[inaudible conversations] good morning. I call this hearing to order. In just the past six months, the covid19 pandemic has completely upended our everyday way of life. One of the most sudden and stark transitions to the way all of us work. Millions of americans have been unable to go to the office each day, as a result, weve had to find a way to get our jobs done and keep our economy going. The financial hit to small and larger businesses has been devastating during this crisis. Reducing expenses is increasingly important for individuals and businesses, as the country struggles with the unexpected costs of the coronavirus pandemic. Such cost savings are likely to persist after the pandemic. Nearly one in five private sector chief Financial Officers plans to keep at least 20 of their work force working remostly after the covid19 pandemic ends in order to cut costs. I believe the federal government should also be looking for opportunities to save taxpayer money wherever and whenever possible. The private sector a leading the way in reducing expenses. In recent years, theyve reduced real estate footprint in order to save money. Theyve been able to do this because modern technologies have allowed them to adopt remote work ongses and flexible strategies. By 2016, Dell Technologies shifted one quarter of its employees to work from home. Either fulltime or a few days a week. Dell technologies was able to consolidate office space, reduce Square Footage and implement more Flexible Work space strategies saving roughly 12 million each year. American express saved up to 15 million annually on real estate through Flexible Work options. Aetna provide Flexible Work space and home options for 47 of employees decreasing its need for office space by 2. 7 million square feet and saving the company 78 Million Dollars each year. On the federal side, the General Services administration, the gsa, is the most advanced agency in the federal government pursuing remote work options and the improved office space through various workplace strategies, including enabling and supporting mobile work, reconfiguring support spaces, desk sharing and shifting from Traditional Office space to flexible open plan workplace environments. A top priority of the gsa is to maximize the use of the federal space, eliminate costly lease arrangements and dispose of underutilized assets. Gsa decreased the Square Footage of its own usable office space by 32 . It has cut its operations and maintenance costs by 10 million in the last four years. The office of Personnel Management reported to congress that over 900,000 federal employees were eligible for telework in the fiscal year 2018. Now, thats 42 of all federal employees. The Global Workplace analytics, determined if all federal employees eligible for telework had telecommunicated just half the time, the federal government could reduce its need for office space by 25 . Taxpayers could save 1. 75 billion dollars in real estate costs alone, and over 11 billion dollars in total costs. Through such telework, federal employees would save on personnel experiences and expenditures such as food, computing, gas and dry cleaning. Todays hearing is an opportunity to examine how the lessons the private sector has learned about cost savings, from telework, can be translated to the federal government. These lessons will allow the government to reduce its footprint and save american taxpayer money. I look forward to hearing from our witnesses today, and am now turning to Ranking Member carper for his statement. Thank you, mr. Chairman. Im happy to be here with you, live and in person and we welcome our witnesses from as far away from, as i understand in texas and in california. And we thank you all for joining us. In california, we spent some time there in the navy and right about this, what is it, 10, 15, earlier than that in california and thank you for getting up early. It goes without saying that just about every aspect of our lives has radically changed the last six months as individuals in the country have been force today adopt to a new normal in our lives, wearing marsh masks, coughing in our sleeves and more. Nor millions of americans one of the challenges has been adjusting to the new normal of telework. When it comes to finding solutions for tough problems, i often say, find out what works and do more of that. And the sudden shift to implementi implementing Flexible Work strategy, the federal government has given us how those alternative methods works or dont work. This is our opportunity to find out what works and do more of that. And what weve learned about telework today will fundamentally change and shape how we view and implement telework as a country from now and well into the future. One of the agencies under the jurisdictions of our committee is General Services commission, affectionately known as gsa. And i hope the testimony today will shed light about the use of private space like peoples homes that the chairman has alluded to during telework, which could provide new and important insights about thousand we operate Federal Buildings. After all, we have more than, im told, 350,000 buildings that the federal government uses and they consume energy, in fact, im told the federal government is the Largest Consumer of energy. And what weve learned about telework today could help us figure out how to occupy and operate Federal Building space more efficiently and ultimately reduce our nations carbon footprint. Another area of concern for the committee is impact