COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
STATE GOVERNMENT COMMITTEE PUBLIC HEARING
STATE CAPITOL HARRISBURG, PA
MAIN CAPITOL BUILDING ROOM 60, EAST WING
MONDAY, MARCH 15, 2 021 9:00 A.M.
PRESENTATION ON GOVERNMENT TELEWORK POLICIES AND DATA DURING COVID-19
MEMBERS PRESENT:
HONORABLE SETH GROVE, MAJORITY CHAIRMAN HONORABLE RUSS DIAMOND HONORABLE MATTHEW DOWLING HONORABLE BRETT MILLER HONORABLE ERIC NELSON HONORABLE CLINT OWLETT HONORABLE FRANK RYAN HONORABLE PAUL SCHEMEL HONORABLE LOUIS SCHMITT HONORABLE CRAIG STAATS HONORABLE JEFF WHEELAND HONORABLE MARGO DAVIDSON, DEMOCRATIC CHAIRWOMAN HONORABLE JARED SOLOMON HONORABLE REGINA YOUNG 2
MEMBERS PRESENT VIRTUALLY:
HONORABLE DAWN KEEFER HONORABLE ANDREW LEWIS HONORABLE RYAN MACKENZIE HONORABLE ISABELLA FITZGERALD HONORABLE KRISTINE HOWARD HONORABLE MALCOLM KENYATTA HONORABLE MAUREEN MADDEN HONORABLE BENJAMIN SANCHEZ HONORABLE JOSEPH WEBSTER
Pennsylvania House of Representatives Commonwealth of Pennsylvania 3
COMMITTEE STAFF PRESENT:
MICHAELE TOTINO MAJORITY EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR MICHAEL HECKMANN MAJORITY RESEARCH ANALYST SHERRY EBERLY MAJORITY LEGISLATIVE ADMINISTRATIVE ASSISTANT MATTHEW RINDFUSS
NICHOLAS HIMEBAUGH DEMOCRATIC EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR 4
I N D E X
TESTIFIERS
~k ~k ~k
NAME PAGE
MICHAEL NEWSOME SECRETARY, OFFICE OF ADMINISTRATION...... 11 ACCOMPANIED BY: REID WALSH DEPUTY SECRETARY, HUMAN RESOURCES AND MANAGEMENT, OFFICE OF ADMINISTRATION
SUBMITTED WRITTEN TESTIMONY
~k ~k ~k
'See submitted written testimony and handouts online. 1 5
1 ~k ~k ~k
2 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN GROVE: Good morning, everyone.
3 Welcome to the public hearing of the Pennsylvania House
4 State Government Committee on governmental work policies
5 and data during COVID-19. I ’m the Committee’s Chairman
6 Seth Grove from York County. This is the second hearing of
7 four which this Committee will review the executive
8 branch’s COVID-19 policies from agencies which fall under
9 this Committee’s oversight jurisdiction. These four
10 Committee hearings were originally going to be held by our
11 Subcommittees, but they have not been populated yet.
12 So specifically the telework policies fall under
13 the jurisdiction of the Subcommittee on Information
14 Technology and Communication chaired by Representative Russ
15 Diamond. Subcommittees are designed, at least for this
16 Committee, to build technical expertise in their area of
17 jurisdiction. In order for this to occur, I ’ll be turning
18 over the remainder of this Committee to Representative
19 Diamond, as I also may have to step out.
20 Chairman Diamond, it is all yours.
21 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
22 Good morning, everyone. I ’m very much looking
23 forward to this hearing and hearing the testimony from our
24 testifiers covering a very important topic. For the last
25 year, it’s been kind of a nightmare for our constituents to 6
1 have interaction with the State when they need to, so this
2 kind of lies at the heart of that is that where our State
3 workers are working and how they're staying in contact,
4 that sort of thing.
5 In the Members' packets there are numerous
6 documents on teleworking, and these have also been emailed
7 to Members attending virtually.
8 Chairwoman Davidson, do you have any opening
9 comments?
10 DEMOCRATIC CHAIRWOMAN DAVIDSON: Yes, thank you,
11 Chairman.
12 I just want to say that I want to express my
13 appreciation for the hardworking members of the State
14 Government staff just in terms of all the work that they've
15 done in an extremely trying situation, which is the global
16 pandemic that has taken over 500,000 lives of U.S.
17 citizens. It’s been a horrific year the last year for
18 Pennsylvanians because there is a pandemic.
19 My constituents are extremely happy with the
20 services that have been provided by my office, which is
21 their first point of contact with State Government, as well
22 as the rest of the State Government functioning. There has
23 been some glitches to the unemployment compensation that
24 has caused some stress to citizens, but that mostly has to
25 do with the fact that the gerrymandered Republican majority 7
1 has refused to fully fund the operating systems of our
2 State employees. And so, you know, when you’re dealing
3 with an antiquated 20- to 30-year-old computer system,
4 there’s going to be problems when you have high levels of
5 unemployment, unprecedented levels of unemployment in a,
6 again, global pandemic that has ravaged our country. And
7 from the top executive branch of the United States of
8 America up until recently there was no coordinated response
9 to that global pandemic.
10 And so, once again, I want to say thank you to
11 State employees who, through their heroism, have done a
12 yeoman’s job of making sure that our citizens are taken
13 care of in a way that was not done from the Federal level
14 but is now being done by our great President Joseph R.
15 Biden. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
16 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: Alrighty then. Thank
17 you, Chairwoman Davidson.
18 We do have Members and testifiers in attendance
19 virtually, as well as the public viewing via live stream.
20 Due to Sunshine Law requirements, if either of these
21 platforms experience technical difficulties, we will pause
22 the meeting in order to correct the issues.
23 For the Members participating virtually, please
24 mute your microphones. Please know when you speak, we hear
25 all of what you say. If you want to be recognized for 8
1 comments, please use the raise-hand function. After being
2 recognized but prior to speaking, please turn on your
3 camera and unmute your microphone. After you’ve completed
4 your question, please mute your microphone again.
5 I do want to begin with Committee Member
6 introductions, and we will start with Committee Members in
7 the room. And for Members attending virtually, I will call
8 on you one by one. Let’s begin with Representative
9 Wheeland.
10 REPRESENTATIVE WHEELAND: Good morning, acting
11 Chairman -
12 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: Good morning.
13 REPRESENTATIVE WHEELAND: — Mr. Chairman. Good
14 morning. Jeff Wheeland, 83rd District, Lycoming County.
15 REPRESENTATIVE NELSON: Good morning.
16 Representative Eric Nelson, Westmoreland County.
17 REPRESENTATIVE SCHMITT: Good morning, everybody.
18 Representative Lou Schmitt, 79th District, city of Altoona
19 and parts of Blair County.
20 REPRESENTATIVE DOWLING: Good morning. I ’m
21 Matthew Dowling, the 51st Legislative District in Fayette
22 and Somerset Counties.
23 REPRESENTATIVE RYAN: Representative Frank Ryan,
24 101st District, Lebanon County, Pennsylvania.
25 REPRESENTATIVE OWLETT: Representative Clint 9
1 Owlett, all of Tioga and parts of Bradford and Potter
2 County.
3 REPRESENTATIVE STAATS: Good morning. Craig
4 Staats proudly representing the 145th District in Bucks
5 County.
6 REPRESENTATIVE MILLER: Brett Miller, 41st
7 District, Lancaster County.
8 REPRESENTATIVE SCHEMEL: Paul Schemel, portions
9 of Franklin County.
10 REPRESENTATIVE YOUNG: Regina Young, Philadelphia
11 and Delaware Counties.
12 REPRESENTATIVE SOLOMON: Jared Solomon, State
13 Rep, 202nd, northeast Philly.
14 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: And beginning with the
15 Members participating online, Representative Lewis.
16 REPRESENTATIVE LEWIS: Good morning, Chairman,
17 Members of the Committee, and Secretary. Andrew Lewis
18 representing the 105th District in Dauphin County. Good to
19 be here.
20 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: Representative
21 Fitzgerald.
22 REPRESENTATIVE FITZGERALD: Good morning.
23 Isabella Fitzgerald, representing the 203rd Legislative
24 District, Philadelphia, West Oak Lane, East Oak Lane, and
25 the lower northeast. 10
1 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: Representative Howard.
2 REPRESENTATIVE HOWARD: Hi, it’s Kristine Howard
3 from the 167th District in Chester County.
4 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: Representative Kenyatta.
5 REPRESENTATIVE KENYATTA: Hey, good morning,
6 everybody. Representative Malcolm Kenyatta, the 181st
7 District in Philadelphia County.
8 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: Representative Webster.
9 REPRESENTATIVE WEBSTER: Good morning, everyone.
10 It’s Joe Webster. I ’m from the 150th in Montgomery County.
11 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: Representative Sanchez.
12 REPRESENTATIVE SANCHEZ: Good morning, everybody.
13 Ben Sanchez from the 153rd District in Montgomery County.
14 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: And Representative
15 Mackenzie.
16 REPRESENTATIVE MACKENZIE: Good morning. Ryan
17 Mackenzie representing the 134th District in portions of
18 Lehigh and Berks Counties.
19 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: Alrighty then. New to
20 House operating rules is the provision of swearing in
21 testifiers for standing Committees. Today, we have joining
22 us Secretary Michael Newsome of the Office of
23 Administration and Reid Walsh, who is the Office of
24 Administration’s Deputy Secretary for Human Resources and
25 Management. Secretary Newsome and Deputy Secretary Walsh, 11
1 would you raise your right hands, please?
2
3 (Witnesses sworn.)
4
5 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: All right, thank you.
6 Secretary Newsome, I ’m going to -- we do have written
7 testimony from you. If you would like to open with a brief
8 summary of that testimony, that would be very much
9 welcomed.
10 You are muted, sir. Still muted, sir. We heard
11 you before when you were testing your microphone. Mr.
12 Secretary, if you would log off and log back in again, that
13 may help us.
14 SECRETARY NEWSOME: I think I ’m on right now.
15 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: We have you, Mr.
16 Secretary. You are free to begin. Thank you.
17 SECRETARY NEWSOME: Okay, great. Great, thank
18 you. Good morning, everyone, and to acting Chairman and
19 Chairwoman Davidson, Members of the Committee. As
20 indicated, I ’m Michael Newsome, Secretary of the Governor’s
21 Office of Administration. And on behalf of the Office of
22 Administration, thank you for the opportunity to testify
23 before this Committee to discuss telework policies and
24 practices.
25 As indicated, we have with us today Deputy 12
1 Secretary Reid Walsh, who will also be answering questions
2 as appropriate during this testimony.
3 One of the things that I talked about earlier or
4 thought about earlier is that the written testimony came to
5 you relatively late last week. I think we were able to get
6 it to you on time. But many of the Members may not have
7 had an opportunity to read through it. And if I may, Mr.
8 Chairman, I ’d like to read through this testimony. It is
9 the detail and an overview of telework for this last year.
10 So if I may, it takes just about 10 or 12 minutes or so,
11 and it will be a good indication to start the conversation
12 today.
13 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: Mr. Secretary, we do
14 have limited time here today.
15 SECRETARY NEWSOME: Okay.
16 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: And everybody has
17 received your written testimony, so if you could just
18 summarize so that the public knows sort of what that
19 testimony was doing, that would be great. Then we can get
20 to questions. We have a lot of questions for you, sir.
21 SECRETARY NEWSOME: Okay, great. That’s great.
22 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: Thank you.
23 SECRETARY NEWSOME: Not a problem. So, as you
24 know, over this past year -
25 DEMOCRATIC CHAIRWOMAN DAVIDSON: Point of order, 13
1 Mr. Chairman, I think the Secretary, who’s taken time out
2 of his schedule today, should be allowed to do the bulk of
3 his remarks. I ’m sure he can shorten pieces of it. But I
4 would like to hear the Secretary in his own words describe
5 telework across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and I
6 think it’s in the public’s best interest to hear as much of
7 his testimony as possible.
8 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: Thank you, Madam Chair.
9 We do have that testimony in front of us. I ’m just asking
10 for a less wordy summary so we can move on. Thank you.
11 SECRETARY NEWSOME: And out of deference to both
12 of you, I will do that. I will make sure that it gives the
13 essence of our testimony but a very shortened version if
14 you will.
15 So over the past year w e ’ve seen countless
16 examples of how this pandemic has affected operations
17 across a variety of sectors. So as we talk today, w e ’re
18 going to be talking about not only the public sector but
19 the private sector. And the reason w e ’re saying that is
20 because these issues that w e ’re dealing with and questions
21 and answers that we will provide will also apply to the
22 private sector and what they have been doing over the
23 course of this past year.
24 This pandemic obviously does not determine
25 whether it’s private or public. It does not discriminate. 14
1 So as we go through this, w e ’re talking about the safety of
2 our employees and making sure that the basic work for the
3 constituents, your constituents, and the citizens of
4 Pennsylvania are receiving services to which they deserve.
5 So our agency supports all of the other agencies.
6 So with respect to the State agencies under the Governor’s
7 jurisdiction, beginning last March, we all were put under
8 the order of the Secretary of the Pennsylvania Department
9 of Health for mitigation and enforcement, which stated
10 essentially that, unless impossible, all businesses must
11 conduct their operations remotely through individual
12 teleworking of their employees. And so under the
13 Governor’s jurisdiction, this basically applied to all of
14 the agencies.
