Most agencies advise employees to power their devices down rather than taking them. | REUTERS Furloughed may lose BlackBerrys

Federal employees might find something else shut down this week besides the government: their cellphones.

A decades-old law prohibits furloughed workers from conducting business outside the office. This extends to government-issued mobile phones or dot-gov emails, now ubiquitous in both work and play.


Agencies can go as far as taking away BlackBerrys, but most have instead advised employees to power them down. The House, especially, wants staff to know just what they face for breaking the rules.

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“Due to legal requirements, working in any way during a period of furlough (even as a volunteer) is grounds for disciplinary action, up to and including termination of employment,” reads a letter from the House Administration Committee to the chamber’s nonessential employees. “To avoid violating this prohibition, we strongly recommend that you turn your BlackBerrys off for the duration of the furlough.”

The House has been down this road before. In 2011 — facing another potential shutdown — the chamber threatened to require furloughed employees to turn in their “BlackBerrys, laptops and cellphones and … to set an ‘out of office’ message on their email accounts.”

But this week’s confrontation could take Washington into new territory. The last time the government shut down, smartphones did not exist and email was in its infancy. Eighteen years later, Washington functions on its devices.

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Federal agencies still have some wiggle room. The Office of Management and Budget says agencies have “discretion to enforce these access restrictions in light of their own particular needs.” Some may ask employees to “turn in their BlackBerrys until they return to the office; others may determine that circumstances warrant a different approach.”

Many agencies appear to embrace the less draconian approach.

“Commerce has not issued a blanket policy regarding whether or not BlackBerrys need to be turned in during a shutdown, or a blanket policy requiring shutdown of email/BlackBerry services,” said Commerce spokeswoman Sarah Horowitz, “because many Commerce agencies need these services to remain operational in order to support excepted employees.”

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Agencies from the FTC to the Department of Education are simply telling employees to stay away from official email and off their government smartphones. The education agency also instructs staff to use an out-of-office message. The Senate Rules and Administration Committee did not reply to requests for comment.

“People are being told not to use them except in dire emergencies,” said Jacqueline Simon, policy analyst at the American Federation of Government Employees. “You’re not supposed to call your friend and see what they are doing.”

But the irritant of missed communication pales in comparison to the potential financial toll of a shutdown, Simon said.

“In the realm of things, this is certainly the least of [employees’] problems,” she said. “People are focused on lost paychecks. They’re not focused on restrictions on the use of their government cellphones.”

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The use of personal email for business can also cause trouble. Just think back to the recent flap over senior EPA officials doing business on personal email accounts.

Agency heads, considered essential employees, are not barred from governmental devices.

But the rest of federal staff, without work emails to alert them, may need to count on traditional journalism to let them know when to go back. OMB stipulates that employees “should not rely on mobile devices or home access to work email for providing notices of when to return to work.”

There’s always Twitter.

Libby Nelson contributed to this report.