of telework on our environment, specifically on our air quality, as our witness from california will describe in greater detail across the country, communities that are normally cloaked in smog are now breathing cleaner air and experiencing the positive effect of widely reduced travel. For too long, we have witnessed the harmful effect of air pollution on health and public life and so Many Americans especially those in our most vulnerable communities. I believe we should be doing whatever we can as soon as we can and that could include reducing travel demand during rush hour, through telework policies. And includes reducing vehicle emissions through fuel economy standards and through the electrification of the cars, trucks and the vans that we drive, which are the largest source of global or pollution in our country. And another important way to reduce travel related emissions is by investing in multimodal low emission like walking and biking. And looking at telework, transit, cafe standards and eelectrification, that could [inaudible] when this is fading memory. Youve heard me quote Albert Einstein more than you want to remember, in adversity lies opportunity. Ive been thinking that quote a whole lot the last couple of months because our nations adversity that were facing tremendous adversity were face being, while extremely tragic, this pandemic provided us with a reallife case study on effect of reduced travel related emissions and i look forward to learning more how we can translate successes into longterm strategies to help us address Climate Change and finally, mr. Chairman, the Homeland Security and Government Affairs committee on which i serve and which has jurisdiction over work force issues held a hearing yesterday on issues quite similar to ones were going to be taking up today. I look forward on drilling down with it again mr. Chairman with members of our committee and persons over the internet and to and maybe we could even work with some of our friends on Homeland Security committee as we continue to adjust to this new normal. Ill close with this, a decade or so ago, folks Discover Card, we had a fair amount of Financial Services in delaware, but the folks from Discover Card said, were thinking of doing Something Different at the air force base and i said what would that be. And i said put up like a branch or something . No, no, were going to hire spouses of military personnel, dependents, to work for us from their homes on the base. And i said, really . They said, yeah, really, and they did. And i think they still have over 100 spouses working there remotely and a second income for themselves and their families and Discover Card actually wins a lot of kudos for the Customer Services they provide so find out what works and thats what were trying to do. Thank you, mr. Chair. Thank you, senator carper, we have some outstanding witnesses and were going to hear from them all whom are joining us remotely. Mark pringle, the schnarr vicepresident of corporate real estate and Dell Technologies, hell be joining us remotely from round rock, texas a few miles north of austin. Kate lister, Global Workplace analytics joining us from carlsbad, california and finally, Michael Benjamin, the chief of air Quality Planning Division for the California AirResources Board. And he is joining us from sacramento, california and welcome all three of you today. I would like to remind the witnesses that your full written testimony will be made part of the official hearing record today. We ask that you please try to keep your statements to five minutes so that we may have time for questions. We look forward to the testimony. Were going to start with mr. Pringle and then to miss lister and mr. Benjamin. With that, mr. Pringle, please proceed. Good morning, chairman barrasso and Ranking Member carper. Im from the facility and environment and for Dell Technologies, my statement is attached. In addition ill address the implications for flex work place, and physical need tore Office Spaces and how dell has approached these strategies. Beginning in 2009, Dell Technologies established our connected work program which allows our employees to choose the work style that best fulfills the need on the job and in life, highly mobile and Flexible Work setting. The program is positively impacted our business and approach to Talent Division ap environment. More than a policy, this program is a change how we think about work. Well, work is not anchored to one place in time, instead, its focused on outcome. In 2013, after initial threeyear implementation of connected workplace, Dell Technologies established a goal to enable 50 of our work force to work flexibly by 2020. At times in an office, but also at home and on the road. Earlier this year, before the onset of covid19, we had surpassed that goal with approximately 65 of Dell Technologies, Work Flexibility in the jobs. Dell technology encouraged employees for work arrangements, remote work, flexible hours and job share. And supporting flex workers needs for enhanced technology infrastructure, training opportunities, and an employees resource group. From an Environmental Impact study, 2016, approximately 10,000 u. S. Employees who worked remotely reduced their travel by 136 million miles and admitted 35,000 less Greenhouse Gases from having fewer commuters on the road and equivalent of taking nearly 7400 cars off the road each year and we estimate that positive impact increased two to three times as our remote work increased significantly over