General Services Administration

GSA has always been pretty good at telework. A model of federal telework, the agency has had most of its workforce on a telework arrangement for several years now. And because of that, when COVID-19 hit, GSA was able to move the rest into a remote posture pretty easily. “We were already a largely mobile-enabled organization,” CIO David Shive told FedScoop. “We started that down that path about five years ago. And so sliding into the current regime under the national emergency didn’t require too much change. We did some stress-testing beforehand just to make sure that all of our infrastructure was going to work well, that employees were trained who are not often teleworkers and did a little bit of tuning kind of around the edges. But it really wasn’t a lot different.” It will be interesting to keep an eye on GSA post-pandemic; as the federal landlord, the agency tends to lean into modern workplace arrangements in support of shrinking the government’s real estate footprint and will likely be aggressive in sustaining an expanded telework stance.