Telework Is Low-Hanging Fruit When It Comes to Federal Budgets [#Infographic]

A new study illustrates that the private sector has been much quicker than the public sector to adopt the power of mobile technology in order to increase productivity and make business processes more efficient. According to the study, the federal government could save a massive amount of money if it were able to harness mobile technology and allow employees to telework.

The report, Deloitte’s Gov on the Go: Boosting Public Sector Productivity by Going Mobile, highlights that the private sector has been able to increase productivity by 50 percent over the past 25 years, while the public sector’s productivity has decreased over the same period of time. This is due in part to the public sector’s failure to fully take advantage of mobile technology. If the public sector doubled mobile adoption rates to 70 percent, it could potentially save in excess of $50 billion per year.

Moreover, mobile adoption would allow the federal government to tap into the currently unused resource of teleworking. Thirty-two percent of federal employees are eligible to telework, but only 7 percent of them are currently doing so. If all eligible employees were teleworking half of the time, the federal government could see as much as a 40 percent increase in overall productivity, and 40 minutes of productivity generated for every 60 minutes saved on commuting. The productivity gains and the reduction in office costs, absenteeism and turnover would amount to approximately $5.4 billion in total savings per year, a dollar amount the government could put to good use elsewhere.

For these and other interesting facts on federal telework, check out the infographic below. Click to view a larger image.

This infographic originally appeared on Government Technology.