15 One thing to remember, we were given, as I
16 recall, about a two-day notice to shut down operations, and
17 we had to do that very, very quickly. But having said
18 that, approximately 65 percent of our employees continue to
19 report in person full-time to their worksites and have
20 continued to do so throughout the pandemic. So as w e ’re
21 talking about teleworking, let’s all remember that w e ’re
22 talking about the remaining approximately 35 percent of our
23 employees that are either working full-time or they’re
24 splitting their time between working in person at their
25 worksite or working remotely. And their job duties have 15
1 been covered along those lines.
2 Now, before the pandemic, most of our employees
3 had never teleworked or had very little experience with it,
4 so we had to deploy things very, very quickly. We had
5 initially about 9,000 of our employees unable to telework
6 because of various reasons. W e ’re talking about having
7 equipment available to them, networks available to them,
8 VPNs, just the opportunity to work from home, and they were
9 unable to. We had 9,000 at that time. And today, almost
10 all of those salaried employees are working either in the
11 office or are teleworking full-time. And that’s a tribute
12 to all of the agencies that were involved, DGS, which
13 helped us with procuring the equipment that we needed,
14 certainly the Department of Health, which gave us the
15 opportunity to communicate with our employees the way we
16 should, and certainly our technical group, our IT group,
17 which has done, as Chairwoman Davidson said, just a huge
18 Herculean job with perhaps providing the support everyone
19 needs.
20 This is also a time for me to give a shout-out to
21 our H.R. group as well, who basically has handled the
22 communications throughout this pandemic with all of our
23 employees, those that are continuing to report to the
24 workplace and those that are teleworking full-time or part
25 time. And we communicated with our employees on a regular 16
1 basis across an entire spectrum of communications that
2 w e ’ve required for them.
3 So as we move on, I can give you examples of
4 maybe as we talk through questions that are being presented
5 to us, and we can give examples of the type of work that’s
6 been done with our employees, by our employees over the
7 course of this past year. But for brevity, let me just
8 jump right to one item in this testimony that I do want to
9 get across right from the beginning, and that is my closing
10 portion of the testimony. It’s a personal feeling. It’s
11 my personal observation and direct observation of our State
12 employees.
13 And I can say without reservation that we have
14 hardworking, dedicated, talented employees. In fact, over
15 my nearly 40-year career, these are among the best
16 employees I ’ve encountered. In my opinion, we have one of
17 the best workforces, State workforces in the entire Nation.
18 And they have met this challenge. They did not ask to go
19 home and telework. And we all came together, we thought it
20 was going to be just a short period of time. No one
21 anticipated being home for an entire year. They have met
22 this challenge facing Pennsylvania, they have met the
23 challenge, and I believe Pennsylvania’s future will be
24 brighter because of them and their inspired service. I am
25 proud to have been associated with the government workers. 17
1 So on behalf of the Office of Administration,
2 Deputy Secretary Walsh and I will be glad to address any
3 questions that you have at this time. Thank you.
4 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: Thank you, Mr.
5 Secretary. I do want to note that Representative Madden
6 has joined us online. Representative Madden, if you’d like
7 to unmute your microphone and introduce yourself, that
8 would be great.
9 Representative Madden?
10 Okay. Well, w e ’ll just move right onto questions
11 then, and our first question will come from Representative
12 Nelson.
13 REPRESENTATIVE NELSON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
14 Thank you for your testimony. And I appreciate your
15 heartfelt remarks at the end.
16 A lot of frustration in the eyes and through the
17 lens of Pennsylvania citizens, you know, as w e ’re looking
18 at trying to emerge out of the pandemic. You know, w e ’re
19 coming up on a year that we have been dealing with this
20 situation. Specifically just to touch a little bit on
21 financial resources, if I ’m understanding the
22 Administration, this is Federal funding provided for
23 administration of unemployment insurance for ’19, ’20, ’21.
24 This is $107,000,866, so I think the financial resources
25 are there. 18
1 The agreement itself that the Administration,
2 Pennsylvania temporary telework agreement, through this
3 year what have you learned about revisions and ways that we
4 can improve this policy as w e ’re moving ahead?
5 SECRETARY NEWSOME: So w e ’re talking about the
6 telework policy?
7 REPRESENTATIVE NELSON: Yes, sir.
8 SECRETARY NEWSOME: Okay. We —
9 REPRESENTATIVE NELSON: I ’d like to focus on the
10 unemployment portion of that telework policy.
11 SECRETARY NEWSOME: Okay. I ’m not quite sure I
12 understand that question. The funding of unemployment?
13 REPRESENTATIVE NELSON: No, sir. Well, we know
14 we have the funding or we have $100 million of funding. If
15 we back up unemployment maybe a little bit too detailed at
16 this point. If you can touch in general about the
17 agreement and what your office has learned over this past
18 year as far as additional improvements moving forward.
19 SECRETARY NEWSOME: I ’m sorry, Representative,
20 I ’m not understanding the question, but let me attempt to
21 answer. If w e ’re talking about the opportunity to reduce
22 the stress on unemployment, that is, by having more
23 employees working as opposed to being unemployed and under
24 this situation I can perhaps talk about that, but if you’re
25 talking about anything else regarding unemployment, this 19
1 has actually not been a focus of the Office of
2 Administration.
3 As I said in my testimony that we had 9, 000
4 employees that potentially could have added to the
5 unemployment ranks during the course of this year, but we
6 were able to avoid that through being able to make changes
7 within the telework procedures that we have. Initially
8 when we were talking about telework pre-pandemic -- by the
9 way, telework didn’t just start with the pandemic. We were
10 obviously doing telework from years before this. But
11 certain employees in certain job functions do not lend
12 themselves to telework. But in this case of the 9,000
13 employees, we were able to convert them to either back to
14 the office or actually teleworking, and we were able to
15 relieve that additional potential stress on the
16 unemployment rolls.
17 REPRESENTATIVE NELSON: Well, thank you, Mr.
18 Secretary. Can you touch on -
19 SECRETARY NEWSOME: That’s a question I ’m not
20 quite sure -
21 REPRESENTATIVE NELSON: Yes, I think you’re
22 working on it pretty strongly.
23 SECRETARY NEWSOME: Okay.
24 REPRESENTATIVE NELSON: Can you touch on
25 specifically about receipt of mail and delivery of mail 20
1 within, you know, the Office of Administration?
2 SECRETARY NEWSOME: Again, we do not handle the
3 mail within -- I mean, w e ’re not responsible for mail
4 distribution throughout the Commonwealth. Obviously, w e ’re
5 responsible for the mail that comes into the Office of
6 Administration, and we do have individuals that have
7 constantly retrieved the mail and distributed it to the
8 appropriate personnel.
9 REPRESENTATIVE NELSON: Thank you. Thank you,
10 Mr. Chairman.
11 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: Thank you,
12 Representative Nelson.
13 Representative Dowling.
14 REPRESENTATIVE DOWLING: Thank you. As the
15 development was taking place for the policies that include
16 telework, can you tell us a little bit about what process
17 was used to do that and how those policies kind of came to
18 fruition?
19 SECRETARY NEWSOME: Well, we have Deputy
20 Secretary Reid that will answer the details of the policy,
21 but I would just give you a couple overview. First of all,
22 the telework policy was in place prior to the pandemic, as
23 I indicated, and during the pandemic, we were able to make
24 some changes to the policy, which, again, has not been
25 completely updated at this point. But one of the things I 21
1 can mention is that this policy did not include our
2 represented employees. And because everyone had to go into
3 a temporary telework situation, the new policy will include
4 our represented employees.
5 But Deputy Secretary Walsh may be able to give
6 you some more detail on the intricacies of the policy.
7 MS. WALSH: Gladly, thank you. Thanks for having
8 me here today.
9 So currently, the Commonwealth employees are
10 operating under a management directive, which accounted for
11 in our planning that w e ’ve been doing for years in terms of
12 continuity of operation that accounted for what happens to
13 State employees when we are under some sort of emergency
14 situation, be it a flood, you know, a pandemic, which I
15 don’t think any of us -- you know, we did not foresee that.
16 But we certainly had plans in place if something like that
17 would come about. So right now, w e ’re operating under a
18 management directive, which allows employees to telework in
19 an emergency situation. If we convert to a long-term
20 telework situation, we will not operate under that
21 management directive anymore. There’s much more detail
22 that would need to go into a permanent policy.
23 I ’m happy to speak on how we formulate our
24 policies, but generally speaking, from my perspective, we
25 had very few pockets, primarily management only under the 22
1 Governor’s jurisdiction, that had telework, but please keep
2 in mind that we have a very large State workforce. We have
3 a very large area to cover with Pennsylvania and many jobs
4 and duties that requires people to be on the road, so we
5 had people that are home-headquartered as in they travel to
6 locations to do inspections, to deliver services in various
7 ways. So given the vastness of our workforce, we need to
8 have a policy that accounted for all these particular
9 situations.
10 So when we begin any sort of policy, we go
11 through the process of combining the right people in the
12 room to talk about things that need to go into that policy.
13 We always have agencies consult on those types of matters,
14 especially something as big as telework so we get a
15 holistic picture of what that looks like, of course our
16 legal teams. So there’s a big process that goes into
17 developing a new management directive, but right now, w e ’re
18 operating under the emergency telework agreement.
19 REPRESENTATIVE DOWLING: And just kind of a point
20 of clarification, and thank you for that answer, the
21 Secretary had said that the policy existed beforehand.
22 Were changes made to the policy or instead were the
23 directives themselves just put in place and followed?
24 MS. WALSH: Correct. The directives are put in
25 place and followed. I think what the Secretary is 23
1 referring to, we have small pocket of telework agreements
2 that have been in place in very small instances. There was
3 no enterprise-wide telework agreement. There is no
4 agreement, generally speaking, that allows covered
5 employees to telework, so it was in very small pockets that
6 we had some sort of permanent agreement.
7 I can give you a for instance. For a while we
8 have had an agreement within our H.R. service center, which
9 is an entity that handles really call volume for employees
10 when they call with benefits issues, when the call with
11 payroll issues, time issues. And in order to save space
12 and to allow more people to be productive, to have, you
13 know, great hours of operations, w e ’ve had a telework
14 policy in place for that limited amount of people. But I
15 think that’s extremely limited across the Commonwealth.
16 So, generally speaking, most employees are operating under
17 a management directive that talks about teleworking during
18 emergency situations.
19 REPRESENTATIVE DOWLING: So in developing these
20 management directives, did we look at best practices from
21 neighboring States at all?
22 MS. WALSH: Absolutely. Absolutely. So I can
23 tell you that, as we develop what our plan would
24 potentially look like for long-term telework, it is a very
25 meticulous process. So not only does it include high touch 24
1 with many States who are either contemplating telework,
2 going through their process, conversations with our Federal
3 counterparts, I speak to my counterparts in other States on
4 a monthly basis and many times in between. It also
5 includes going through example agreements from other States
6 to see what has worked, what we can learn, that sort of
7 thing. It’s a very meticulous process.
8 There’s a lot of considerations that goes into
9 telework. It is not just limited to kind of where the
10 employee is. We need to make sure that our employees are
11 well-trained, they have the tools to work, that managers
12 understand what it means to manage in a telework
13 environment. So even during the pandemic outside of the
14 policy, outside of the emergency management directive, we
15 quickly pivoted to set up websites where our managers could
16 get training on telework, any sort of questions that
17 employees would have about telework, you could access the
18 site. It’s a temporary telework site at some point will
19 convert to more of a permanent resource. There was a lot
20 to be done to be able to stand up and get our employees
21 operational very quickly. So when Secretary Newsome talked
22 about this 9,000 folks, it was an extremely quick pivot to
23 stand those folks up. And generally speaking, most of our
24 workforce is reporting. There’s a lot of things that we do
25 to enable health and safety when they’re reporting, so I 25
1 think I ’ll leave it there if I answered your question. I ’m
2 happy to elaborate or if you need anything else.
3 REPRESENTATIVE DOWLING: No, no. I thank you
4 very much, Deputy Secretary, for those answers.
5 MS. WALSH: Thank you.
6 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: Representative Lewis.
7 REPRESENTATIVE LEWIS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
8 Good morning, Secretary Newsome, Deputy Secretary Walsh.
9 Thank you for taking the time to be here and also thanks
10 for your service to the Commonwealth, especially during
11 these perilous and unprecedented times. Your job is
12 certainly not an easy one.
13 I would like to ask -- and also I want to note I
14 represent the 105th District, which is Lower Paxton, West
15 Hanover, and South Hanover Townships. I actually have one
16 of the highest numbers of Commonwealth employees in my
17 district, very privileged. W e ’ve got a lot of folks
18 working very hard doing great work to serve the people of
19 Pennsylvania and make our State better for everybody.
20 And so I think one of the things that my
21 constituents are interested in kind of the accountability
22 of employees during these times of teleworking. And so I ’m
23 going to be asking a little bit about the disciplinary
24 policies, and specifically, one, if either of you could
25 walk me through a little bit about the Administration’s 26
1 disciplinary policies overall and then any changes made to
2 those policies to accommodate for telework employees.
