As of January 2024, 85 percent of HUD employees had approved telework agreements, and 9 percent had approved remote work agreements.  HUD estimated that 31 percent of remote employees were remote as a reasonable accommodation.  Most of HUD’s remote workers served in a limited number of occupations.  

We evaluated the Office of the Chief Human Capital Officer’s (OCHCO) controls over the quality of data related to remote work and telework, including employees’ assignments to locality pay areas.  OCHCO implemented controls over telework and remote work agreements and locality pay for remote workers.  OCHCO established centralized oversight of the Flexiplace program and conducted periodic reviews of all Flexiplace agreements to verify that agreements complied with policy.  Before our evaluation, OCHCO reviewed the locality pay of 700 remote workers and identified 6 with incorrect locality pay.  

Additional controls over Flexiplace telework agreements would reduce the risk of incorrect locality payments to teleworkers and of out-of-date telework agreements.  Locality payments for teleworkers are not impacted by their telework location, so OCHCO chose not to specifically review locality payments to teleworkers or telework agreement location data.  We identified 2 percent of teleworkers with discrepancies between their official duty stations and Flexiplace agreements, but these employees had a low risk of receiving incorrect locality payments.  Discrepancies may also include telework agreements that were out of date or incorrect official duty stations but correct locality payments.  In response to our evaluation, OCHCO modified its review process for remote work agreements to track whether employees approved for remote work as a reasonable accommodation submitted remote work agreements.

In addition, 9 percent of teleworkers (626 employees) had official duty stations that matched the self-reported duty stations listed on their telework agreements but had telework worksites that were more than HUD’s defined commuting distance of a 50-mile radius from their agency worksite.  The U.S. Office of Personnel Management’s policy allows teleworkers to live outside an agency’s defined official station radius.  Given that HUD’s data indicated that 9 percent of HUD employees had commutes longer than 50 miles, some of these 626 HUD employees may have received incorrect locality pay or had official duty stations or telework worksites that needed to be corrected. 

HUD employees’ supervisors are typically responsible for enforcing the telework and remote work policy and the terms of their agreements and for ensuring that employees reflected their telework or remote schedules on their timesheets.  OCHCO offered a variety of training courses designed to support supervisors in overseeing telework and remote work programs.  The training included 27 courses for supervisors related to telework and remote work and 30 courses addressing managing employee performance, including employees who participate in telework or remote work programs.

We recommend that the Chief Human Capital Officer implement a process to identify teleworkers most at risk of receiving incorrect locality payments, verify that their official duty stations are correct and they are reporting to their official duty stations as required, and if necessary, correct their locality payments.