Employees who:
* Need little supervision and don't mind working alone.
* Have good organizational skills and self-discipline.
* Can be available, if necessary, to communicate with co-workers and customers via e-mail or phone.
* Have a place to work that is free of interruptions and offers a safe environment for government property.
* Live within commuting distance because they will probably continue to perform some of their work at the office.
* Are required to write or perform computer-related tasks.

I think they're right about every one except living within commuting distance. There's only 2 reasons why that would be necessary:
1. The right collaboration tools don't exist to permit effective remote meetings, or
2. Management still isn't comfortable with the fact that they would have to manage differently if they can't see you regularly.

And when you get right down to it, both of these reasons are false too. Unless you are part of a workgroup where everyone is located in the same place (and how many of those still exist today?), then chances are remote meetings and management are already happening. Maybe not perfectly, but well enough to allow people some degree of choice in their work location.

I do give credit to Uncle Sam though in recognizing that employee preference (don't mind working alone) and home environment (place to work that is free of interruptions) are key to making this successful. Full disclosure: I spent almost 12 years working as a civilian employee in the Defense Department, and really enjoyed 10 of those years. At Sun, we have developed a tool that looks at over 50 characteristics of employee preferences, work environment, and the work itself to determine the best fit for the employee as either Sun assigned, flexible, or home assigned, based on their individual ratings of each characteristic. Even then, the employee can "over-ride" the survey result by selecting their preferred category, though it does require the agreement of their manager. Which brings us right back to that pesky issue of whether your manager "gets it" or not: setting goals and measuring whether they've been met or not is a better way to determine who's productive than by looking to see who showed up at the office each day.