A report from the Government Accountability Office found that only nine of 23 federal agencies had plans in place for essential staff to work from home during a pandemic.
One reason for the lack of preparation was that FEMA (the Federal Emergency Management Agency) had not provided specific guidance on what was needed to allow staff to work from home, the GAO report said.
Illinois Democratic Rep. Danny Davis said he introduced legislation that would require the federal government to conduct and evaluate a 10-day telework project.
"Federal agencies must be able to continue operations during an emergency," he said.
The H5N1 avian flu virus has spread rapidly in recent months, leaving Asia and moving into birds across Europe and into Africa. It does not yet easily infect people, but it has made 205 seriously ill and killed 115 of them.
A few mutations could turn the virus into a pandemic strain that would pass easily from person to person and spread around the world in weeks or months.
Experts agree that at the peak of the pandemic, 40 percent of workers could be unable to leave home, because they were ill, caring for a sick person, caring for children because schools would be closed, or simply afraid.
Many jobs can be done via computer, telephone or teleconference and U.S. agencies have been asked to be ready for this.
YOU CAN'T JUST DIAL UP
But it requires planning, said Dr. Jeffrey Runge, acting undersecretary for science and technology at the Department of Homeland Security.
"It is one thing to say we are all going to use the Internet for work," Runge told the hearing. There are fears that Internet access could be overwhelmed if millions of workers all try to use it at the same time.
"It turns out to be quite a more complex problem than saying, 'guys, go home and log on,"' Runge said.
The GAO's Linda Koontz said one agency needed to be put in charge of coordination, and rehearsing was essential.
"Under an emergency, particularly a pandemic, you might have a lot more people teleworking than normal. It is important to make sure you have the technological capacity to do this, you have the software licenses to do this. You don't know what you don't know," Koontz told the hearing.
Paul Kurtz, a former National Security Council member now executive director of the Cyber Security Industry Alliance, said no one had evaluated the Internet's total capacity.
"We simply don't know about what the impact would be if, for example, even half the 60,000-plus employees of the Department of Health and Human Services -- who help coordinate the entire national health care system -- were to attempt to work off-site," Kurtz said.
Autor/Author: Maggie Fox
Quelle/Source: VARBusiness, 12.05.2006
