6 percent of federal employees worked in the office full-time ,and 90 percent of them telework to varying degrees.
The Trump administration has attempted to crack down on remote work by federal employees in order to boost productivity and reduce inefficiencies. On Day One, Trump initiated the return to in-person government work by signing an order instructing federal agency heads to bring bureaucrats back to the office as soon as possible.