An Office Closer to Home; Area Centers Offer Employees Chance To Telecommute
Phyllis D. Rose spends up to 90 minutes each weekday in her car, driving to and from the General Services Administration's offices in Arlington where she works.</br></br>And when she gets there, after the traffic-filled ride from her home in Laurel, Rose typically gets interrupted many times over by bosses, colleagues and the telephone. The distractions are many; the opportunities to concentrate are few.</br></br>But things are a lot calmer on the days she reports to the Laurel Telecommuting Center--a mere five-minute drive from her house. Away from the interruptions of her workplace, she finds she is far more efficient and gets much more done.</br></br>Rose is one of 27 federal workers signed up to telecommute part of the week from the telecommuting center in Laurel, which opened almost a year ago. The center is part of a federal program and one of three pilot projects run by the College of Southern Maryland in La Plata.</br></br>There are now 17 such telecommuting centers in the Washington area and about 27 around the country, all of which are nonprofit projects started in 1994 and funded by the General Services Administration (GSA). Each federal agency also has $50,000 set aside in its annual budgets to contribute to the centers, if employees use them.