3 MS. WALSH: Sure, I ’ll take that question. So,
4 generally speaking, I think -- well, I know that we don’t
5 focus on where the employee works but how the employee
6 works. So regardless if they’re working on premise or if
7 they’re working hybrid, they go into the office to do the
8 things that Secretary Newsome alluded to such as checking
9 mail, that sort of thing, or they’re working remotely, we
10 continue to rely on our managers and supervisors to monitor
11 performance.
12 In terms of discipline process, it’s no different
13 than if w e ’re in telework, so there are lots of different
14 things that govern how we discipline employees, what is the
15 level I would say of the infraction, is it counseling, is
16 it a performance improvement plan. You know, all of those
17 things are still in place.
18 So if in this environment we as H.R. as a service
19 provider hear from an agency that they need help with
20 performance, discipline, we use the same policies that we
21 always do. We direct them to stay consistent in how
22 they’re treating the employees regardless of how they’re
23 working because, like I mentioned before, we have employees
24 that are on the road that are inspectors that make sure the
25 water is safe, you know, make sure they’re, you know, doing 27
1 anything they need to do to enable their services. And
2 they work in a remote environment.
3 So our managers and supervisors are fairly agile.
4 In a lot of cases they’re fairly used to handling
5 discipline. When they’re not, we provide that support. If
6 they’re a new manager, we help walk them through it. We
7 train them through it. W e ’re here to provide them the
8 tools to do that appropriately. So I think consistency is
9 our main goal in staying with what our program policies are
10 not deviating because of where the employee is performing
11 the work.
12 REPRESENTATIVE LEWIS: That does make sense. I
13 appreciate that. As a follow-up, looking at the numbers,
14 so when we go back to 2020 and we look at disciplinary
15 events, numbers of employees that were disciplined, do you
16 have any indication or any numbers on whether that number
17 of disciplined employees was above or below your average
18 year of disciplinary events?
19 MS. WALSH: Right. No, I don’t have those
20 numbers in front of me, but I can speak to anecdotally. So
21 H.R. is actually a fairly data-based organization despite
22 the fact that there’s a lot of human interaction that needs
23 to go along with it. So, for instance, I ’m able to look at
24 our hiring activity, how many employees have requisitions
25 for hire, what the time to hire is, and how that’s 28
1 happening during the pandemic and what is the difference
2 between years prior, taking snapshots of certain months and
3 years prior to the pandemic, currently, et cetera. I can
4 see that data. We have an H.R. service center, again,
5 which takes, you know, thousands and thousands of calls a
6 month, let alone a year, and then looking at that data for
7 indications of how this pandemic is affecting our
8 performance.
9 And when I look at that, generally speaking,
10 we ’re seeing flat. W e ’re not seeing a whole lot of changes
11 when it comes to employee performance, positive or
12 negative. In fact, I have to say that because of the
13 agility that we have proven to ourselves that we can handle
14 as a Commonwealth, I feel like w e ’re seeing a lot of
15 movement and a lot of ability to reallocate resources to
16 meet demand. I think w e ’ve really tested ourselves and
17 we ’ve met that. I see when, for instance, if we need to
18 ramp up hiring in certain places, w e ’ll shift resources,
19 all hands on deck to help X, Y, or Z that may be a demand
20 that’s surging during the pandemic that wasn’t there
21 previously.
22 So I believe that generally what w e ’re seeing is
23 flat activity. W e ’re not seeing huge spikes in issues. I
24 think the transition to a pandemic world was one that we
25 had to do a lot of education, a lot of training. What does 29
1 it mean to be safe, what does it mean to be healthy when so
2 many of us aren’t reporting to the worksite? How do we
3 help those employees understand what it means to have a
4 safe and productive workforce under these pandemic
5 conditions?
6 REPRESENTATIVE LEWIS: Thank you very much.
7 SECRETARY NEWSOME: Representative Lewis, if I
8 may just add one overarching comment?
9 REPRESENTATIVE LEWIS: Yes, sir.
10 SECRETARY NEWSOME: And you talk about
11 discipline, and I ’m sort of like a glass-half-full type of
12 person, so I ’m always thinking about employee performance
13 and how managers evaluate employee performance. And we
14 have obviously an annual performance review process. And
15 I’m a stickler for getting that right, making sure
16 employees understand how their managers and supervisors
17 feel about their work. And they get that in writing, and
18 it’s an interactive type of thing. The two of them are
19 back and forth about what can I do to improve, how can I
20 make my job much more valuable to the Commonwealth, and how
21 can I build my career as I move through this? So there’s
22 another side to this is helping employees even in this
23 telework situation, helping them understand how important
24 the work they do for the Commonwealth is to us.
25 REPRESENTATIVE LEWIS: I appreciate that, and I 30
1 certainly identify as a former Army NCO and someone who
2 actually majored in H.R. with my MBA and leadership. Tell
3 me, Secretary Newsome, how do you feel the morale is out
4 there? Are folks doing all right with all the telework
5 policies and everything? How are you seeing those numbers
6 come back?
7 SECRETARY NEWSOME: I was hoping someone would
8 ask that question.
9 REPRESENTATIVE LEWIS: Sure.
10 SECRETARY NEWSOME: Early on when we went into
11 the telework situation and we were talking about the
12 difference between the beginning and then now, early on
13 when we went into the telework situation, actually, every
14 employee I encountered that didn’t report to me directly, I
15 asked that question. How are you doing? How are you
16 holding up? What’s telework like to you? And in the
17 beginning I must admit a number of employees were
18 apprehensive. They weren’t sure. They weren’t sure if
19 they could continue in this type of environment. But many
20 of them of course appreciated the fact that they’re still
21 employed, which was a great point.
22 Later on, I think I went around six months
23 without asking that question, then I started asking it
24 again. And most recently, the answers have been, oh, this
25 is great, don’t take it away from us. Our work and life 31
1 balance now is something that I never expected. And think
2 about the commuting time, when they’re commuting, they’re
3 not with their families. Now they can spend that extra
4 time with their families. When they come home in the
5 evening and decompress if you will about the workday and
6 what they went through, they’re not kicking the dog and all
7 of that kind of stuff. They’re already relaxed. They’re
8 not as stressed as they were before. So the whole idea is
9 that our employees have less stress.
10 Now, is that across-the-board 100 percent? No.
11 We have some employees who live alone. Someone told me
12 that it’s tough not being able to interact with their
13 colleagues, and they’re looking forward to getting back to
14 that situation. But generally speaking, a very, very
15 positive attitude among our employees.
16 REPRESENTATIVE LEWIS: Wonderful. Well, thank
17 you for that. And we are so appreciative of the hard work
18 of our Commonwealth employees. Thank you both for your
19 answers. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
20 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: Representative Ryan.
21 REPRESENTATIVE RYAN: [inaudible] and so — there
22 we go. I thought it was on but apparently it wasn’t. At
23 one point I thought it was my hearing at my age.
24 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: You may want to begin
25 again, Representative Ryan. 32
1 REPRESENTATIVE RYAN: Great, thank you so much.
2 You probably didn’t hear that, but again, thank you for the
3 great work in light of the fact that 72,000 folks had to
4 change direction in 48 hours, so I appreciate the
5 complexity of that operation.
6 But in a letter to Chairman Grove and myself that
7 was dated September 11, 2020, you indicated approximately
8 65 percent of the 72,000 State workers continued to report
9 full-time to their worksite. So a couple questions I have
10 for you is what are the job classifications typically of
11 those folks? And generally speaking, if you could give us
12 an overview and potentially, if necessary, follow up with a
13 written response to us on where some of those agencies are
14 with those individuals’ work so we can get a better
15 perspective of the nature of the work that’s occurring.
16 SECRETARY NEWSOME: Okay. I can begin. I don’t
17 have the fine details, but I can give you certainly an
18 overview -
19 REPRESENTATIVE RYAN: Okay.
20 SECRETARY NEWSOME: -- when you think about
21 corrections and when you think about our State Troopers,
22 when you think about our nurses and doctors, basically,
23 many of the public-facing types of functions that we have,
24 but we certainly can follow up with the exact numbers.
25 Well, certainly, I missed some, but we can certainly follow 33
1 up with the details. Reid, any others that you might want
2 to mention or -
3 REPRESENTATIVE RYAN: Well, Mr. Chairman, that’s
4 tremendous, but I would like to also -- your letter says
5 that customer service remains a top priority. And again, I
6 think all of us appreciate the complexity of a sudden
7 shutdown in 48 hours, but our district offices are getting
8 comments. And like Representative Lewis, I have a
9 significant number of State workers who live in my
10 district. And what I ’m hearing from a lot of them and
11 constituents are two separate categories. One is for many
12 of the State workers who are working very diligently, many
13 of them are working significantly harder because of the
14 remote working locations. But they are then at the same
15 time complaining about those who are not going into work at
16 all and spending a half an hour to an hour a day on a Zoom
17 call and getting full pay, and they feel the inequity and
18 the injustice of that from their perspective. These are
19 State workers.
20 So a question I would ask you for yourself is do
21 you have a hotline or a monitoring system to see where
22 those kinds of complaints can come into where a State
23 worker who’s got that type of a grievance can make that
24 kind of a response without fear of retribution for somewhat
25 bringing up that someone else may only be working a half an 34
1 hour per day? I can tell you in my own particular case I
2 know three or four individuals who haven’t reported to work
3 since March of last year and they’re working a half an hour
4 per day. And so I ’m just trying to get a better
5 perspective of those State workers that are working so
6 diligent and working so hard about how we can protect them
7 at the same time as get to the bottom of the concerns we
8 have.
9 SECRETARY NEWSOME: Absolutely.
10 MS. WALSH: I ’m happy to take that one if you’d
11 like me to, Secretary Newsome.
12 SECRETARY NEWSOME: That’s fine.
13 MS. WALSH: So, yes, I think that in terms of
14 employees having questions about equity in the workplace
15 regardless of where they’re working, we have the same
16 channels that are open to them. As you mentioned, the
17 grievance process, if that’s appropriate for them if
18 they’re covered by an agreement, certainly interacting with
19 their union representatives to go through the interactive
20 process with management. Many of those channels that are
21 open to them from the union aspect, that’s a benefit of
22 being represented. We have civil service cases which can
23 be submitted. And also, you know, there are other channels
24 through the State Government generally, you know, through
25 OSIG at any time anything comes to us, whether it’s 35
1 telework or not, w e ’re not necessarily looking unless it’s,
2 you know, relevant to the situation about where they’re
3 working but what are they saying, what are the problems
4 that were surfacing. Is there something that’s actionable
5 there that we should be attending to?
6 So I can tell you that we take any sort of
7 complaints very seriously, those that are referred to us.
8 We spend a lot of time and resources making sure that we
9 have very strong procedures and we follow them precisely,
10 you know, with our unions for things that come up from the
11 employee aspect. So the telework environment, they should
12 be using those channels that are available to them, as they
13 would if they were in the office and feeling some of those
14 or having some of those concerns I should say.
15 REPRESENTATIVE RYAN: Thank you so much. But I ’m
16 just going to give you a real quick corollary. There were
17 a significant number of national guardsmen and reservists
18 called active duty. By the way, this has nothing to do
19 with your department, but it’s an example. And they spend
20 a tremendous amount of time on active duty. They’re
21 typically working seven days a week, extended work hours,
22 and are working with their active-duty counterparts. And
23 then when they get back to the United States, they’re
24 released from active duty immediately with the intent of
25 getting them off active duty when their active-duty 36
1 counterparts then might get three weeks of basket leave,
2 which is basically gratuitous take some time off, and the
3 National Guardsperson doesn’t get the same issue.
4 And I ’m particularly sensitive to the State
5 worker, and I want to reinforce this. There are a
6 significant number of State workers that are working
7 unbelievably hard, and my hat’s off to them, but I can tell
8 you from some of the comments that w e ’re getting from
9 customer-service hotlines and our district offices are
10 saying that they just can’t get through to people, I had a
11 question from a constituent saying that they’ve been trying
12 for eight weeks to try to get information from the
13 Department of Health and they can’t get it and they’re
14 calling their legislator to figure out how they can get
15 certain things done. And we are getting in our area -- my
16 district office staff has worked unbelievably hard to
17 respond to calls from even areas outside of it.
18 So the question I would ask is how are you
19 monitoring the customer-service aspect of the jobs that the
20 individuals are doing as well? Because I can tell you on
21 the district-level side w e ’d be more than happy to give you
22 a litany of the questions that w e ’re getting that are being
23 answered by our district office staffs with the legislative
24 liaisons of the various departments because they can’t get
25 through on the citizen -- so how are you monitoring that 37
1 customer-service aspect?
2 MS. WALSH: Right, so thank you for everything
3 you do in your local offices to support the constituents.
