Deputy Director Peterlin Testifies at House Hearing on Teleworking

    By Donald Zuhn --

Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Deputy Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Margaret Peterlin (at right) testified today at a House of Representatives hearing on teleworking.  The hearing, entitled "Telework: Breaking New Ground?" was held by the Subcommittee on Federal Workforce, Postal Service, and the District of Columbia, which is part of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.  In view of the Patent Office's 750,000 application backlog and the Office's attempts to reduce this backlog by promulgating its draconian continuation and claims rules, the Deputy Director's comments regarding the success of teleworking programs at the USPTO offer some insight into a rather painless way to increase Office efficiency.

Deputy Director Peterlin testified that as of October 19, 2007, 3,609 USPTO employees -- or 40.7% of the Patent Office's workforce -- participated in some form of teleworking.  The Deputy Director noted that after initiating the Trademark Work-at-Home (TWAH) program in 1997, the Patent Office expanded its teleworking program to include patent examiners with the creation of the Patent Hoteling program in 2006.  The Patent Hoteling program is a flexible telecommuting program in which participating examiners spend most of their workweek at home.  When working on the Office's Alexandria campus, however, the examiners in this program share offices called "hotels," which can be reserved on-line before the examiners come onto the campus.  The program, which originally involved 500 examiners, has since been expanded to 1,000 examiners, and the Deputy Director stated that Office plans to have 3,000 examiners involved in the program by 2011.

Deputy Director Peterlin noted during her testimony that "[t]he nature of our patent and trademark examination work easily lends itself to employee telecommuting," an important observation at a time when the Office's application backlog continues to grow.  The Deputy Director also stated that teleworking leads to a happier and more productive workforce since examiners gain an "improved work/life-family balance" and "add[] hours of 'found time' to an otherwise hectic and exhausting day" by reducing commuting and "commuting anxiety."  More importantly, the USPTO's teleworking program has allowed the Office "[to] improve overall employee retention -- thus reducing the costs of recruiting and training associated with high staff tumover rates."

Interestingly, the Deputy Director noted that the Office already has teleworking employees residing in Pennsylvania, New York, Illinois, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Colorado, Texas, West Virginia, and Delaware.  However, because these employees "are currently required to report to the office at least once per week to maintain the official duty station at USPTO headquarters," the USPTO has sought Congressional approval for a pilot program to allow these employees to maintain their homes as official duty stations.  For those advocating that the Office establish satellite offices, this pilot program could constitute the first step.

Deputy Director Peterlin concluded her testimony by discussing the results of a recent Virtual Art Unit pilot program in which the production of 13 hoteling patent examiners was compared with that of 37 non-participating examiners on the USPTO campus.  As with prior Office teleworking pilot programs, the office found that the hoteling examiners had a 10% increase in production, doubled their amount of overtime, and yielded quality reviews that were not significantly different from the non-participating examiners.

For additional information on this topic, please see:

• USPTO press release regarding the Deputy Director's appearance at the hearing

Comments

[sicktdeathofthis]

Boy, it is good to see she is tackling the backlog with some of "her" ingenious ideas.