The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee voted on Wednesday to approve two tech-related bills: the Federal Improvement in Technology (FIT) Procurement Act and the Telework Reform Act.
The committee’s votes to approve the bills will send them to the full Senate for further consideration.
The panel voted 10-0 to approve the Federal Improvement in Technology (FIT) Procurement Act, which looks to streamline the Federal procurement process for agencies and their contractors. Sens. Gary Peters D-Mich., chairman of the committee, and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, introduced the bill in early April.
Among other aims, the bill would remove obsolete and restrictive procurement requirements and enable contractors to bid on Federal contracts in a more simplified fashion. The legislation would also strengthen the training process for the Federal acquisition workforce in newer technologies like cloud services and artificial intelligence.
As for the Telework Reform Act, the panel voted 9-2 to approve the bill – which would make it easier for Federal agencies to hire qualified candidates for remote work positions, especially the spouses of service members and law enforcement officials. Sens. James Lankford, R-Okla., and Kyrsten Sinema, I-Ariz., introduced the bill in October.
While the Senate legislation specifically targets remote job opportunities for those groups, it would charge Federal agencies with figuring out a range of criteria for supporting remote work more broadly, including on the cost savings and productivity fronts.
Specifically, the bill would enhance training, accountability, and support related to remote work and telework. It would also direct agencies to identify necessary cybersecurity and IT infrastructure changes due to the increased use of remote work and telework.
The Senate panel also considered another telework bill during its Wednesday markup, the Telework Transparency Act, but decided to not vote on the bill in order to work out the details of an amendment proposed by Sen. Mitt Romney, R- Utah.
Sen. Romney proposed an amendment that would call for agency supervisory staff “to monitor those that are teleworking to make sure they’re doing something.”
“It’s not specific, it doesn’t describe what the monitoring has to be. It could be as simple as just reporting on what they accomplished during the day, but some kind of monitoring,” Sen. Romney said.
Chairman Peters, who introduced the bill in April along with Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, said that he’s not opposed to what the amendment is trying to accomplish, but wants to “do it in a way that we’re protecting privacy issues if need be.”
“As this amendment is right now, I think we also need to balance this oversight with guardrails around what type of monitoring agencies would conduct,” Sen. Peters explained. “I think without proper guardrails, it could result in employers misusing this authority and infringing on privacy and civil rights.”
“I will hold this bill over now, and we’ll put it up on the next markup,” the chairman told Sen. Romney. “And I would hope to earn your support there with language that you believe achieves your ends, which I agree we need to be looking at.”
At its core, the bill aims to increase transparency and oversight of Federal telework policies. It would require agencies to gather quality data and monitor how telework impacts agency performance and Federal property decisions.