4 And I ’m sure the Administration would be glad to, you know,
5 hear some of those patterns and themes that are coming up.
6 I can say generally that the Commonwealth is a
7 customer-service provider, and I don’t think meeting demand
8 and balancing demand with resources that is something that
9 is new to the pandemic. It’s something that is a tricky
10 thing to do. All businesses deal with demand versus
11 ability to meet demand. And I believe that in a pandemic
12 that’s been exacerbated.
13 I do know that I can say that we have been very
14 agile in shifting resources where we needed to. From my
15 own staff in H.R., we took people and said can you please
16 reassign to call line A, B, or C, wherever the demand was,
17 and help meet that demand. So I think the agility of the
18 workforce has been pretty remarkable during this because
19 there were call volumes that we could never have
20 anticipated throughout this pandemic.
21 So in my particular instance, call centers are
22 something that’s very easy to monitor, call times, wait
23 times, that sort of thing. So generally speaking, when
24 there’s that sort of environment, I noticed the agencies
25 are using to monitor, to look at demand, to allocate 38
1 resources, and then ultimately plan for their budget.
2 REPRESENTATIVE RYAN: Thank you so much. And,
3 Mr. Chairman, thank you so much.
4 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: Representative
5 Mackenzie.
6 SECRETARY NEWSOME: You’re still muted.
7 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: Representative
8 Mackenzie, online, are you there? Let’s come back to
9 Representative Mackenzie.
10 Representative Owlett.
11 REPRESENTATIVE OWLETT: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
12 And thank you, Secretary and Deputy, for being here.
13 I know there are a lot of laptops -- and
14 Representative Mackenzie might touch on this when he is
15 able to log back on -- but I want to talk a little bit
16 about the training. Pre-COVID, I had never been on a Zoom
17 call or a Teams meeting. I ’m probably not alone in that.
18 So there was a lot of training. And you talked briefly
19 about that. Can you elaborate a little bit more on the
20 training that occurred on the necessary technology and
21 applications for that? And specifically, who did these
22 trainings on the laptops that were distributed and the
23 videoconferencing software that w e ’re using?
24 MS. WALSH: Yes, I can speak to that. So I think
25 one of the benefits -- and I ’m saying that very broadly 39
1 because there’s absolutely no benefit to the situation that
2 w e ’re in. But one of the benefits if there is a silver
3 lining is that in a way it forced us to use the very
4 sophisticated technology we have at our fingertips. So one
5 of the things that was important to us immediately was to
6 make sure people understood how to be using Skype, how to
7 be using Teams, and really moving more towards a Teams
8 environment because of the capability. So all of these
9 things have been at our fingertips, and I think what the
10 pandemic did for that 35 percent through teleworking, it
11 really stressed kind of the I guess trial-by-fire nature of
12 using our software to the fullest extent.
13 And there are a couple of ways that we met this
14 need. One, I can say previous to the pandemic w e ’ve had a
15 very strong relationship with our provider of software, for
16 trainings. They develop a lot of content that is available
17 to us. We keep it in our learning courses. I can say in
18 particular during the pandemic they were pushing out any
19 kind of learning, whether it was online courses,
20 microlearning, resources for them to read up on something
21 themselves. So the training aspect, training with
22 technology has always been there. Certainly, we think we
23 saw more utilization of that type of training because
24 people were -- it was imperative for them to do that in
25 order to be successful in this telework environment. So we 40
1 definitely rely on the people who develop and the tools
2 they develop for training in addition to our own internal
3 trainings.
4 And I can say one of the first things that I did
5 with my team was to say, okay, everyone who has a phone,
6 please make sure you download your Skype app if you haven’t
7 already, if you haven’t downloaded your Teams app, if you
8 haven’t already. So I think in a way this was kind of the
9 upscaling in terms of the use of our software, and I think
10 it’s been really beneficial. W e ’re going to benefit from
11 that going forward. Everything w e ’ve learned during this
12 pandemic, w e ’re going to carry into future work.
13 SECRETARY NEWSOME: And, Reid —
14 REPRESENTATIVE OWLETT: So you mentioned who —
15 SECRETARY NEWSOME: -- just one quick comment
16 there, Reid. You recall in the beginning when your staff,
17 obviously a lot of the training was in person and your
18 staff was able to convert a lot of those in-person
19 trainings to virtual trainings. Can you take 30 seconds
20 and talk about that?
21 MS. WALSH: Sure. I think that the pivot to
22 virtual-based trainings, if they’re either instructor-led
23 or something that people can reference later, is something
24 that frankly was probably overdue for the Commonwealth.
25 What w e ’re seeing is that we have more people joining when 41
1 they are virtual. We are able to take advantage of the
2 subject matter experts in the trainings. We can cover more
3 bodies at once. W e ’re seeing our trainings fill up faster
4 in this remote environment with a virtual trainer than they
5 ever have.
6 So w e ’ve definitely seen sort of this pandemic
7 think about the way that w e ’re working and the ability to
8 use our resources to their maximum through our technology.
9 So it’s been pretty remarkable about how many people we can
10 train at once. And I think w e ’ll have a hybrid when we go
11 back. I don’t think remote training will ever go away. I
12 don’t think micro-training will ever go away. And we
13 really see the benefits of it so far.
14 REPRESENTATIVE OWLETT: So really quick, you
15 mentioned you did a lot of in-house training but then you
16 said there were other trainings that occurred. Who
17 specifically did those other trainings? And would you be
18 able to provide us the dates of when those trainings
19 occurred?
20 MS. WALSH: Yes, we have trainings with Microsoft
21 available on Teams. We have trainings that are available
22 constantly for our employees. Generally speaking, the
23 Office of Administration, through our talent development
24 area, helps to promote those trainings, push them out, make
25 employees aware that they’re there. When it comes to other 42
1 types of trainings, supervisor trainings, manager
2 trainings, we are doing those remote. So I can get you
3 more numbers on that, but w e ’ve never not had those
4 trainings available. W e ’re seeing an increased use of
5 them, and I ’m happy to provide that.
6 REPRESENTATIVE OWLETT: Thank you.
7 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: All right, thank you.
8 Mr. Secretary, again, in the September 11th, 2020, letter
9 you stated, and I quote, "Although the Office of
10 Administration was already in the process of expanding the
11 availability of telework before the start of the pandemic,
12 many employees had never worked remotely or had limited
13 experience in doing so. Further, many were not equipped
14 with the necessary hardware or software to telework
15 securely. Many businesses and governments were in similar
16 situations, creating marketplace shortages of these items.
17 Nonetheless, we were able to procure more than 540
18 additional laptops in less than two weeks, repurpose an
19 additional 400 existing laptops that were near the end of
20 life, and helped one bureau redeploy over 650 desktops to
21 staff working from home among numerous other efforts. At
22 one point there were over 9,000 employees whose worksites
23 were closed and who were unable to telework. Today,
24 through the accomplishments referenced above and many
25 others, there are fewer than 200, less than one-third of 1 43
1 percent of our salaried workforce, who are unable to work
2 remotely.”
3 I wanted to go back to the 9,000 you mentioned
4 there. And how did you handle those 9,000 employees who
5 could not work? Were they furloughed, or do they continue
6 to receive pay?
7 SECRETARY NEWSOME: I ’ll have to get the details
8 of that for you. I can tell you the first two weeks as I
9 recall of the stay-at-home order obviously I think everyone
10 was paid for that two-week period whether they were working
11 or not. It was an emergency situation. We sent everyone
12 home, and we did not want employees to lose income at that
13 point.
14 I do believe that a number of employees did in
15 fact lose pay during that time frame. I don’t have the
16 details of how long that was or how many, but we certainly
17 can get those numbers.
18 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: Were any of those 9,000
19 employees advised to apply for unemployment?
20 SECRETARY NEWSOME: Anyone that was without pay,
21 yes, would have been advised to apply.
22 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: And can you get us a
23 summary of how many did and how many actually did receive
24 unemployment?
25 SECRETARY NEWSOME: I assume that information is 44
1 available.
2 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: Okay. And do you know
3 if any of those employees applied for unemployment while
4 they were still being paid?
5 SECRETARY NEWSOME: Well, no, that’s a different
6 question. Let’s hope that’s not the situation among these
7 employees. I hope they understand that if they’re
8 receiving pay from the Commonwealth as an employee, that
9 they are ineligible for unemployment, and I would hope -
10 and also we have systems in place to catch that kind of
11 thing.
12 I am aware of at least one situation where that
13 happened. I ’m not sure if it was a mistake or it was
14 actually fraudulent, but I ’m not aware of any wholesale
15 type of occurrences of that.
16 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: Okay. Let me touch back
17 on the computer equipment that we just, you know, discussed
18 in the letter that you sent on September 11th. Your total
19 laptops procured were 940 plus 650 desktops totaling 1,590
20 computers for telework. If 16,200 employees telework,
21 that’s 35 percent of the 72,000, minus the 9,000 worksites
22 closed, if 1,590 employees received State computers, what
23 did the other 14,610 employees who were teleworking do?
24 SECRETARY NEWSOME: That’s one of the issues that
25 you have with putting numbers out. And w e ’re always 45
1 careful about putting numbers out because they can be used
2 in so many different ways.
3 Let’s start over. In September those were the
4 numbers we provided. In our latest testimony, we updated
5 those numbers. That laptop number is 3,100 in our latest
6 testimony. However, there’s one piece that’s not in the
7 testimony, and I just wanted to make sure we get this
8 across is that early on in the pandemic, again, we were
9 dealing with the emergency and trying to provide, continue
10 to provide services to the citizens of Pennsylvania, so we
11 had to pivot, as Reid likes to say. We had to do a lot of
12 pivoting in order to make sure that that happened.
13 But as we moved on and as we continued to become
14 more comfortable with telework, we stopped keeping track of
15 what we considered to be routine activity. And so if
16 someone needed a computer at some point even after that
17 letter went out and our IT folks are telling me right
18 around the end of the summer, beginning of September, they
19 stopped keeping track of the number of laptops that have
20 been deployed because it’s just routine. Of course, we
21 still have inventory, we know where they are, but we didn’t
22 have those numbers available for this testimony.
23 The second part of your question is, well, what
24 is everybody else doing? Well, I don’t know what the total
25 number of laptops we had deployed before the pandemic, but 46
1 literally thousands of laptops were already available
2 throughout the Commonwealth. In fact, I ’m on my laptop
3 right now I had well before -- or the day I arrived but
4 well before the pandemic. So yes, we have I don’t know how
5 many laptops. We can get that for you. Trust us.
6 Everyone who’s teleworking is able to do so effectively and
7 have the equipment and they have the support that they need
8 today.
9 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: Thank you, Mr.
10 Secretary. I just want to back up a little. I ’m a little
11 confused by your statement, "We stopped keeping track.” I
12 mean, if you have an inventory of -- what did you stop
13 keeping track of?
14 SECRETARY NEWSOME: That 3,100 that w e ’re talking
15 about. I mean, when the letters came through, we were able
16 to go back and summarize the number of additional laptops,
17 desktops, repurposed laptops that we had to deploy or the
18 pandemic and then the folks teleworking. As I indicated,
19 after a while, if someone was hired and they needed a
20 laptop, someone retired and the person replaced them needed
21 a laptop, we did not include those numbers in the 3,100 is
22 what I ’m saying. We didn’t stop counting, we didn’t stop
23 keeping an inventory. We know where all of these computers
24 are. We just don’t have the total number deployed over the
25 course of this entire pandemic. Does that help? 47
1 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: A little. Thank you,
2 Mr. Secretary.
3 SECRETARY NEWSOME: Well, we can get the numbers
4 for you.
5 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: That would be great if
6 you could follow up with the Committee on the numbers. I
7 mean, w e ’re talking about taxpayer resources here, and we
8 just want to make sure that, you know, tax dollars are not
9 being wasted and laptops are not being lost. I was just a
10 little confused by what you meant by "We’re not keeping
11 track anymore," sir, that’s all.
12 SECRETARY NEWSOME: Well, again, the inventory is
13 there. We just weren’t adding it as a part of the telework
14 pandemic phenomenon that we’re in. We’re considering a
15 part of our routine activities today.
16 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: I see. Representative
17 Wheeland.
18 REPRESENTATIVE WHEELAND: Thank you, Mr.
19 Chairman, and thank you, Secretary Newsome, for this
20 morning, very informative.
21 As you know, the agencies often handle a lot of
22 very, very sensitive personal information. What kinds of
23 security systems are in place on these laptops that were
24 distributed or in existence?
25 SECRETARY NEWSOME: The same security that we 48
1 have for those that are working at their worksite
2 throughout the entire Commonwealth. That’s one area that
3 is so critical to continuity of government not only during
4 a pandemic but at any time.
5 We have testified and I ’ve seen numbers where we
6 have literally thousands of attempts to penetrate our
7 systems on a daily basis. And I ’m really excited to talk
8 about our security folks and what they do on a regular
9 basis to ensure that our systems remain safe, that our data
10 remains safe.
