Steele presented a second myth: the concept that teleworking provides a better work-life balance. Crawford said that was not necessarily true, as teleworkers often schedule back-to-back meetings throughout the day, without a natural break. In addition, most agency employees aren't taking vacation as they did last year due to the pandemic.
"Now, you can take advantage of your calendar, and it's just back-to-back-to-back meetings. That presents a real challenge," Crawford said. A day full of meetings leads to burnout and not enough time to finish deliverables.
"To have an internal meeting, you have to have the agreement of everyone on the call. We have had a lot of success with that," Crawford said.
Teleworking is thought by many to require complex technology, Steele said in describing a third work-from-home myth.
Texas DIR's biggest demands have been for simple technologies, such as laptops, headsets and hotspots, Crawford said. More complex deployments continue behind the scenes as states work on digital transformation, which has been accelerated in the pandemic. Putting resources in the cloud, for example, makes them accessible to a wide range of common devices that employees can use at home.
"This is the perfect example that we as IT leaders, throughout all the states, have been preaching to our customers. It's about the benefits and the scalability," Crawford said of cloud adoption.
She continued, "Our legislature last session passed two different bills to at least consider cloud technology when developing a new application." Doing so helps resolve challenges, such as increased demands on public websites while citizens remain at home or avoid government offices.