“This week the Office of Management and Budget issued a memo asking federal agencies and departments to offer “maximum telework flexibilities” to eligible employees. A top representative for the federal services industry says it won’t do much good for contractors—or public health—if contracting officers aren’t specifically told to modify the relevant legal agreements.”
“If an agency says, ‘Everybody go home and telework,’ and the contractors have contracts that say you can’t telework, you have to be at the agency facility in order to do your job. You have a disconnect right away,” David Berteau, president and CEO of the Professional Services Council, told Nextgov.
Berteau said the contractor has to follow the contract unless their contracting officer gives guidance to the contrary.”
“The way to fix that is not with something issued by the president,” he said. “The way to fix it is you have to modify the contract.”
“Studies have shown a majority of the federal workforce is made up of private contractors, and Berteau said the COVID-19 outbreak raises the stakes in showing why the government should more fully embrace that segment, in general.”
“Part of the challenge here is we haven’t done anything like this at the scale we’re trying to do it and you need to sort of test these things out and make sure they…” Read the full article here.
Source: Government’s Maximum Telework Policy Overlooks Contractors – By Mariam Baksh, March 18, 2020. Nextgov.
