The true cost of telework

Do you know what you’re spending on IT resources to support teleworkers? If not, you’re not alone.

Telework programs at public and private sector organizations typically are informal, which makes it tough to put a price on associated expenses and benefits. To help clear the confusion, the General Services Administration (GSA) commissioned a study of telework technology costs at 20 federal agencies. Booz Allen Hamilton surveyed 8,000 teleworkers and managers, along with telework program coordinators, agency CIOs and IT staff.

The study, which the GSA presented last month at the Telework Exchange’s town hall meeting in Washington, D.C., describes in detail the current telework technology environment at federal agencies and estimates the costs of expanding telework programs to support 25% to 50% of the federal workforce. The study also quantifies potential benefits to help federal agencies justify the IT investments they need to make to support more expansive telework programs.

Not surprisingly, the report found ad hoc deployment of IT resources to teleworkers is the norm in federal agencies. While agencies are required by Congress to expand their telework programs, few have the IT infrastructure in place — or in the works — to support widespread telework deployments.

Below the radar

A key step in expanding agency telework programs is to iron out associated IT costs. Yet most agencies have no idea what they’re spending on telework-related IT resources.

“There are IT budgets, but the cost of telework is lost within the larger picture,” says Theresa Noll, a senior telework program analyst at the GSA. “We would like to be able to see the telework costs broken out more clearly.”

The budget is fuzzy because individual offices tend to incur incremental telework costs, which fall below the radar of agency IT budgets. Few agencies have strategies in place to fund telework IT at an agencywide or even department level, Noll says. “It’s as if the telework programs sit off to the side and use ‘catch as catch can’ what’s available at the agency. It is not yet integrated into the normal business practice.”

To help fill in the blanks, GSA and Booz Allen Hamilton devised a cost model based on the types of technologies agencies said they have in place and the market cost of those IT products and services.

Expenses fall into three categories: home office components such as laptops, broadband routers and mobile devices; services such as voice and data connectivity, help desk support and technical training; and enterprise resources such as remote access servers, VPNs and terminal emulation systems.

In terms of current conditions, the study reveals a huge disparity in spending. The agency with the most bare-bones telework program is spending $310 per user in telework-related IT, while the agency with the largest outlay is spending $5,420 per user. (The study does not identify agencies by name.) Among all 20 agencies, the average per-user cost is $1,920.

Only three of the agencies surveyed currently provide the full range of critical IT components for telework, while the remaining 17 provide partial support, the study reveals.