11 So, yes, just to give you an example, I have a
12 Commonwealth telephone, and this is the same for everyone
13 who is in this same situation, I have a Commonwealth phone.
14 I have a Commonwealth laptop. So whenever I log on, I have
15 to obviously use my normal password, but we have what we
16 call a multifactor authentication. And essentially what
17 that is is it’s not only that password isn’t enough for me
18 to get into Commonwealth systems. They also have to call
19 my cell phone and ensure that I ’m the person that’s trying
20 to get in, and I have to enter a code in order to access
21 those systems.
22 Now, I must admit it’s frustrating because I have
23 to several times a day, as many other folks have to do as I
24 go into various things, if I go into the VPN, I have to do
25 this multifactor authentication. If I go into a shared 49
1 drive where data and information is, I have to go through
2 this multifactor authentication. So yes, our systems are
3 very, very secure.
4 But I also want to take this opportunity if I may
5 to put -- we just talked about training. We talked about
6 something that’s very, very critical and very important to
7 me. I think it should be important to everyone in the
8 Commonwealth. We deploy, through all of our employees,
9 security training on an annual basis. And I think that 90
10 percent of our employees that complete that training on an
11 annual basis it’s critical that we understand the types of
12 attacks that we have on our system and employees are aware
13 so they can avoid them as much as possible. So, yes, I
14 feel very comfortable that w e ’re doing as much as we can to
15 secure our systems.
16 REPRESENTATIVE WHEELAND: So, to follow up,
17 you’re saying that you’re confident of our IT folks that
18 all these thousands of computers that are off premise are
19 properly secured?
20 SECRETARY NEWSOME: I ’m confident that if they’re
21 trying to get into our system, they have to know how to get
22 into our system. And yes, even if it’s not a Commonwealth
23 -- I know in the beginning we had people using some of
24 their own personal equipment, and they had to go through
25 the same security. They have to go through the same 50
1 security as they would if we owned that equipment. Yes,
2 I’m very confident.
3 REPRESENTATIVE WHEELAND: That is very good to
4 hear because I know there’s been a lot of talk about data
5 breaches specifically with the unemployment. People in my
6 district have been contacting me, letting me know that they
7 have somehow -- they did not do it but someone used their
8 personal information to apply for unemployment benefits,
9 and it appears to be going on all over the Commonwealth.
10 And w e ’re trying to find out where that leak is coming
11 from.
12 So my final question is -- and you had stated
13 earlier that you do keep an inventory. How many of these
14 remote computers have been missing, misplaced, or stolen?
15 Because you talked about thousands of computers that are
16 off premise. How many have been stolen?
17 SECRETARY NEWSOME: I have no idea. I presume
18 that our IT folks would know that, and we certainly can
19 take a look at that and get that back to you.
20 REPRESENTATIVE WHEELAND: I would appreciate it
21 very much because this data issue is a serious problem, as
22 we all know. But thank you very much -
23 SECRETARY NEWSOME: Yes.
24 REPRESENTATIVE WHEELAND: — for your testimony.
25 SECRETARY NEWSOME: Yes, and just one final 51
1 point, when you talk about unemployment and the fraud that
2 has taken place, that is a nationwide problem, and it’s not
3 necessarily associated with Pennsylvania in particular but
4 our entire Nation is dealing with that issue.
5 REPRESENTATIVE WHEELAND: We certainly hope so,
6 but we still have to be very vigilant and follow through on
7 any possible leads, but thank you again for your testimony.
8 SECRETARY NEWSOME: Great, thank you.
9 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: Mr. Secretary, if I
10 could just briefly reach back into the security issue that
11 Representative Wheeland was talking about. I know when we
12 do a security analysis of my district office, it’s very
13 important when our security team comes through and looks -
14 I mean, they’ve even looked at what direction is my monitor
15 pointing to make sure that the public can’t walk by the
16 window that they can see through into my office to see that
17 potentially there’s some constituent’s personal information
18 on my screen. Is there a policy that the O.A. has
19 regarding family members of employees at home and what
20 employees are supposed to do to protect that information
21 from their family members, you know, because sometimes
22 people are set up in their living room to work or their
23 dining room or what have you. Do you have any kind of
24 extra security regarding employees, you know, not allowing
25 their family members to see the information that’s on their 52
1 computer screen to protect the interest of Pennsylvanians
2 that they’re working for?
3 SECRETARY NEWSOME: Absolutely. The policies
4 were in place prior to the pandemic. And you talk about
5 the public and the situation where public comes into an
6 office or comes into a worksite, employees are -- the
7 policy says that computers, even phones, should be secure
8 at all times, and when they are away from their desk, they
9 should be locked. And that policy certainly has
10 transferred into the telework situation as well. We have
11 policies regarding storing of Commonwealth data on personal
12 computers. We have policies regarding printing of
13 Commonwealth documents, and so on and so forth. Yes, those
14 policies existed pre-pandemic.
15 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: All right, thank you,
16 Mr. Secretary.
17 Representative Solomon.
18 REPRESENTATIVE SOLOMON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
19 Thank you, Secretary. Thank you, Deputy
20 Secretary, for being with us today.
21 You’ve mentioned a lot and w e ’ve had a long
22 conversation here about the challenges that the pandemic
23 offers. Your testimony, your written testimony also talked
24 about the possible opportunities. And I want to talk about
25 that. Certain opportunities it seems that this 53
1 Administration has realized and you’ve worked on are things
2 that w e ’re seeing throughout our society, right? So I ’m
3 sure people in this room have family members, friends who
4 have made very important life decisions. It’s sort of
5 pushed forward a lot of life decisions. Businesses are
6 looking at how they do business better, different due to
7 the pandemic. Educators are looking at how we can better
8 educate our kids. And, of course, government should start
9 to pivot, reset how we do government better and deliver our
10 product more efficiently and effectively.
11 What have you noted during the pandemic in terms
12 of realizing tax savings for taxpayers and also delivering
13 services where you can now use the remote process to better
14 serve Pennsylvanians?
15 SECRETARY NEWSOME: Certainly, a loaded question
16 and a lot of opportunities for us, so we just talked about
17 training. We think about pre-pandemic times where we have
18 folks traveling around coming from other parts of the
19 Commonwealth to attend in-person trainings. There’s an
20 opportunity for travel savings, so tremendous savings, and
21 across more training available to employees because they
22 don’t have to travel. These in-person trainings that have
23 been converted to virtual, tremendous opportunity along
24 those lines.
25 Some of the areas that w e ’re not directly 54
1 involved in but workspace, as Deputy Secretary Walsh
2 indicated, the telework is going to be here to stay, and
3 you have to obviously work with the agencies to ensure that
4 the services provided to our citizens are still high
5 quality and high quantity that they’re used to. But there
6 may be opportunities for a reduction long term in office
7 space.
8 We have a tremendous parking problem around the
9 Commonwealth in particular, and I must tell you one of the
10 problems that I ’ve seen is some of our lowest-paid
11 employees are being asked to spend hundreds of dollars per
12 month to pay for parking or they have to be inconvenienced
13 and coming into the office by walking across the bridge in
14 bad weather from City Island or taking public -- all those
15 types of things. And as we have more telework taking
16 place, we believe we can repurpose and certainly have some
17 of our other employees have parking that they’ve never had
18 before that is already paid for, and that’s a pay increase
19 for them if you will, certainly an expense reduction.
20 So the list goes on and on about the potential
21 savings. I mean, just the little things like I had come to
22 my office to make sure that the printer ink in my printer
23 hadn’t dried up so I could print some documents, so paper
24 that we haven’t printed out so many things over the course
25 over the past year, just savings in paper and those types 55
1 of things. So yes, we expect that there will be some
2 savings. We haven’t quantified those yet, but once we know
3 what the permanent or the future telework situation will
4 be, of course there will be savings throughout the
5 Commonwealth.
6 MS. WALSH: Secretary, if I could just add to
7 that, from my perspective, from an H.R. perspective, what
8 I’m seeing is the sourcing of talent, and I think that’s
9 really important because just looking at the Capitol
10 complex in and of itself, we have so many talented State
11 employees, so within my own leadership ranks I now have
12 people that are overseeing very large roles in H.R. not
13 located directly in the Capitol complex. So I ’m making the
14 best use of that talent, and perhaps it traditionally would
15 have been thought that you need to be in Harrisburg, you
16 need to report, but now I can see increased success because
17 we ’re able to get to those people in different ways. I see
18 the quality going up in terms of the conversations that
19 we ’re having because w e ’re sourcing people who may have
20 traditionally worked in a field site and not necessarily
21 have been willing to make a personal sacrifice to move to
22 Harrisburg, and we could take advantage of their expertise
23 and their lens on the world.
24 And I think, you know, that’s very micro for me
25 and my organization, but I see that broadly. We see 56
1 generally that entities, public, private that advertise
2 their jobs as having some sort of opportunity for telework,
3 a lot of people apply. We have deeper candidate pools, we
4 have richer candidate pools, which I think allows for a
5 workforce that’s efficient and diverse to support our
6 population, so I ’m very excited about the possibilities for
7 improvement, retention, morale aspect for the people that
8 actually do deliver the services.
9 And then if you could just indulge me with one
10 other smaller story, I can hear my CIO in the back of my
11 head talking about as we were switching to a new technology
12 platform that, you know -- oops, sorry, I just lost the
13 connection here, sorry, coming back. Sorry about that.
14 You know, really considering if we still need to have desk
15 jobs. Everything that we can do can be through our
16 computers. And that’s a little bit of a cultural shift to
17 say, well, my desk phone, I use it all the time, you know,
18 but really the technology, the platform is so different.
19 So I think that w e ’ve broken some of those habits, and so
20 therefore, we no longer need to procure, maintain, think
21 about those types of equipment.
22 So I think this grows. W e ’re going to see more
23 and more of that behavior shifting, taking advantage of
24 more technologies and actually reducing that dependency on
25 resources such as paper, which is things that you 57
1 traditionally grab when you’re in the office, as the
2 Secretary alluded to. So I believe this remote workforce
3 allows us to be very deep in terms of our talent pools, and
4 that’s a very exciting concept for someone who’s
5 continually trying to recruit for Commonwealth workforce.
6 REPRESENTATIVE SOLOMON: Thank you both. Thank
7 you, Mr. Chairman.
8 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: Thank you,
9 Representative.
10 Representative Schemel.
11 REPRESENTATIVE SCHEMEL: Thank you, and thank you
12 to both of our testifiers.
13 This follows really well on the two questions
14 that you just answered. This past year will be such a
15 fascinating experiment on how to build in efficiencies, you
16 know, in a way that we never anticipated through remote
17 work and other platforms like this.
18 Mr. Secretary, earlier, I think I absolutely
19 understand what you meant when you were talking about
20 laptops, how w e ’re not keeping track. I think just like
21 you don’t keep track of filing cabinets and desks and desk
22 phones, I mean, those are all inventoried, you know what
23 they are, you could find them, but you’re no longer
24 tracking them because they’re now just part of your
25 regulatory inventory replacement system. I think that’s 58
1 probably what you were saying, and that does make sense for
2 those that might be listening at home. That doesn’t
3 indicate lost items. That’s just inventory flow at this
4 point.
5 That leads into our questions here. So as the
6 Commonwealth made the choice to go to so much remote
7 working, we might find that there are efficiencies to that
8 and things that you potentially want to keep going forward,
9 but there are costs to that as well, and I think that’s a
10 large part of this hearing is trying to quantify what those
11 costs are. So my questions really relate to that,
12 specifically in regard to the hardware, the laptops.
13 So laptops were distributed -- and this must have
14 been a monumental task to all the employees at home. How
15 was that done, you know, and did you have issues with
16 damage? You know, were there lessons learned in the
17 distribution of those?
18 SECRETARY NEWSOME: With all due respect, I
19 actually have not gotten into that kind of detail with how
20 it’s done, but I can tell you that in my particular case I
21 have had some issues from the beginning with my laptop and
22 just coming home and particularly with the virtual private
23 network. W e ’re in the modern age today. I made a phone
24 call, which our employees can do as well. This is not
25 Secretary-only kind of stuff here. But I made a phone 59
1 call, they asked for permission to get into my computer,
2 and they did it remotely. So that’s how it’s done today.
3 I have a piece of equipment. It was put in the mail and
4 mailed to me. I assume that’s how w e ’re doing it with our
5 employees, but if a laptop has to be deployed to someone,
6 you could go to the office and pick it up or you could have
7 it mailed to you, but it’s also secured before that
8 employee receives it.
9 But, again, Reid, are you aware of how that’s
10 done? I ’m not sure how the fine details are handled along
11 those lines.
12 MS. WALSH: Yes, I would defer to CIO MacMillan
13 on that, but I can generally say, you know, procurement is
14 still procurement, so we still had to go through the
15 appropriate processes to procure any new equipment that we
16 would have come into the Commonwealth. They still need to
17 go through a process whereas Secretary said, the equipment
18 is secured and set up correctly.
19 You know, I think the risk to any business or
20 entity is when in those emergency situations you deviate
21 from those processes, and I believe that, you know, we
22 tried very hard, despite the nature of that, to not deviate
23 from our normal protocols, especially in terms of IT
24 safety.
