From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!duke!unc!brl-bmd!wmartin Newsgroups: net.followup Title: Re: Working at home Article-I.D.: brl-bmd.285 Posted: Thu Jul 29 13:12:34 1982 Received: Fri Jul 30 06:21:11 1982 There are current government work-at-home programs; the only one I know anything about is a prototype one here at my agency -- the USArmy Development and Readiness Command Automated Logistics Management Systems Activity (USArmy DARCOM ALMSA for short). We have two categories of work-at-home personnel -- handicapped and regular. There is one handicapped individual, paraplegic in a wheelchair; he does his work on a microcomputer or on a dial-up terminal at home during normal business hours and comes in once a week. (He gave up an amount of subsistence equal to his salary to become a productive worker once again.) The regualr employees have leased lines and workstations in their homes, and perform their work during non-prime time, accessing the contractor host computers over the ARPANET. These were current employees who volunteered for the program, and all seem to be happy with the arrangement. (One turned down a promotion in order to stay in the program.) They either work an eight-hour chunk of time at night or in the evening, or split their shift into two chunks. These are all programmers, who also do documentation and document production on these facilities. They are now operating under the Augment/NLS environment, but are in the process of moving to a UNIX environment. We've had some local publicity on the WAH (Work-At-Home) program; one of the local TV news teams did a feature on the handicapped WAH individual, I think in relation to a series on handicaps. There are lots of nit-picking legal issues involved; there are questions related to liability, workmen's compensation, supervisory controls, productivity demonstration, etc. That's why this is still a prototype program, even though our top management is strongly behind it. The Headquarters legal staff has to be convinced that all difficulties have been overcome. I, too, would like to see contributions on the net from anyone who works at home (other than self-employed) as their normal workday. (Forgot to mention above -- the regular WAH personnel come in once every two weeks, unless training or other special requirements interrupt their WAH schedules.) Regards, Will Martin