In 15 minutes, Countryside resident Mike Carpenter can be in the office though his employer is an hour away in Washington, D.C.
"I have the tools I need to do my job here," said Carpenter, a management and program analyst for the U.S. Department of Education. "I don't need to drive another 45 minutes."
Carpenter sets up shop two days a week at the Sterling Telework Center, which opened in 1997 to give workers an alternative place to work.
The Sterling Telework Center, similar to the 15 other telework centers in the metropolitan Washington region, is set up like a typical office with 20 individual desks separated by cubicles, a private office and a conference room. The desks are outfitted with computers, high-speed Internet access, digital telephones and other professional amenities, including fax machines, laser printers, scanners and access to on-site technical support.
"Compared to working at home, it's a lot better atmosphere," Carpenter said. "It's quiet here. ... There are certain tasks I can get done a lot better here without distractions."
Several of the teleworkers are neighbors, said Darryl Dobberfuhl, executive director of the Washington Metropolitan Telework Centers. "Teleworkers start to form communities among themselves," he said.
Teleworker Antoinette Williamson, of Ashburn, described the telework centers as "the United Nations of work."
"Everyone is doing their own job, but you're in an environment where you're in an office working together," said Williamson, who transferred from the Fairfax Telework Center to the one in Sterling last week. She has been telecommuting for more than four years as a part-time automated commercial systems specialist for the U.S. Customs Service. She works from a telework center two days a week. "The same dynamics that exist at your job are the same dynamics that will govern working in a telework center. You see the same people every day. You establish relationships."
The difference, Williamson points out, is the diversity of the employees, since they work for different companies. "You end up having a telecommuting family," she said.
THE STERLING TELEWORK Center and the telework centers in Fairfax, Herndon and Manassas are part of NoCommute.org, a cooperative program among the U.S. General Services Administration, George Mason University and Lockheed Martin. NoCommute operates as a subset of the larger Washington Metropolitan Telework Centers, which include 16 centers with eight centers in Virginia, six in Maryland, one in Washington, D.C. and one in West Virginia.
The 16 centers had 670 users and another 462 open seats by the end of last year, the most updated information available. Teleworkers typically use the centers one to two days a week, so the center's 361 seats can accommodate more than 1,100 teleworkers. In 1999, the centers had a 41 percent utilization rate that increased to 61 percent last year. The utilization rate this year is 59 to 60 percent, while the Sterling center has a lower utilization rate of 35 to 40 percent. The rate dropped after one of the center's major clients no longer needed to use the center.
"For the centers in general, teleworking's been a slow and steady increase," Dobberfuhl said.
The lack of awareness about the centers and reluctance of managers to let their employees out of their sight are two reasons the centers are not more used, Dobberfuhl said. Progressive managers measure worker performance on the work product the worker produces, not on the number of hours spent at a desk, he said. "It's a paradigm shift, but it's turning," he said.
"It's a privilege, so you always have to give more," said Williamson about her teleworking experience. "You have to be there even when you're not. ... There's an issue of trust, and you have to produce."
THE CENTERS are used 70 percent by federal employees and 30 percent by employees from the private sector who can do their work using a computer and a telephone.
"Work is something you do, not a place you go. Our slogan is, keep your job, lose the commute," Dobberfuhl said.
The first telework center opened in 1993 in Hagerstown, Md. through a federal pilot program, funded in part by the General Services Administration. The centers, all part of the pilot program, are expected to become self-sufficient without any subsidies. They are designed to help combat increasing commuter traffic and clogged roadways in the metropolitan region.
Dobberfuhl said the centers give employees more of their lives back when they spend less time in traffic, so that they can arrive to work less stressed.
The employees have more time for their families and their communities, said Russell Miller, program manager for GMU Enterprise Center Telework Centers, which operates the four Northern Virginia centers. "It's an easier way of life. I'm a 20-year commuter from L.A., and coming here is harder than in L.A.," he said. "Moving out here and trying to drive anywhere was frustrating."
U.S. Rep. Frank Wolf (R-10th) sponsored legislation last year allowing 25 percent of federal employees to participate in telecommuting, either from home or the telework centers, for the next three years. The Omnibus Appropriation Act provides $50,000 each year for federal executive agencies to enable employees to use the telework centers.
"I can do what I can do just as well or better. I have less distractions. I can get my work done," Williamson said.