25 REPRESENTATIVE SCHEMEL: Okay. So the practical 60
1 and I guess, that would be something, I think, good to
2 know. And, once again, the Committee is trying to quantify
3 the cost, so we want to know going forward like, you know,
4 what do you see, you know, is the next generation? Are we
5 going to be keeping some teleworking? We see efficiencies
6 there, so isn’t that positive to some of those? There’s a
7 net negative to the cost, too. And all of us have
8 constituents. Businesses largely have been in person for
9 almost the entirety of the pandemic. And it can be head-
10 scratching to them to have so many individuals that work
11 for the State that still aren’t. Maybe you’re discovering
12 there are some efficiencies to that. That’s important for
13 us to know. But that was a choice on the part of the
14 Commonwealth to continue to have so many individuals a year
15 after and I think into the summer at this point, they’re
16 still working from home. There’s certainly lost
17 inefficiency, and there’s definitely a cost to the
18 Commonwealth. So I think some of our questions and mine in
19 particular as well are related to that. What are the costs
20 that come? How much is it costing the Commonwealth to have
21 made this decision to have continued to have so many
22 employees at home?
23 So it would be helpful to know like just my line
24 of questioning then really related to equipment that’s
25 mailed out, you know, what is the cost of that, what is the 61
1 cost of handling repairs and so forth, some of the costs
2 that maybe wouldn’t have had had these employees been at
3 home, that would be good for us to know even if you do that
4 in summarized form perhaps in the future. Thank you.
5 SECRETARY NEWSOME: Okay. Thanks. There’s one
6 other benefit I just thought about. It doesn’t happen very
7 often, but we now have the ability to continue to support
8 the services to Pennsylvania even during weather
9 emergencies. It’s one of the things that I think about
10 that w e ’ve had a few of those over the course of this past
11 winter. And before, employees would be home without the
12 ability to work during those types of emergencies. We
13 continued to work during weather emergencies this year, and
14 that perhaps can be something that will be continued moving
15 forward. It only happens a few times a year, but a few
16 days a year of inactivity or additional activity on the
17 part of our employees makes a big difference.
18 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: Representative Young.
19 REPRESENTATIVE YOUNG: Thank you so much for this
20 testimony. Thank you for this hearing. I think I ’m
21 getting a lot of good information that I probably wouldn’t
22 have known I needed until now, so thank you.
23 But not to belabor the point of Rep. Diamond, I
24 wanted to make sure that I, too, understand this process of
25 tracking the hardware as it relates to the laptops. What I 62
1 believe I understand is you saying although we don’t have
2 an aggregated report system in place, it doesn’t mean we
3 cannot have one going forward as it relates to these new
4 laptops that are distributed, the ones that are
5 refurbished, the ones that have been reassigned and the
6 ones that are still in stock. Is that correct?
7 SECRETARY NEWSOME: I ’m sorry, did you say that
8 we don’t have a way of keeping track of these laptops?
9 REPRESENTATIVE YOUNG: No, just wanted to make
10 sure I understood although there is not a current report in
11 place, it does not mean we cannot have a current report in
12 place. My understanding is there was a report of that
13 3,500 I believe the number was when the pandemic first
14 started, but as of to date we don’t have the numbers
15 reported because there’s not an updated report to present
16 today. Is that correct?
17 SECRETARY NEWSOME: No, let me try to restate
18 that because I think that was misunderstood. When the
19 letters came to us this summer, we had that information
20 available, and we provided the numbers at that time.
21 Because that question came up, we continued to keep track
22 of the numbers, so we went back and actually summarized
23 what we had. The point I was trying to make is that once
24 we were into telework, everything started to become routine
25 again, routine meaning that we were very effective with 63
1 telework such that our IT staff did not have to continue to
2 associate individual laptops to telework, which we have to
3 do as a part of answering the question in that letter.
4 What we're saying now is of course we know where
5 our inventory is. We know how many laptops, we know who
6 has them, so that's not the point. The point is anything
7 that happens from this point forward, we're back to pre
8 pandemic types of routine activities is what I'm trying to
9 say because our employees know where to go to get any kind
10 of corrections, any kind of repairs, any kind of login
11 problems, whatever. We're just routine again, and
12 employees are operating as if they're sitting in their
13 workplace because there’s literally very, very little
14 difference now. And being able to get the job done, as
15 Secretary Walsh said earlier, the work is not necessarily
16 where you are. Work is what is actually being performed.
17 And when I sit at my desk, I ’m sure when people sit at
18 their desk at home, it’s almost as if w e ’re at the office,
19 except we don’t get to see each other personally.
20 I hope that helps. Of course we know where
21 everything is.
22 REPRESENTATIVE YOUNG: Thank you.
23 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: Representative Ryan.
24 REPRESENTATIVE RYAN: Mr. Chairman, thank you.
25 And again, Deputy Secretary, Secretary, I truly appreciate 64
1 your time today.
2 Going back to the remote work schedule, whenever
3 someone logs in and is working at home particularly with a
4 remote system, how do you monitor a number of things? One
5 is how long they're logged in for, how long is it before
6 they're timed out due to inactivity? Are they accessing
7 information via USB port for the data security perspective
8 that came up earlier? And other aspects such as -
9 DEMOCRATIC CHAIRWOMAN DAVIDSON: Point of order.
10 Sorry. I think according to our rules w e ’re only doing one
11 round of questions. There’s a five-minute time limit. The
12 gentleman had already questioned for eight minutes, so in
13 all fairness and in accordance to our rules, I think the
14 gentlemen’s time had already expired well past his time the
15 last time, and now w e ’re doing -- I don’t think a second
16 round of questions are in order, Mr. Chairman, according to
17 our rules that we all agreed to.
18 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: Thank you, Madam
19 Chairman. The gentleman had previously took up a question
20 that an absent Member was assigned, so w e ’re going to let
21 him continue.
22 DEMOCRATIC CHAIRWOMAN DAVIDSON: Mr. Chairman,
23 according to our rules, there is no, you know, taking up
24 another Member’s time. We restricted the Secretary to a
25 short amount of time, and now w e ’re giving time to other 65
1 Members that are not absent. If a Member is absent, he
2 doesn’t have time, so each Member is supposed to be
3 assigned five minutes. If w e ’re not going to follow the
4 rules, Mr. Chairman, then why do we have rules?
5 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: Representative Ryan, you
6 may continue.
7 REPRESENTATIVE RYAN: Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
8 And again recognizing the efforts -
9 DEMOCRATIC CHAIRWOMAN DAVIDSON: Mr. Chairman,
10 point of order. On what grounds are you allowing the
11 gentleman to continue 10 minutes after his time has
12 expired?
13 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: He can either continue
14 to ask his question or you can take up the time complaining
15 about him asking the question.
16 DEMOCRATIC CHAIRWOMAN DAVIDSON: Mr. Chairman,
17 I ’m not complain. I ’m asking you as the Chairman of this
18 Committee, are you going to follow the rules or are you
19 just going to disregard the rules?
20 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: The gentleman has a
21 question. I ’d like to let him answer it or finish his
22 question to the Secretary.
23 DEMOCRATIC CHAIRWOMAN DAVIDSON: I would like to
24 abide by the rules.
25 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: Do you have a question 66
1 for the Secretary?
2 DEMOCRATIC CHAIRWOMAN DAVIDSON: I would like to
3 abide by the rules, Mr. Chairman.
4 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: Representative Ryan, you
5 may continue.
6 DEMOCRATIC CHAIRWOMAN DAVIDSON: I would ask the
7 Chairman, as the Democratic Chair of this Committee, I
8 would ask the gentleman would he please be brief since the
9 Chairman, the Majority Chairman refuses to follow the rules
10 of the Committee that we all agreed to?
11 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: I would ask everyone to
12 be as brief as possible. Representative Ryan.
13 REPRESENTATIVE RYAN: Thank you, Mr. —
14 DEMOCRATIC CHAIRWOMAN DAVIDSON: That would mean
15 one question, not several.
16 REPRESENTATIVE RYAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
17 The effort is to try to make certain that we can provide
18 the best possible level of service and security to the
19 citizens of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania who have seen
20 identity theft and things of that nature, so I ’d say two
21 things. How are we monitoring the work that’s being done
22 outside of the area to include data that is downloaded to
23 USB ports and other types of data security to ensure that
24 the information for the citizens of the Commonwealth of
25 Pennsylvania are protected? And how are we monitoring and 67
1 able to monitor the amount of work that someone has done to
2 include whether or not they are remotely timed out after a
3 period of time of inactivity?
4 SECRETARY NEWSOME: I ’ll answer this in two
5 parts. I ’ll answer the first part, and then I ’ll turn it
6 over to Deputy Secretary Walsh to talk about employee
7 performance in general.
8 But from an IT standpoint and from a security
9 standpoint, first of all, just logging onto the system, we
10 know who’s logging onto the system. We know, as I said
11 before, this multifactor authentication is required for
12 individuals to get into the system, so we know who’s
13 getting in, and we know when they’re getting in and we know
14 when they’re getting out. And in a situation like mine
15 where half the time I forget to turn off my VPN, they can
16 shut it off remotely. So that’s the one thing.
17 As far as downloading information, as far as
18 printing out information, as far as someone who wants to be
19 fraudulent when it comes to handling our information,
20 downloading into USB drives or whatever, that kind of thing
21 can happen, and it is fraudulent. It is something that
22 certainly employees can do, but I can tell you it’s not
23 something that, according to policy -- people obviously
24 cannot follow policy. But we do have policies in place to
25 ensure, as I said earlier, that employees do not have those 68
1 kinds of activities.
2 But having said all of that, with someone just
3 logging on or someone being in the system is not an
4 indication of them actually doing work, or if they’re not
5 logged on, it’s not an indication that they’re not doing
6 work. That’s where we talk about employee performance, and
7 that’s where we give our managers and supervisors the
8 opportunity to assess employee performance.
9 So, Deputy Secretary Walsh, you may want to
10 address how we deal with employee performance.
11 MS. WALSH: Sure. I believe w e ’ve touched on
12 this before, but generally speaking, our managers and
13 supervisors are -- you know, the essence of their task is
14 to make sure people are doing their work, and when it comes
15 to security alerts and timing out, I wouldn’t want to step
16 into CIO MacMillan or Deputy Secretary Avakian’s -- sorry,
17 Secretary Erik Avakian’s role in terms of security to talk
18 about all the systems that go in place to make sure that
19 w e ’re secure.
20 I can say this much, that we take anything that
21 would -- if something would rise up to the level of some
22 sort of insecurity, we take that very seriously. Many
23 agencies have policies in place that carefully explain to
24 employees what it means to be secure and not secure. They
25 have repeated trainings on what it means to be secure or 69
1 not secure. When any of those protocols are breached in
2 any way, there is serious discipline that happens for those
3 employees, inclusive of dismissal in extreme cases, so we
4 take that very seriously. That is absolutely something
5 that we would attend to.
6 And in fact in the temporary telework management
7 directive which allows pandemic telework to be
8 contemplated, making sure than employees were understanding
9 that all protocols that were there previously are still
10 there. That’s a big part of the policy. It’s called out.
11 So pre-pandemic, post-pandemic we have a lot of intense
12 effort that goes into making sure from the security side,
13 from IT side, from the best practices side, from the
14 business, that employees understand what it means to be,
15 you know, vigilant with information from the citizens of
16 the Commonwealth.
17 REPRESENTATIVE RYAN: If I could just ask you at
18 a point just to follow up and in order to be brief, if you
19 could follow up with the Committee relative to the issues,
20 relative to the performance diagnostics of IT, relative to
21 the Office of Administration, relative to cybersecurity
22 risks that have been addressed or any violations that may
23 have occurred? And then what’s the paid leave accruement
24 policy for employees while they are working remotely versus
25 those that are coming on place because those are some of 70
1 the comments I ’m getting from State workers who are calling
2 my office saying that they’re working diligently and some
3 other people may not be, and they felt that some of the
4 vacation time accruals were not particularly fair.
5 But in the interest of time and in consideration
6 of everyone else, I would ask if you would not mine just
7 responding to us to that in writing afterwards.
8 MS. WALSH: Sure. I can say briefly just so I
9 can have it on the record that the vacation time accrual,
10 sick time accruals, all those policies are still in place.
11 They didn’t deviate. Now what we needed to accommodate for
12 were the Federal laws that allowed for employees,
13 especially those who are reporting on site, if they had a
14 close contact, if they were sick themselves, to not be
15 disadvantaged by that while the pandemic was on. We did
16 our best to make sure that we gave our employees the
17 opportunity to and were legally in compliance with the
18 Federal laws that were there. We set up call centers in
19 H.R. just to deal with leave issues for employees. So this
20 was definitely an unprecedented time, but there are certain
21 things that we did not deviate from when it comes to
22 treatment of employees.
