Senate bill would track computer usage of agency teleworkers

Federal agencies would be required to track and report computer usage for teleworking employees under new legislation from a Senate Republican.

The Requiring Effective Management and Oversight of Teleworking Employees (REMOTE) Act, from Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, would charge executive department heads with enacting policies that record the login activity and network traffic of teleworkers’ government computers. 

Managers of teleworking staffers would be required to “periodically review” the traffic generated by those workers and collect a variety of relevant data, including average number of daily logins and average daily duration of the connection to the applicable computer network.

“While DOGE stands ready to clean house, I will be leading the fight in the Senate to disrupt the business-as-usual bureaucrats who spent the last four years out of office,” Ernst said in a statement. “The federal workforce has shown they clearly don’t want to work in D.C., and I am going to make their dreams come true.”

The bill also carves out new tracking requirements for in-person agency workers, requiring several swiped data collection measures 180 days after the legislation is enacted. Employees or contractors working out of agency headquarters would have to use a personal identity verification card or common access card to log in to network systems. Daily logins, daily duration of connection and network traffic would be collected and preserved for up to three years.

Department heads would then be required to submit a report on their findings, comparing average login rates of teleworking employees to the rates of staffers who work at agency headquarters.

Finally, the bill calls on each executive agency’s chief human capital officer along with the agency’s telework managing officer to submit an annual report to the vice chair of the Chief Human Capital Officers Council on “agency management efforts to promote the efficient use of telework.” That report would include “a description of the adverse effects of telework policy,” a summary of performance metrics and details on related disciplinary actions, along with relevant employee-specific details.

The legislation from Ernst is a continuation of the Iowa Republican’s targeting of telework in federal agencies. She released a report last month that detailed a variety of statistics on federal telework, including the claim that 90% of federal employees engage in the practice.