REMOTE Act

Bill Summary

The REMOTE Act (S. 21) is a federal workforce oversight bill focused on how Executive departments manage and measure telework. It does not ban or mandate telework; instead, it standardizes data collection, retention, and reporting so Congress and agency leaders can assess telework utilization and compare remote activity to in-office activity.

Key definitions set the scope. “Executive department” tracks the 5 U.S.C. §101 list (e.g., State, Defense, Justice). An “agency office” is any department-owned or -leased office space regularly used by at least one department employee or contractor. A “computer network” is the department-operated system employees must connect to for work (email, user accounts, file systems). “Login” is the act of making that digital connection. “Network traffic” means volume and flow of data across the network (i.e., metadata, not necessarily content). “Teleworking employee” includes both federal staff and contractors working under department contracts who are covered by a telework agreement and not detailed to another entity. “Working remotely” means using a computer to perform duties from outside agency offices (or, for contractors, outside their company’s space).

Section 2 requires each department to put uniform policies in place within 180 days to record two kinds of information for teleworking employees: login activity and network traffic generated, and to require managers to periodically review the network traffic of teleworkers while they are working remotely. Within one year of enactment, departments must begin retaining specific data for each teleworking employee who works remotely: the average number of logins per day, the average daily duration of network connection, and the network traffic generated during remote work. Departments must keep this information for at least three years before it can be disposed of.

The bill also addresses in-office activity at department headquarters. Beginning 180 days after enactment, departments must require employees and relevant contractors who regularly work at headquarters to use their Personal Identity Verification (PIV) or Common Access Cards (CAC) to log in. Agencies must collect comparable data for these on-site workers: average daily logins, average connection duration, and network traffic generated while working at headquarters. That data must also be retained for at least three years.

Critically, departments must publish telework utilization data annually in their budget justification materials (the same documents they send to Congress to explain and defend their budget requests). The published data must protect personally identifiable information but show, for each weekday, how the average login rates of remote teleworkers compare to: (1) the number of employees approved to telework remotely that day, and (2) the average login rates of employees working from the department’s headquarters. This creates a regular, standardized benchmark for Congress and the public to see whether employees approved for remote work are actually logging in and how that compares to their on-site peers.

Section 3 amends the Telework Enhancement Act reporting regime at 5 U.S.C. §6506(d). Each year, Chief Human Capital Officers (CHCOs), in consultation with Telework Managing Officers, must report to the CHCO Council on management efforts to promote efficient telework use, and specifically describe adverse effects of telework policy on agency performance, including any increase in disciplinary actions. The bill also requires, within 60 days of enactment, that CHCOs establish a policy mandating that any manager who revokes an employee’s telework privileges for reasons specific to that employee must provide written documentation to the agency’s human capital office and to the employee. That documentation must include: the employee’s identifying job details and pay rate; a detailed tally of telework days over the prior six work periods, itemized by day; a narrative explaining the circumstances and confirming the revocation’s propriety under agency policy; and any steps the manager took to discipline the employee before revocation. The human capital office must retain this information for a reasonable time after the employee leaves the agency. This creates a due-process paper trail around telework revocations and supports oversight of management decisions.

In practical terms, the bill aims to deliver a consistent, department-wide baseline for measuring telework and in-office activity through network-based activity metrics. It gives Congress comparable data year over year to assess utilization and trends and equips agency leadership with records that can be audited by Inspectors General or GAO. It also tries to balance transparency and privacy by requiring PII protection in published reports while still mandating the collection and retention of detailed metadata.

Potential operational effects include new IT and cybersecurity demands to track, store, and secure network telemetry for at least three years; additional managerial responsibilities to review teleworker network traffic; and procedural requirements and documentation burdens before, during, and after revoking telework privileges. The bill’s emphasis on “adverse effects” of telework in CHCO reports could tilt narratives toward risk and performance concerns, yet the revocation documentation requirement provides employee protections and standardization that could reduce arbitrary or inconsistent management actions. Overall, the REMOTE Act is a data-centric oversight and governance framework for federal telework, designed to inform budget, workforce, and space-planning decisions without directly dictating where employees work.

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