As you all know, the Washington, DC area is under siege with Snowmageddon 2010, and the federal government in the DC area is officially closed. Even though the government in the DC area is closed, our government has offices throughout the country that are doing business as usual. Even many of the DC area agencies, although closed, have people who are teleworking and carrying out their normal duties from home.

I know this because I am a full-time teleworker that lives in the San Antonio area and I am still carrying
out my duties for my DC office. All of my work duties are carried out across the internet, so when the DC area is affected by something and I am not, I continue my own work. I also can take over most of the duties from the members on my team. For instance, my office runs www.pueblo.gsa.gov, a web site that allows citizens to order government publications. Every business day, someone from my team runs processes and gets
orders out to our distribution facility in Pueblo, Colorado. This week, I have been sharing those duties with my DC team members.

Also this week, while the government was officially closed in DC, I finished database updates and prepared
reports that will be used to make decisions during a meeting next week. My coworkers are able to access those reports via the internet so they can be prepared for the meeting next week. As a member of the blog team, I am expected to meet my deadlines and have my blog posts up during holidays and during those times when mother nature decides to drop record-breaking amounts of snow.

My office has other remote teleworkers. Blogger Joanne is a content manager for USA.gov and she is continuing to make updates to that website from her home in Pennsylvania. Diane, in Florida, continues to work with the National Contact Center 1-800-FED-INFO (333-4636). They answer questions about federal agencies, programs, benefits, and services. Questions don’t stop just because DC has to dig out from a cajillion tons of snow.

It’s not just the remote teleworkers at GSA that are working during the storm. I have been in contact with supervisors and many of my coworkers in the DC area via phone or email and they too are using their laptops to log in to our government networks to continue their work from home.

GSA works very closely with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management on the government’s telework program to ensure that the government has a workforce that can work during times of natural disasters and other situations. So, when you hear in the news that the federal
government had to close down in DC, you should know that many dedicated federal workers are still carrying out their duties and serving the public.

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