The Travis County Commissioners Court last week received a briefing on a new “Telework Dashboard,” a web tool that reports on the impacts of the county’s ambitious push to build a 75 percent remote workforce.
The test drive quickly became a victory lap as commissioners celebrated their sweeping labor gambit’s notable benefits to the environment, infrastructure, productivity and recruitment.
The dashboard showed that an estimated 39 percent of county workers were eligible for telework at least one day per week at first glance, though this figure rose to 60 percent upon eliminating workers who could not reasonably telework, such as emergency medical service providers or food pantry workers.
Reports showed that eliminating county employee commutes has taken a cumulative 1.3 million cars off the road and spared an estimated 18,000 tons of carbon dioxide since data collection began in 2019.
Though the county’s telework policies were inspired by the shifting constraints of the pandemic, data from lockdown does not account for the bulk of these sums: In January 2024, the county’s telework initiatives resulted in 22,000 cars being taken off the road, saving an estimated 33,000 gallons of gas.
Commissioner Brigid Shea, co-sponsor of the initiative alongside former Commissioner Gerald Daugherty, emphasized that this data represents benefits to infrastructure as well as the environment. “22,000 cars off the road is really significant,” Shea said. “(Telework) is definitely the least expensive, quickest tool for reducing congestion. And we are not using it enough.”
Review of utilities data raised one bump in the road. With telework arrangements consolidating office space and reducing onsite staff, Shea called for facilities management to address energy consumption, building utilization and infrastructure.
“Under homework, that would be a No. 1 because it’s our largest source of greenhouse gas emissions,” she said, “And it’s a thing we do have a lot of control over since such a huge percentage of our employees are working remotely and not sitting in an office.”
The celebratory briefing closely followed the city of Austin’s more strained passage of its own updated telework policy, which came following months of delays and pushback.
Shea – who recently went to bat at the city’s Planning Commission advocating for a more robust policy proposal – noted the contrast between Travis County’s progressive policies and the city’s history, including its abrupt decision to require employees to return to the office after pandemic restrictions lifted.
She also noted the advantages of Travis County’s tactics, noting, “We also gave a lot of flexibility to the managers and said that you are the ones who know the work that needs to be done, so you decide who is eligible and you also decide: Do you still need your team members to come into the office once a week, twice a week? So we provided a lot of flexibility.”
”We have a real competitive advantage with recruiting because of this program,” she later noted. “We get many, many more qualified applicants than we previously have gotten.”
The county crafted its telework policies with consulting firm Deloitte beginning in 2020, spending a cumulative $1,525,000 across two contracts.
“From what we can tell from Deloitte, who was our consultant to help to put in place some policies and practices for our telework effort, we think Travis County has the most ambitious telework policy for any local government in the country,” Shea said before the briefing.
The dashboard is currently available only internally to Travis County staff, but commissioners championed the idea of a public rollout. “Let’s mark that in the homework column as well,” Shea instructed staff. “I think we have huge bragging rights on this.”
Photo made available through a Creative Commons license.
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Travis County Commissioners Court: The legislative body for Travis County. It includes representatives from the four Travis County Precincts, as well as the County Judge. The County Judge serves as the chair of the Court.
