Watchdog finds ‘rampant abuse' of remote work among federal employees during Biden administration

Yahoo

3 hours ago

A U.S. government watchdog found 'rampant abuse' of work-from-home policies by federal workers, according to a new report released on Friday.
The Inspector General of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which oversees the federal workforce, found 'compliance failures and weak internal oversight' as the root cause of the problem. The report focused on procedures that allowed employees to work remotely, rather than whether they were effectively performing their jobs.
The report sampled badging data, timesheet, and remote-work agreements of dozens of federal employees in 2024, during President Joe Biden's administration, following a 2023 request from Republican Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, who took issue with telework policies.
'Under the previous administration, OPMʼs telework and remote work policies were mismanaged and oversight was virtually nonexistent,' OPM Acting Director Chuck Ezell said in a statement.
'That era of telework abuse is over,' Ezell declared. 'At President Trumpʼs direction, OPM has restored in-person operations to ensure federal employees are working for the taxpayers.'
On the first day of his second term, President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies and departments to 'take all necessary steps to terminate remote work arrangements' and require employees to return to the office on a full-time basis.
Federal employees were required to return on March 3; therefore, the findings and recommendations of the OPM report, which aimed to develop written procedures detailing internal controls concerning remote work, are now considered closed, according to the executive summary.
OPM is the chief human resources agency and personnel policy manager for the federal government's 2.8 million employees.
President Trump has claimed that many federal workers took on second jobs while still being paid by the federal government, or were not fulfilling their duties when working remotely.
There was a dramatic increase in working from home during the Covid-19 pandemic in the first Trump administration.
Based on a small sample of timesheets, the report found that 58.1 percent of the sampled employees failed to meet the minimum requirements for in-office work in 2024.
According to OPM's inspector general, three in ten (29.7%) telework agreements had lapsed, 21 percent of those sampled had discrepancies in their paperwork, and 15 percent did not have any approved agreements on file.
The report did not investigate why this was the case, but suggested that possible reasons included 'weak or missing management controls,' 'negligence or carelessness,' and 'intentional fraud or abuse.'
Under the order signed by President Trump mandating a return to in-office work, limited exemptions are allowed as determined by departmental heads.
Similarly, new internal controls and compliance reviews have been set for employees who continue to telework.
When workers were summoned back into their offices five days per week in March, many were met with less-than-desirable conditions, from cramped workspaces to dirty bathrooms.
In addition to the return to the office, the Trump administration also sought to cut costs by reducing space and staff.
Multiple federal employees across various agencies and departments told news outlets at the time that they found themselves working elbow-to-elbow as staff consolidated into smaller workspaces.
Understaffed cleaning crews are reportedly struggling to keep up with the demand for tidy spaces, resulting in dirty bathrooms with no paper towels.
Some staff were asked to bring their own toilet paper or help out by taking their trash home, a federal employee told USA Today.