Federal Resources

Men and women both need time to care for their families and should have access to workplace flexibilities that help them succeed at work and at home. Offering family leave and other workplace flexibilities to parents can help achieve the goals of recruiting and retaining talent, lowering costly worker turnover, increasing employee engagement, boosting employee morale, and ensuring a diverse and inclusive workforce. This memorandum instructs agencies to ensure that discretionary flexibilities, such as telework, are used to the maximum extent practicable, in accordance with the laws and regulations governing these programs and consistent with mission needs, and that employees understand the benefits for which they may qualify.

President Obama signed into law the Telework Enhancement Act of 2010 (the Act; Public Law 111-292) on December 9, 2010, to improve telework across the Federal government.  As part of its telework program, each agency must ensure that adequate information and security protections for information and information systems are used while teleworking. This memorandum provides guidelines on security requirements for the implementation of the Act, as required by 5 U.S.C. § 6504(c).

This memorandum directs all Executive departments and agencies to review their personnel practices and develop a plan of action to utilize the flexible policies already in place and, to the extent feasible expand their ability to provide their employees with certain work-life programs.