23 The order for health is to make sure that we look
24 at our requirement and we say where is it operationally
25 imperative that the reporting work? So we have 42,000 71
1 employees reporting to work every day and have the other
2 half that we are continuing to treat in the normal way that
3 we would are working from elsewhere. So it’s important to
4 note that vacation policies, leave policies, none of that
5 changed while we were in the pandemic, and we did the best
6 we could through our own leave types that we offered and
7 through the Federal leave types we required [inaudible] to
8 make sure those who are [inaudible] close contact, if they
9 had to be out because someone in their household tested
10 positive, that we weren’t disadvantaging them.
11 REPRESENTATIVE RYAN: Deputy Secretary —
12 MS. WALSH: And I ’d be happy to get back to
13 you with more information.
14 REPRESENTATIVE RYAN: Great, thank you. Deputy
15 Secretary and Secretary, both of you, thank you so much for
16 your time today.
17 MS. WALSH: Absolutely.
18 REPRESENTATIVE RYAN: Mr. Chairman, thank you.
19 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: I want to let folks know
20 that Representative Keefer has joined us online and has a
21 question. Representative Keefer.
22 REPRESENTATIVE KEEFER: Good morning. Thank you,
23 Mr. Chairman, and thank you, Mr. Secretary.
24 So, first, Mr. Secretary, the stay-at-home order,
25 when did that start? What was the date of the stay-at-home 72
1 order?
2 SECRETARY NEWSOME: Actually, I believe tomorrow
3 will be the anniversary of that date. I think was March
4 16th of last year.
5 REPRESENTATIVE KEEFER: Okay. March 16th, 2 020.
6 In your testimony you state that 65 percent of the
7 employees are working. When did they start back after that
8 initial two-week stay-at-home order?
9 SECRETARY NEWSOME: I believe it was right after
10 that initial two weeks.
11 REPRESENTATIVE KEEFER: So that’s what 65 percent
12 of the employees -
13 SECRETARY NEWSOME: And let’s understand that
14 many of them never had that two weeks. Again, when you’re
15 talking about State Troopers, we didn’t give State Troopers
16 two weeks off or folks in corrections or doctors and
17 nurses. Many of them probably never had that two-week
18 period off.
19 REPRESENTATIVE KEEFER: Okay. So I ’m going to
20 assume then that 65 percent of the employees that are
21 working, is that 65 percent, that’s all the employees are
22 reporting to work or is that 65 percent of the employees
23 that, you know, had the initial stay-at-home and then
24 reported back, understanding that, you know, we have some
25 essential employees that never had that time off? 73
1 SECRETARY NEWSOME: I ’m being corrected here.
2 That 65 percent never were in the telework or stay-at-home
3 situation. The stay-at-home order did not pertain to them.
4 REPRESENTATIVE KEEFER: Right, so when you say 65
5 percent of the employees are working currently, that was
6 the number that you had given, are you -
7 SECRETARY NEWSOME: Yes.
8 REPRESENTATIVE KEEFER: -- including those that
9 never stayed at home anyway, you know, never had that -
10 that order didn’t apply to them?
11 SECRETARY NEWSOME: That is the percentage of
12 employees that did not ever have the stay-at-home order
13 applied to them.
14 REPRESENTATIVE KEEFER: Okay. So that does
15 include them. I ’m just trying to figure out like, you
16 know, what the process was or what that actual picture
17 looks like, so if they, you know, had that initial stay-at-
18 home, you know, order, which applied to, you know,
19 everybody except for, of course, critical health employees
20 or, you know, first responders, that type of thing, trying
21 to figure out what that picture looks like and what that
22 timeline is when they started back because it’s my
23 understanding that beginning June 1, the number of
24 Commonwealth employees reporting to full-time to their
25 worksite is going to increase. And that seems like a long 74
1 time for me to start back that increase.
2 SECRETARY NEWSOME: I ’m sorry, June 1 of this
3 year?
4 REPRESENTATIVE KEEFER: Yes.
5 SECRETARY NEWSOME: No date has been set for -- I
6 haven’t heard that date.
7 REPRESENTATIVE KEEFER: Okay. So this is a date
8 we had in -- I ’m sorry, we had this in, you know, one of
9 the press releases that was out there as far as the, you
10 know, phase-in -- the number was going to start increasing
11 as of June 1. I would have to look through my notes to
12 find, you know, that statement that was made. I ’m just
13 trying to figure out like what the benchmarks are, you
14 know, how the phasing to come back to work, just
15 understanding that, you know, w e ’ve had a lot of -- you
16 know, my staff have been reporting since -- I think we took
17 a week off maybe, and we were going staggered back and
18 forth to cover the office -
19 MS. WALSH: I ’m happy to take that, Secretary
20 Newsome.
21 REPRESENTATIVE KEEFER: Sure.
22 MS. WALSH: So thank you for the question. I
23 think you’re hitting a really important point about, you
24 know, kind of how w e ’re using generally the term working.
25 So I think it’s, as you stated, Representative Keefer, that 75
1 65 percent of our workforce has been reporting, so if you
2 think about our largest sectors of employees, it’s
3 correctional officers, it’s police, but really even when
4 you get down into other organizations such as DHS, you
5 know, they’re 50 percent reporting and 50 percent, you
6 know, working remotely, so it really flexes according to
7 operations, and that’s what w e ’re asking because w e ’re
8 still in the midst of a pandemic. We still have an
9 obligation to be able to socially distance our employees in
10 order to be in compliance with the health orders.
11 Everybody is working. They may be doing it from an
12 alternative locations, but w e ’re not increasing the spread.
13 We ’re not adding to that as w e ’re still in the pandemic and
14 we ’re still under orders from the Department of Health. So
15 we as an employer are doing everything we can to enable
16 that work. So like you mentioned, w e ’re doing staggered
17 shifts in places where people need to be reporting. We are
18 using all the tools that are available to us to keep those
19 services up. And from what w e ’re seeing, w e ’re seeing a
20 lot of places where productivity is very high.
21 I think, generally speaking, State Governments
22 have handled the pandemic very well considering what we had
23 to do. So I think all of us are, you know, fairly pleased
24 with what w e ’ve had to deal with as a workforce and how we
25 responded. So I ’m happy to continue answering the 76
1 question, but I know -
2 REPRESENTATIVE KEEFER: Yes, I ’m trying to figure
3 out the actual physical reporting to the offices, just
4 let’s take PennDOT for an example. There’s a lot of
5 services that are still delayed. In fact, they report, you
6 know, hey, w e ’re not going to be able to do this until X,
7 Y, Z. And so when I read that, you know, June 1 start date
8 will be when we start seeing that increase, I ’m trying to
9 figure out how we came to that date, what that’s going to
10 look like, why it’s so far out that they haven’t adjusted
11 in well over a year to figure out how to, you know, start
12 safely getting people back to work.
13 MS. WALSH: Sure. And I think you really hit it
14 on the head when it comes to safety. So PennDOT itself,
15 you know, again, it’s one of those organizations that have
16 a very large hybrid of work. I mean, I don’t want to speak
17 for PennDOT in terms of their service levels and that sort
18 of thing, but we very much so have a lot of PennDOT
19 employees that are reporting to work. So w e ’re doing
20 things at the workplace to make sure they’re safe. W e ’re
21 staggering shifts, w e ’re doing screening of some sort
22 whether it be onsite or asking employees to self-screen, so
23 there’s a lot of things that are being done to support the
24 employees coming to work and continuing to deliver the
25 services. 77
1 In terms of returning to the office, and again, I
2 think it’s really just a physical switch and not a coming
3 back from work but a working from one spot and then
4 returning to the office. We are asking that we do this in
5 high touch with the Department of Health. W e ’re listening
6 to the orders. As an employer, w e ’re obligated to follow
7 those orders to telework if possible. That’s certainly
8 what w e ’re doing with the majority of our employees,
9 continuing to report to work. W e ’re looking at how we
10 would bring people back, so this is not -
11 REPRESENTATIVE KEEFER: Okay, I ’m sorry. I just
12 have a limited amount of time, so thank you. And I
13 appreciate all that, and I appreciate that safety
14 component. I ’m just looking at this from a business
15 component. I have a lot of people that are interacting
16 with, say, PennDOT, so there just has to be -- I get it,
17 you don’t have to be in the office. It’s not necessarily
18 being at the office to say that you’re productive because
19 there’s a lot of things that you can do -
20 MS. WALSH: Correct.
21 REPRESENTATIVE KEEFER: -- and you already
22 testified to what you can do efficiently.
23 MS. WALSH: Yes.
24 REPRESENTATIVE KEEFER: Clearly, we have
25 delineated a lot of areas where they can’t perform the 78
1 services or the tasks, yet they’re still collecting the
2 money, cashing the checks, somehow able to do all of those
3 processes but not actually perform the work that we need,
4 and so they’re not meeting the needs. It’s been well over
5 a year. It looks like there’s no plan that we can look to
6 in concrete to say, hey, w e ’re going to start phasing in
7 this department. It’s going to start, you know, March 1,
8 w e ’re going to phase in this, we figured out how to get the
9 spacing in there, you know, what tasks actually have to be
10 there in person for. It doesn’t seem like there’s a whole
11 plan for that. So -
12 MS. WALSH: Yes, let me address that. I really
13 appreciate the opportunity to bring that up. So, you know,
14 to be respectful of your time but I think it’s an important
15 question for everyone on the Committee that the return to
16 work -- and I use that as a very broad term, again, because
17 w e ’re working. But yes, there are plans in place. We have
18 a committee that has been meeting, and that’s comprised of
19 the Department of Health, the Department of General
20 services, OA IT, OA HR, and a couple other agency
21 representatives. And the intention is to be -- we have
22 some guiding principles for that.
23 So the first, as you mentioned, Representative
24 Keefer, is employee safety, and then right level to that is
25 the continuity of operations. So as agencies are making 79
1 their plans, to all the comments that have been made of
2 this Committee, where do we have the operational benefits
3 of teleworking? Where has it increased productivity, and
4 where -- do we see a hybrid model coming back to the office
5 or when we can distance in a healthy, safe, responsible
6 way? W e ’re looking at our numbers. We know facility by
7 facility who’s teleworking, what kind of equipment that
8 they have.
9 I think one of the things that can’t be lost here
10 is that, as we transition employees, what it looked like
11 when we w e ’re going out, it’s going to look very different
12 than what it looks like coming in. Coming back in, people
13 will, as we mentioned before, have equipment that they
14 haven’t necessarily -- for that, you know, smaller
15 percentage of people, haven’t necessarily plugged into
16 their wall, they haven’t used them in the office
17 environment. So we need to make sure in order to maintain
18 that continuity of operations that we have appropriate
19 support to say, hey, employees, it’s safe to come back
20 because we can distance you. We also have the proper help
21 desk so when you’re plugging those things back in, you’re
22 trying to use systems that you haven’t accessed from your
23 work location in quite some time, that w e ’re not going to
24 see that drop in operations and that drop in services as
25 we ’re doing that. 80
1 So the plan is to be deliberate, to be very
2 communicative with employees as they’re coming back in.
3 The date itself, that’s going to accordion with the
4 pandemic. W e ’re going to keep in touch with the Department
5 of Health. The plans are being made to do that. It cannot
6 go without planning. It would be irresponsible as an
7 employer to do that without planning, and lots of different
8 voices in the mix understand where our balances of health,
9 safety, operations, and needs of the agencies.
10 SECRETARY NEWSOME: And just to be clear about
11 the June 1st date, we can’t leave that hanging. That June
12 1st date is a date that I ’m unaware of. Deputy Secretary
13 Walsh, I believe you would be unaware of that. And to the
14 employees who are listening in and other employees who are
15 not, until you hear officially from us, there is no date
16 that has been set at this point for even a phasing in of
17 employees returning to the office, so stay tuned. You will
18 hear from us. But until you hear directly from us, that’s
19 an unofficial date.
20 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: All right. Thank you.
21 Thank you, Representative Keefer. Let’s go to
22 Representative Schmitt.
23 REPRESENTATIVE SCHMITT: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
24 And, Mr. Secretary, you just talked about hanging
25 in, so I want to thank you and the Deputy Secretary for 81
1 hanging in with us here this morning.
2 I had a question. After March of 2020, did State
3 employees receive bonuses or overtime? And if so, are you
4 able to give me a ballpark figure on the total cost of the
5 bonuses or overtime received by State employees subsequent
6 to March of 2020?
7 MS. WALSH: So I ’m happy to take that, Secretary,
8 if you’d like me to, but the State workforce under the
9 Governor’s jurisdiction that we don’t have a bonus program,
10 overtime is -- generally speaking what w e ’ve seen -- and I
11 believe that some of you heard already in the agency’s
12 testimony that there were pockets of overtime increasing.
13 There was -- especially when I think about Department of
14 Corrections, again, I don’t want to speak for the
15 Department of Corrections, but I know that that’s a very,
16 you know, close environment. The pandemic hit those areas
17 very hard in terms of staff resources. So I believe they
18 saw a slight increase at times in their overtime. But
19 generally speaking, in some areas we saw some overtime go
20 down because of increased productivity due to telework. So
21 we ’re happy to get back to you with those numbers. I know
22 that the agencies themselves have been testifying about
23 what’s going on with their agencies. I would hate to speak
24 broadly and misrepresent it.
