A new survey indicates the U.S. Office of Personnel Management is tightening the noose on the federal government's mid-level managers adverse to telework.

For one, OPM has figured out how to accurately measure telework participation of federal employees: First you have to determine how many employees in each agency are eligible to telework, then count how many actually are teleworking.

Sound simple? It's not. In years past, many agency managers ducked telework compliance by reporting very low numbers of eligible employees. But this year's annual report on the state of telework in the federal government shows high eligibility numbers across most of the 74 agencies surveyed, indicating OPM has fixed the problem.

That means now, with good data in hand, OPM Director Kay Coles James can call up Secretary Tom Ridge and ask, "Hey, Tom, how come the Department of Homeland Security has 25,803 employees eligible to telework but only 392 who do?"

Speaking of Homeland Security, this year's report puts a strong emphasis on using telework for emergency preparedness - a no-brainer concept telework advocates have been screaming about for years. OPM wants agencies to have experienced teleworkers and managers who can keep agencies running remotely, should disaster strike.

The report states that telework has "been integrated into the federal government's Continuity of Operations Plans (COOP), and OPM is laying the groundwork for including telework in its evaluation of agency human resources programs. Besides holding agencies accountable, this change will define telework clearly as a basic [HR] tool, rather than a new program in need of promotion."

By the way, the shift away from using telework to meet environmental goals - such as decreasing vehicular emissions by getting cars off the roads - jibes neatly with another statistic from the report: In 2003 69% of federal teleworkers worked outside the metropolitan Washington, D.C., area, compared with 31% who reside in the area. So much for easing Metro D.C. gridlock.

Tying telework to national security is smart business, considering how much work there's still left to do. The survey found the number of employees eligible to telework rose 20% in 2003 from 625,313 to 751,844. However, the percentage of federal employees who actually teleworked in 2003 remained "stable" at 14%, and telework center usage dropped 5%. Keep in mind, by April 2004, 100% of eligible federal employees were to have been teleworking as mandated by section 359 of Public Law 106-346.