Don't Be Snowed by the Cost of Closing Government

WASHINGTON (Feb.17) -- The estimate for how much it cost to close the federal government during the recent blizzard was about $450 million. But don't believe the hype.

The real cost may be much less in a wired world where many federal employees can get some of their work done from home. And even the four-and-a-half-day shutdown, at an official estimate of $102 million a day, totals less than the $800 million loss caused by a political storm -- the 1995-96 budget impasse that shut the federal government down for five days and then another 21.

The Office of Personnel Management -- whose chief, John Berry, makes the call on whether to close the behemoth federal government in Washington -- came up with the $102 million daily estimate. But he has acknowledged that his figures may be out of date: They are based on paying 270,000 people to sit home. (Though not all of them could afford to sit long with 42 inches of snow to shovel.) And not all those people were home; emergency personnel were still required to work.

Unlike the days of the 17-inch snowstorm of 1996 that smothered the D.C. area and shuttered the government for three days (and then a fourth later), technology is now so pervasive that working from home is an option for many workers. So not all the productivity will be lost.

"It's not going to be a dollar-for-dollar loss by any means," said Jim McCabe, associate professor of finance at the University of Louisville. "The key thing is, one year from now, will we notice any major difference in the output of the federal government? I don't think we'll see a blip in output."

McCabe kept his own output up during the storm by putting his lecture on a Web-based service when classes were canceled. His university, like many organizations, benefited from contingency planning set up over worries about how to carry on if the swine flu virus closed operations for any length of time.

Claire Simmers, chairwoman and professor of management at Saint Joseph's University, estimated that probably 25 percent of federal workers could get at least some of their jobs done from home during the storm. If the federal government had a clearer contingency plan, the figure could have been 50 percent.

"Most of my office was [working]," said an OPM spokesman on the condition that he not be named. OPM is now trying to come up with a better estimate than the $102 million daily figure. The spokesman said OPM is trying to figure out how many people came into their offices and how many worked from home. "They just carry on the business of government, but not in the office. People have gotten used to it now."

The spokesman said Berry is a big proponent of telecommuting and a "mobile workforce," and is looking for ways to increase that. Some managers have been reluctant to allow work outside the office in the past, the OPM spokesman said, adding, "Managers after this past week are buying into it pretty quickly."

Simmers, author of "The Internet and Workplace Transformation," said snow isn't the only reason the federal government should have a system for getting employees to work when they can't come to the office. Terror attacks, water main breaks, technology meltdowns and illness outbreaks like swine flu should all be planned for. Even employees caring for out-of-school children or shoveling their driveways should be required to do some work from home if they are getting paid, she said.

With technology like smart phones, employees don't even need to have a computer at home to be productive.

When the government tallies how much it lost, it shouldn't assume that federal workers usually are productive all eight hours of their day. Simmers estimated that most employees in the country actually work only about five hours daily, after factoring out breaks and distractions like checking their Facebook accounts.

"The concept of eight hours physically sitting at a desk isn't the reality now," she said. But the flip side is that many workers put in several more hours a day of work as they commute or while at home. "The lines between home and work are blurred."

The historic snow storm that hit Washington affected only capital-area workers. By contrast, the budget showdown between President Bill Clinton and the Republican Congress left 800,000 employees across the country sitting home in November 1995. The Clinton administration later estimated that the mess cost taxpayers as much as $800 million for salaries to nonworking employees and in lost revenue from things like tax collection.

While finance and economics experts this week were sorting through the cost of the lost work time, federal employees got back to shoveling -- shoveling out their desks full of backlogged work.