25 SECRETARY NEWSOME: And I would say I agree from 82
1 a policy standpoint or practicality. We have not changed
2 any of our overtime policies as a result of the pandemic.
3 Is that true? I mean, overtime still has to be approved,
4 generally approved by the supervisors, and there may be
5 some situations where overtime may happen in emergency
6 situations and it’s approved after the fact, but generally
7 speaking, as I recall, we haven’t changed any of our
8 overtime policies during this pandemic.
9 MS. WALSH: That’s correct. The collective
10 bargaining agreements, as well as overtime approvals, that
11 would stay in place during the pandemic.
12 REPRESENTATIVE SCHMITT: Now, Mr. Secretary, you
13 anticipated one of my questions, so let me ask this one
14 instead. Are you able to tell me what funding stream was
15 used to provide employees’ bonuses or overtime since March
16 of 2020?
17 SECRETARY NEWSOME: Again, we don’t have a policy
18 for bonuses. I ’m not aware of any. The agencies’ budgets
19 were to be handling overtime. I understand that there may
20 have been some stimulus money that’s available through the
21 budget office. I think they have an opportunity to
22 redeploy some of those pandemic-related costs into those
23 funds, but I would have to defer to the budget office and
24 the agencies specifically on how they handled pandemic-
25 related overtime. 83
1 REPRESENTATIVE SCHMITT: I know there was some
2 mention about overtime being paid in the Department of
3 Corrections. Are there other job classifications that
4 you’re aware of that received overtime since March of 2020?
5 SECRETARY NEWSOME: I haven’t really gotten into
6 that detail. I assume, yes. I mean, due to the types of
7 surges that w e ’ve had and requests and services in these
8 agencies, I would presume that we had significant overtime
9 in many agencies, but I don’t have the specific numbers.
10 REPRESENTATIVE SCHMITT: All right. I think I
11 actually am under my time, so thank you both very much.
12 SECRETARY NEWSOME: Thank you.
13 DEMOCRATIC CHAIRWOMAN DAVIDSON: Thank you.
14 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: Mr. Secretary, our
15 district office employees have been handling most of the
16 Administration’s calls from almost a year now. In fact,
17 we ’re pretty much serving as the Administration’s complaint
18 department. But our district employees, their pay has been
19 frozen. They’ve not received any bonuses. And, you know,
20 in 2020 our entire economy collapsed and a lot of
21 businesses just don’t exist anymore.
22 And on Wednesday, this Committee will be taking
23 up another pay freeze for elected officials. Will the
24 Administration match that by freezing some pay and taking
25 some of the burden off the taxpayers who, quite frankly, 84
1 have lost a lot of income or lost their business?
2 SECRETARY NEWSOME: Fortunately for me, I don’t
3 make those decisions, so I can’t help you with that. I
4 assume that -- I can’t answer that question. I ’m not
5 involved in that aspect of compensation.
6 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: Representative Grove.
7 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN GROVE: Thank you. Thank you
8 for your time this morning, Mr. Secretary. I think
9 telework provides a great deal of benefit moving forward,
10 without a doubt. I think w e ’ve seen that private sector
11 productivity has increased, and there’s a lot of, I think,
12 businesses going to reevaluate their physical locations and
13 downsize them moving forward.
14 So, one, I would urge the Administration to,
15 posthaste, get a formalized telework policy moving forward.
16 It’s been a year. I think you’re moving in that direction,
17 but having something locked down moving forward would be, I
18 think, beneficial for this Committee understanding of how
19 w e ’re going to operate moving forward.
20 Two, I think we need to definitely start talking
21 about having conversations bringing employees back online.
22 Again, w e ’ve seen it many times that our district offices
23 have handled the call center for unemployment compensation,
24 Department of Revenue, and w e ’re still having a lot of
25 issues with constituents reaching State agencies. So 85
1 prioritizing that customer service aspect would be greatly
2 appreciated. Many of my constituents are back to work, and
3 again, it is a mix of teleworking and physical presence.
4 But I can tell you that physical presence is outweighing
5 the telework at this point. So moving into a direction and
6 starting to formalize plans to bring back State employees
7 would be greatly appreciated.
8 And lastly, we did ask questions. Representative
9 Ryan asked you some specific questions on some details
10 about how telework has been working. Not to get into those
11 questions again, we did resend our letter from all the way
12 back on August 7th, 2020, back to your legislative liaison.
13 We would ask that, to the best of your ability, answer
14 those questions so we have a better understanding of the
15 data breakdown of telework, what’s it look like, how’s it
16 operated since March. Particularly what would help is a
17 breakdown of 65 percent of State employees who have
18 basically worked nonstop through the pandemic, what their
19 job classification looked like and then what 35 percent
20 that is still currently not back, what do their jobs look
21 like moving forward? I think it will help inform us about
22 how the operations of telework have been evolved and
23 hopefully back up any policies that you come out with on a
24 formalized plan to say, you know, this has worked so
25 wonderful in these departments, here’s the data backing up 86
1 why these individuals will be on maybe permanent telework
2 policy moving forward. And I know w e ’re having those
3 discussions here in the General Assembly as well.
4 So with that, just can I get your comment, your
5 commitment to kind of answer those questions and provide us
6 the data on how this has operated? Thank you.
7 SECRETARY NEWSOME: Okay. Thank you,
8 Representative Grove. Just to reiterate a couple of the
9 things we talked about, as we are -- and Deputy Secretary
10 Walsh and her team and working with other agencies, you
11 know, we are actively working on a plan to return our
12 teleworking employees to the offices where appropriate. We
13 do have a management directive that will deal with telework
14 and will be rolled out as a part of the return to work.
15 Employees will understand completely what the requirements
16 will be under a permanent part-time or ad hoc telework
17 situation.
18 As indicated before, I know you didn’t mean this.
19 I don’t want to give the impression to anyone that the 35
20 percent of our employees are not producing quality work and
21 have been doing so for the entire year from the telework
22 situation. We are very, very proud of the efforts, the
23 results of the work that our employees are doing who are
24 teleworking.
25 And finally, any issues that -- I hate to think 87
1 of any of your offices being a complaint office, but we do
2 have a legislative liaison within OA, as you know, and most
3 agencies if not all have legislative liaisons. If we can
4 get those specific issues to them real-time, we can deal
5 with them real-time because, as you know, customer service
6 is the hallmark of any successful business, any successful
7 government. I would not have made it through my career
8 without making customer service number one. Certainly in a
9 for-profit situation and now when w e ’re dealing with the
10 constituents of PA, it’s imperative that they feel
11 comfortable that their tax dollars are being put to the
12 best use.
13 So all of that being said, there are a number of
14 items in the letters that you’ve asked for that we can
15 provide. W e ’re concerned about how some of the information
16 may be used, may be misused or misconstrued, so w e ’re
17 careful about putting numbers out. As w e ’ve heard numbers
18 today, you know, and w e ’ve heard dates today, and w e ’re
19 careful about making sure that employees understand that
20 through our date of June 1st, for example, and next thing
21 you know everybody’s returning to the office June 1st when
22 in fact that is not the case.
23 So we want to be -- as we raise our right hand to
24 be as truthful as we can, and we will be, but we certainly
25 want to make sure the information is as accurate as 88
1 possible and is not subject to misinterpretation.
2 So thank you for your -
3 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN GROVE: Yes, and, listen, w e ’ll
4 be more than happy to work through all those questions and
5 make sure we have a great understanding of what each data
6 point means. I think we can reach that. I ’m always open
7 to further conversations on whatever anytime you want, so
8 we ’ll be more than happy.
9 But speaking of productivity, the Commonwealth
10 does have a productivity report. Is that something that’s
11 made publicly available? Because, again, we know from the
12 private sector because they provided openness in the data
13 to back up the fact that in many cases productivity has
14 increased, and I think you hit on some of those issues of
15 not telecommuting to work, better life-work balance. So do
16 we have a productivity report that can show pre-pandemic
17 and during pandemic and hopefully at some point post
18 pandemic so we have a better evaluation to see if we see
19 similar results in the public sector here in Pennsylvania
20 as w e ’ve seen in the private sector?
21 SECRETARY NEWSOME: I am not aware of a
22 Commonwealth productivity report. I can suspect that
23 agencies measure productivity in various ways. We
24 constantly talk about these types of things. When I was in
25 a company where we produced widgets, productivity was 89
1 pretty easy to do. You could see how many square feet of
2 linoleum, for example -- I ’m dating myself of course -
3 across the production line. That’s a very different thing
4 from looking at the productivity of a State Trooper or a
5 doctor or an auditor, for example. So I ’m not aware of any
6 productivity report per se in that regard, but I would
7 suppose that agencies have their ways of measuring
8 productivity.
9 What w e ’d like to talk about in OA is employee
10 performance, and performance is much more encompassing and
11 maybe one that we can -- we have position descriptions that
12 we can look at the performance against those position
13 descriptions. We have annual reviews where we can have a
14 back-and-forth with the employees to understand that they
15 understand what they’re supposed to be doing, and we assess
16 the quality and the quantity of the work that they’re
17 doing. So, again, I don’t think we have any productivity
18 reports across the Commonwealth.
19 MAJORITY CHAIRMAN GROVE: Thank you. Thank you,
20 Mr. Chairman.
21 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: All right, with that,
22 w e ’re just about out of time. Chairwoman Davidson, do you
23 have any closing comments?
24 DEMOCRATIC CHAIRWOMAN DAVIDSON: I do. Thank
25 you, Mr. Chairman. 90
1 I want to thank you again for your testimony,
2 both Secretary and Deputy Secretary. We can see from your
3 testimony today that in fact State employees have risen to
4 the challenge that has been presented by this pandemic. We
5 saw from the questioning there were a couple of good
6 questions, and I thought they highlighted the fact that
7 State employees did rise to the challenge, regardless of
8 the work environment that they were placed in, whether it
9 was in-office work or telework.
10 You talked about from some of the questions your
11 system for discipline, accountability, and performance
12 monitoring. I think that was excellent, and that you
13 talked about how the performance of your employees have
14 been monitored and how they have been held accountable to a
15 workload that has, quite frankly, increased dramatically.
16 You also talked about policies that have been
17 enacted. That was a question that I also thought was good,
18 policies that have been enacted and launched and utilized,
19 best practices that you’ve learned from other States and as
20 you began to monitor how employees were doing in their new
21 work environments as they were working.
22 I think it was also important that you talked
23 about the fact that some problems that were discussed here
24 predated the pandemic like the equity of workload and how
25 people perceive their work partners or their coworkers or 91
1 whether or not certain people on the job are meeting
2 deliverables and other people are not meeting deliverables
3 from that job. That always happens in any work
4 environment. And I think you talked about how you address
5 that.
6 What I did find troubling was there was a
7 gentleman that asked the question or alluded to the fact
8 that he was personally aware of three people that were only
9 working 30 minutes a day. And that is of course fraud and
10 theft of service, and that should be reported to the proper
11 authorities. So I would encourage that Member to please
12 report those three individuals to the proper authorities.
13 But that does not have anything to do -- I ’m sure
14 there’s always going to be people that commit fraud, but
15 that does not have anything to do with the overall work
16 performance of the great State workers that we were talking
17 about today.
18 I think, finally, Mr. Chairman and Members of the
19 Committee, we talked about the elevated talent and expenses
20 eliminated both in paper, parking, travel costs, that we
21 might not want to re-incur as we transition back to more
22 in-office work. And so I ’m very delighted that you are
23 going to be evaluating what the new model post-pandemic is
24 going to be, and w e ’re not out of the pandemic yet. People
25 are continuing to get sick. People are continuing to die. 92
1 And so it was nobody’s fault that it took a year, that a
2 year later people are still dying. That’s not the fault of
3 the Commonwealth Members, of the State employees. That is
4 just the worldwide situation that we are in.
5 And so I want to thank you, Mr. Secretary, again,
6 and thank the Members for the amazing work that our State
7 employees are doing every single day on behalf of the
8 citizens of Pennsylvania. Thank you.
9 REPRESENTATIVE DIAMOND: Thank you, Chairwoman
10 Davidson.
11 Thank you, Secretary Newsome, Deputy Secretary
12 Walsh, for joining us today.
13 Secretary Newsome, you did ask a kind of the
14 nature of the questions and complaints that w e ’re getting
15 in our district offices. Basically, it could be summed up
16 in one sentence. Our constituents simply want someone at a
17 State agency answering the phone who can actually help them
18 with the issue they’re dealing with rather than having to
19 go through a State Representative who is not actually
20 working for that agency. That’s kind of the nature. They
21 just want somebody to answer the phones.
22 So thank you again for your testimony and for
23 your time today. Thank you, Members, for joining us.
24 Thank you to those members of the public who joined us
25 today. And I will declare this hearing of the State 93
1
2
3 94
1 I hereby certify that the foregoing proceedings
2 are a true and accurate transcription produced from audio
3 on the said proceedings and that this is a correct
4 transcript of the same.
5
6
7 Christy Snyder
8 Transcriptionist
9 Diaz Transcription Services