the last four years. From 2013 to 2016 our connected Workplace Solutions have avoided an estimated 25 million kilowatt hours and we were able to realize approximately 12 million a year in real estate cost savings, over 50 Million Dollars in total savings. In 2017, as Dell Technologies continued to evolve and grow as a company, our real estate footprint changed dramatically due to acquisitions,s as a result the real estate cost and strategy the last few years has been tied primarily to supporting our business strategy, which includes sites, reducing or eliminating sites and reducing investments for employ productivity. We converted nearly overnight 90 of employees to working home. And looking how best to support our employees work style and managing the portfolio. And Dell Technology can achieve 20 to 30 real estate savings over the next five years as we assess our future requirement. While the overnight transition to remote work force, we know coming out of the crisis we know many of our employees wont need or desire to return to our corporate offices, at least not on a fulltime basis. As we begin our return to site process, we surveyed our employees on how and when they felt comfortable, to return to the office. The results were fascinating. Across the different regions, countries, and organizations, the results were consistent. On average, 60 of employees desired to work from home with the flexibility to go to the office for collaboration and meetings a few days a week. 20 to 30 of employees desired to work from home fulltime. 10 to 20 of employees desired to work in the office fulltime. We actually see this as an opportunity to reinvent and redefine work in the new world and were looking at ways to enable, to innovate new ways of high levels of fully engagement for activity. We need to evolve the data mindset of being in an office fulltime, with an actual busine business, in conclusion were rarely afforded the opportunity to make such dramatic changes to our business ins such a short period of time. Even rarer still is the ability to do so in a way that will better prepare our team in the changing digital landscape by helping us achieve the organizational goals around diversity and innovation. And one of the best ways to recover from both is to reimagine working in ways that generally include for our nation we look forward to that journey, thank you for inviting me. Thank you, mr. Pringle. Were grateful for you to take the time to join us and the testimony. Well turn to miss lister. Please proceed. Thank you, chairman barrasso and Ranking Member carper. I go where the facts lead me. The employeremployee and environmental benefits are too compelling to ignore. The covid19 crisis forced as said over 95 of Office Workers to become teleworkers overnight and four months into that Global Telework experiment it looks like its going to fundamentally reshape where, when and how people work. Result of this, p wiwc releasedn june. 89 of executives expect 30 of employees to work at home at least one day a week and 55 expect more than 60 to do so, i know thats a lot of numbers, but this is going to change things. The employees want it, too, in spite of less than ideal conditions at homeworking at home during the pandemic, nearly seven in 10 want to continue to do so. The numbers higher in government and this is based on a survey that dr. Anita kamoro and i looked at employees and just as we heard from mark, that two to three days a week seems to be the sweet spot. Its not all in or all out, its part of the time. The pandemic didnt start the telework trend, but its going to accelerate it. Whats that going to mean to office space . The fact is, much of office space in this country is inefficient and ineffective. For more than a decade. Occupancy studies around the globe have shown that people are not at their desks a majority of times. Theyre working at conference rooms, customer locations, coworking centers and working at home and anywhere they can get availability of broadband. So regardless of what you call it, employees are mobile and the same thing for teleworkers, is the same thing for a 21st century work force. And the majority let work happen rather than making it happen and those intentional about it have coincidentally transported their offices that support a wide range of activities. Theyve lower overhead, happier and more productive employees and less waste. Success lies in the integration of policies, practices and a choice of places and spaces and work that includes some. Predictbly the organizations that prioritized Cost Reduction over people, cramming more people into smaller spaces have been disappointed by the results. Telework programs need to be supported from the very top of the organization chart. They need to be deployed as a collaboration between human resources, real estate, i. T. , and other stake holder groups. And when we dont have that cross functional approach outcomes suffer. When deployed strategically weve seen across the public and private sector, the potential benefits of telework are real. The chairman mentioned in his opening comments. In government, some of the numbers that weve seen, Social Security administration reported 900 million in annual real estate savings. U. S. Patent and trademark office, reported more than 50 million in annual savings and almost 100 million reduction in miles traveled. There are many more examples in government. Federal Work Life Survey and federal work survey reflected positive impacts on people. Compared to no