Of mysteries and bargaining chips

Big companies don't like to talk about internal struggles or failures. But in the public sector, everything's, well, public, so all kinds of details make their way into the local and trade press. Two developments in the telework realm recently came out of Washington that deserve a closer look.

First, in a move shrouded in mystery, came the news that the National Environmental Policy Institute (NEPI) had shut its doors. NEPI was administering the federally funded eCommute, a five-city pilot program that encourages businesses to adopt telework in return for emissions credits, called reductions, which they could then trade like stocks. For more details, click here.

To fill the void and keep eCommute alive, Rep. Frank E. Wolf (R-Va.) asked the Environmental Protection Agency to administer the program until it finds a successor organization. Mark Simons, the EPA project director charged with the task, says, "I don't know what NEPI is going to do, whether it'll file for bankruptcy or not. The dust hasn't settled yet."

There's no official word on why NEPI shuttered, and former staffers aren't talking. Industry insiders say NEPI was fired by the EPA, but won't reveal why. The only clues? NEPI had been run by former Rep. Don Ritter (R-Pa.). Its responsibilities included convening steering committees, running the eCommute Web site, designing marketing materials, and perhaps most importantly, paying the bills each pilot organization submits for training and promotional activities. Simons emphasizes the ideal replacement group should be a nonprofit, objective (not a telecommuting company), and have some emissions trading experience. Have a theory? I'd love to hear it.

Other news comes from the U.S. Patent and Trade Office. A recent article in Government Executive stated that the PTO's award-winning telework program had been suspended due to stalled negotiations with the Patent Office Professional Association (POPA), the patent examiners' union. That's incorrect. The Trademark Office and Patent Office run separate telework programs. The Trademark Office program is 5 years old and award winning; the Patent Office completed its second six-month pilot. Negotiations are stalled over the terms of the next.

What's at issue? Richard Maulsby, the PTO's director of public affairs, says the union wants to transition the Patent Office pilot into a permanent program, but Maulsby says that's premature. The Trademark Office program (always a model) proved it takes at least two years of pilots to work out the bugs. The Patent Office also wants examiners who work a certain number of days at home to share their desk with a coworker. The union says no way.

But most important, the Patent Office is adamant that no patent examiner who has either a conduct problem or is not performing at an optimum level should be allowed to participate in the program. "Trade and Patent are like apples and oranges, and that confidentiality piece is so important," Maulsby adds. "We can't have examiners taking these sensitive documents home who have a problem. But the union says it doesn't matter, anyone can participate."

Trademark applications are posted on the PTO's Web site, and the examination process is relatively simple, taking only a few months. In contrast, patent documents are completely confidential. The only people who know what's in the patent application are the inventor, his attorney and the patent examiner. It also takes about 27 months to register a patent.

"This isn't your garden variety Federal telework job," Maulsby says. "For God's sake, some applications that run on CD-ROMs are millions of pages."

Until the pilot ended May 31, the Patent Office had 318 teleworkers, and plans to bump up the number to 350 - out of 4,000 examiners. "We've offered to expand the number of hours and people. We have nothing to apologize [for] when it comes to work at home," he adds.

Ronald Stern, POPA's president, declined to comment. But what place labor unions should have in deciding who teleworks is a sticky issue that could prompt a fair number of stalemates like this one, and hopefully some strong advances.

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