Nearly a week into the Trump administration’s directive to maximize telework, agencies have adjusted to a new normal under the coronavirus pandemic.
Agency leadership last week requested nearly $46 billion in emergency funding to, in part, bolster IT systems to withstand a greater volume of remote traffic.
But aside from technical issues like capacity, federal IT and cybersecurity officials say management and workplace culture issues remain a persistent challenge in maintaining regular operations through telework.
At the Department of Homeland Security, acting Chief Information Officer Beth Cappello said she’s “cautiously optimistic” with the current performance of the agency’s systems with more employees teleworking amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The agency’s confidence in telework, she said, is built on several years spent testing the resiliency and capacity of its IT systems to ensure continuity of operations.
“A couple of years ago, during one of the major snowstorms, our remote access didn’t perform as well as we would have would have liked,” Cappello said in an Association for…
