With record-breaking snow pounding the Washington area over the weekend (and more expected Tuesday night and well into Wednesday) much has been made of the Office of Personnel Management's decision to close the federal government two days in a row. Feds in the DC/Maryland/Virginia area have been so anxious for news that OPM's operating status page went down for brief periods on Sunday and Monday nights.
Director John Berry's decision slowly trickled out through Twitter and various news sites as high traffic limited access to the official page. According to Google, OPM was the fastest-growing search term in the Washington metro area over the past seven days. D.C. weather, weather forecast and weather.com also placed in the top 10.
With Wednesday's operating status still up in the air, OPM may see yet another evening of overwhelming traffic.
COMMENTS
In an age of government wide employee telecommuting, why does the Federal Government still need to cease operations because of a snow storm? Based on the forewarning everyone had last week of the impending D.C. storm, one would think federal employees with telecommuting agreements in place could have taken home work and computers to dial into agency networks. Each night of the shutdown, the cable news networks are stating it is costing $100 million to idle the government. A news story about telecommuting feds would have gone a long way to improve the misconception the media and general public has about federal employees.
Michael Janiga 02/10/10 10:37 am ET