Boil down today's "Work Anywhere Symposium" at Sacramento State to its essence, and what's left is a daylong discussion of government accountability and its oft-dissed sidekick, trust.

Nearly 40 experts are meeting to talk about benefits of "telework," the notion that employees working at home are happier, produce more and cost less.

The idea gets hung up on questions like these: Can government trust employees to telework? Can managers be trained and trusted to keep them accountable? What's the line between monitoring work and intrusive surveillance?

California successfully piloted one of the first government telework programs in the mid-'80s with about 300 state workers. The Legislature followed up with a 1990 law that told state departments to craft teleworking (then known as "telecommuting") plans.

A few pockets of the bureaucracy have followed through, such as the business tax-collecting Board of Equalization, its income-tax counterpart Franchise Tax Board and the state Environmental Protection Agency. Up to half the employees at a few departments now do some work from home.

Yet only 5 percent of the state workforce does some teleworking, according to the Department of General Services, which is the clearinghouse for state telework planning.

A paper to be presented today figures the state would save $340 million per year in real estate and personnel costs if employees teleworked twice per week.

The policy also improves morale and increases productivity, says researcher Kate Lister of the Telework Research Network, which issued the paper and does government consulting.

"It's email vs. popping in for a visit with a colleague," Lister said. "The office becomes a place for collaboration and socializing. Home becomes the place to get work done."

Still, teleworking "isn't a magic bullet," said professor Ralph Westfall of California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, and sometimes the benefits get overstated by firms hoping to snag telework consulting contracts.

Effective programs carefully select the right hardware and software for teleworking, Westfall said, then find employees with the right temperament for it. Then managers need training to handle long-distance employees and set measurable performance standards.

That last one is a toughie. Much of what government workers produce can be hard to quantify: reports, analyses and the like. Office attendance, on the other hand, is easy to measure. Telework takes that away.

Fred Klass, the new director of the state General Services Department charged with developing a statewide telework plan, isn't going to rush it.

His spokesman, Eric Lamoureux, said Klass wants to make sure "there is a strong accountability structure in place" for a statewide program.

In other words, California right now can't be sure that teleworkers would be teleworking. Until that's fixed, the idea is doomed.

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Call The Bee's Jon Ortiz, (916) 321-1043. Read his blog, The State Worker, at sacbee.com/blogs.

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