Telework at the Johnson Space Center

1. National Aeronautics and Space Administration Telework at theJohnson Space Center October 10, 2012 James B. McClellan Information Resources Directorate Chief Technology Officer www.nasa.gov

2. Telework in the Federal Government • For over a decade, laws addressing telework have been in effect for Federal employees. In response to these laws NASA enacted NPR3600.2. Summarized it requires: • Determination of Employee Eligibility • Telework Options • Routine (Core) Telework or Situational (Episodic) • Submission and Acceptation of a Telework Agreement • Telework Training Requirements • Documenting Telework in WebTADS (timesheet) • The Information Resources Directorate (IRD) scheduled and ran a pilot involving ~ 70% of our Civil Servant workforce the week of February 6, 2012 to learn what is necessary to support entire Directorates working via telework. • Johnson Space Center (JSC) leveraged that knowledge in a center-wide event on the Friday before Labor Day 2012. www.nasa.gov

3. IRD Telework Pilot Goals for the Pilot • Learn all the steps required to enable an entire Directorate for telework and document “Lessons Learned” from that level of effort. • Determine if the existing infrastructure could support a large scale telework force. • Analyze the cultural and behavioral impacts from both the customer perspective and IRD employee on having a large percentage of a support organization teleworking. www.nasa.gov

4. IRD Telework Docs • IRD has compiled a Telework Implementation Guide and Best Practices document that details the steps needed to prepare your Directorate for telework. • IRD also developed an Excel template that helps with tracking those teleworking, their schedules, contact lists, etc. • These documents are available to be shared within NASA. www.nasa.gov

5. IRD Telework ResultsProductivity 84% report equal or better productivity www.nasa.gov

6. IRD Telework PilotFeedback Notable Quotes: • “Telework Rocks!” • “Eliminated my 3-hour round trip commute to work; saved $15 fuel costs per day and no car pollution” • “I don’t think I would be able to telework every day of the week” • “At the end of the day, I did feel isolated a bit” www.nasa.gov

7. Best Practices Learned • Meetings with presentations need BOTH teleconference (audio) and WebEx (web based application sharing). • Teleconference and WebEx information and any links (dial-in numbers, pass codes, etc.) need to be placed in the agendas, meeting notices, and calendar notices.  This facilitates easily joining the meeting from your mobile device without requiring that you establish a VPN (Virtual Private Network) connection to get access to links. • Learn to use teleconference etiquette. • If the meeting is with a diverse group then announcing your name every time you speak helps to build relationships and understanding.  • Also be aware that those joining remotely do not see something that happens locally in a room so be prepared to share with your remote collaborators so that laughter or some other occurrence is not misinterpreted by the folks that are remote. They may think you are laughing at them. • Phones need to be muted unless you are speaking. • Don’t place your phone on hold • we don’t like the elevator music that much. • Meetings that start out as general and then go to “NASA ONLY” may need to re-establish the link to ensure that only invited guests are online. www.nasa.gov

8. From an overall life choice perspective would you opt to telework on a recurring basis: www.nasa.gov

9. If you teleworked part-time, how much would be right: www.nasa.gov

10. Center Test on August 31th JSC ran a test on the last working day before Labor Day 2012 (on August 31) and physically shutdown several of the largest buildings on site. • This included Buildings 1, 4S, 9E, 15 and 45. Supervisors and civil service teleworkers had to complete all the agreements and training before being approved to telework: • Discuss clear work assignments with your supervisor. Keep in mind that duties may be performed that do not require electronic connections, such as writing or reviewing documents, training or work that can be pre-saved to an approved media device, etc. • Not all job functions are appropriate for telework, specifically those that require onsite attendance in a lab, workspace, etc. • Federal telework requires both the supervisor and the employee to agree to telework. www.nasa.gov

11. Security Considerations The current NASA and JSC practice is to allow both Government Furnished Equipment (GFE) and non-GFE for telework. The JSC Security team has reviewed our current model in reference to the new Telework Reference Architecture and validated that we are in compliance with all applicable laws, guidelines, and policies. They suggest keeping in mind that telework has certain security challenges as well as operations issues. Following are some tips that will help reduce the security risks while teleworking. • Do you use encryption with email? You can download Entrust Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) software to your home computer after you VPN in. It is available on the IRD website. • Do you need a copy of Microsoft Office or Symantec Antivirus? This software is available for your home computer. Contact your IRD customer service agent for help. • Need to know more about securing your home computer? IRD has compiled a detailed documentto assist you with securely working from home. It is available on the IRD website. • At a minimum you should have antivirus and a firewall installed and routinely updated. Security suites such as Symantec contain these and more. Also consider enabling auto-update on your Microsoft and other products. It takes the hassle out of having to remember to update your applications. • And remember this basic step when using your home computer. Make sure the data you need is accessible to you when you VPN in, either on a server or on your NASA desktop. • The current policy does not allow for the use of a NASA media, e.g., a thumb drive in a personal machine or a personal thumb drive in a NASA machine. Therefore the following is not recommended; however, what do you do if you absolutely, positively must use NASA media to transfer data to your home computer? Make sure to run a full antivirus scan of the thumb drive the very first time it is reconnected to a NASA computer; before doing anything else with it. Note, if it is an encrypting thumb drive, you’ll need to decrypt it first. www.nasa.gov

12. Conclusions • JSC IRD results strongly mirrored the results of a similar one week telework trial by the Office of Chief Information Officer (OCIO) at HQ. Early indications are the JSC center-wide pilot had similar results. • There is a substantial amount of work required to determine eligible employees and make sure all agreements and training are in place before telework can begin. That includes assessing if your employees are capable (computers, Internet connectivity, suitable work space) of telework. The IRD pilot proved this to be more work than initially thought, so be careful not to underestimate all that is involved to prepare for and support telework in your Directorate. • JSC has the basic infrastructure and policies in place to enable teleworking. IRD will monitor the growth in telework load. A full scale telework deployment for the entire center would necessitate a re-evaluation of the infrastructure. • There are significant cultural and behavioral implications to telework that can impact employee moral. Plan to work with Human Resources (HR) to help address these issues. • Be sure to follow the security guidelines while handling data via telework. • The question of telework for contractors will need to be addressed by the contractor on a case by case basis. www.nasa.gov

13. Next Steps • If you plan to move forward with telework in your Directorate , IRD can go over our results in detail with you to help prepare you for a successful telework experience. You will need help from HR also. • IRD is working with several Directorates on the Office of the Future initiative to better prepare our workforce for the way we will work. We envision telework and mobility as key components of that future. • Some of Office of the Future solutions such as desktop videoconferencing and social media have the promise to help mitigate part of the cultural and behavioral impacts related to physical separation. www.nasa.gov