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ETD News - May 1999 ETD News Editorial ETD (European Telework Development) has nearly completed its third year and so the programme is coming to an end. The next issue of ETD News (September 1999) will therefore be the last and will review the progress made in telework over those three years and review the challenges ahead, which are not about telework, but the wider world of online trading and working over networks in a knowledge-based economy. It may well be that this final edition, because of project schedules and budgets, might not be published in the hard-copy version. Therefore, if it does not make the next edition of ETHOS, look for the online version at http://www.eto.org.uk/etd/news/ This edition provides an update on the forthcoming 5th annual Teleworking Congress as well as news from several contributors in the ETD network. As usual, you can get more detailed information from authors and the web sites mentioned. David Skyrme Editor, ETD News. Telework '99: Making Telework Work For All Sixth European Assembly on Telework and New Ways of Working Aarhus, Denmark, 22 - 24 September 1999 The goal of "Making Telework Work For All" reflects the Danish and wider European concern to show that telework and other new ways of organising and carrying out work can benefit individuals, families, local communities and public services, as well as enterprises and the economy. Thus the 1999 Assembly is built round the needs of four main audiences each reflecting a major conference theme: Audience: politicians and legislators, and other policy makers Theme: the social, employment and labour market policy aspects of new work Audience: executives and managers wishing to enhance organisational flexibility and effectiveness through telework and new ways of working Theme: the business case for new ways of working including its links with e-commerce Audience: representatives from local and regional economic development agencies, plus those concerned with equal opportunities and special groups Theme: the socio-economic aspects of new work, ensuring that individuals, families and communities can all benefit from flexible working in the 21st Century. Audience: technology and infrastructure suppliers and technology specialists and consultants Theme: innovation in technologies, infrastructures and services which support telework and new ways of working. Telework '99 provides Europe's main platform for focusing on the technology, socio-economic and policy aspects of new ways of working and sustains the pattern of previous Assemblies as top level, high profile and quality events. It will be structured around both plenary and parallel sessions and workshops, and will include demonstrations as well as an exhibition of technology and workplace innovations. In 1999, special focus will also be paid to the European Union's new Information Society Technologies Programme, as part of the Fifth Framework Programme for Research, and especially upon the key action concerned with new methods of work and electronic commerce. A number of top key-note speakers and presenters from both private and public sectors and the European Commission are already booked, including: Kevin Kelly: Executive Editor and founder of Wired Magazine. and author of the new book New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Turbulent World. Diane Coyle: Economics Editor of the Independent newspaper in London and author of The Weightless World - Strategies for Managing the Digital Economy. Mike Hawley: the Drefoos Professor of Media Technology at MIT in Boston, USA, and responsible for the Things That Think project A final call for presentations in the parallel sessions and for demonstrations has now been made with a deadline of 7 June 1999. It is also possible to register on-line. Please go to: http://www.telework99.dk/ See also the ETO events calendar at: http://www.eto.org.uk/events/ Death of Distance How the new geography of the networked economy places Germany closer to USA than to France, UK closer to Australia and Hong Kong than Spain. A new analysis by European Telework Development has created a world map that will puzzle both airline pilots and school children. On this new map, the Netherlands has Canada and the Virgin Islands as near neighbours, closer in fact than its neighbours in the old geography, such as Germany and Belgium. The analysis, part of an effort to understand the geography of the new networked economy, measures distance in terms of relative cost of a telephone call. According to this assessment, UK and Sweden have placed themselves next to the USA and Canada at the centre of the networked world. They have achieved this through early and progressive liberalisation of telecommunications, resulting in hot competition for customers' business and subsequent decline in the cost of International calls. Taking the cost of calls between USA and UK as a distance of one "new mile", countries get further from world centre as their international calling costs increase. This means that some European Union countries are close to centre, some much further from centre. Greece and Portugal are twice as far from world centre as Hong Kong, four times as far as Sweden and further "out" in networked economy terms than Malaysia. The table lists "distances" EU countries and other selected countries: UK 1 Sweden 1.3 Canada 1.4 Virgin Islands 1.5 Australia 1.6 Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany 1.8 Denmark 1.9 Austria 2.0 New Zealand 2.0 Finland 2.1 Ireland 2.3 Hong Kong 2.4 Italy 2.4 Luxembourg 2.5 Mexico 2.6 Japan 3.0 South Korea 3.0 Spain 3.0 Singapore 3.5 Malaysia 3.6 Taiwan 3.9 Portugal 4.3 Poland 4.5 Greece 4.8 Eastern Europe on the Fast Track The analysis shows that some countries of central and eastern Europe are on a fast track to the centre. Slovenia, the Czech Republic and Poland are already closer than either Portugal or Greece, with Estonia and Slovakia right alongside. From the Mediterranean region Israel is closer to the centre than Spain. Among Asian and Pacific economies, China at 8.1 new miles appears much closer than India (12.4), while the main "hi tech" economies such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan. Singapore are as close as some European countries, with Australia and New Zealand both very close to the centre. Breaking into the circle Telephone calling costs are just one measure of the new geography, but a very important one. Cheaper lines for consumers means cheaper bandwidth for industry and - with other factors - faster Internet performance for e-business sellers and buyers. Government policy and actions can have a big impact on these factors. For larger, stable, higher-performance economies, a progressive approach to telecom liberalisation has the most leverage, since consumer and business spending power will attract the necessary investment and competition. In smaller, lower-performance or less secure economies Governments need to take additional action to entice investment and competition. Every national and regional government should be aware of its current "distance from the centre" and have a clear strategy to get closer. Proximity to the centre of the networked economy will increasingly determine economic growth. The full world table of networked economy distances, together with explanatory notes and commentary, is online at: http://www.eto.org.uk/eustats/ Seeking Success on the Web? Don't Throw Money At It! An article in The European Journal of Engineering for Information Society Applications suggests that low-budget websites can deliver excellent results for their owners and target audiences, while many high-budget online projects either struggle to attain a critical mass of users or generate more brickbats than plaudits. Exploring the reasons for this, author Horace Mitchell, programme director of European Telework Development reports that the wrong kind of site can: "do real damage to the reputation and image of the enterprise. These website owners have lost sight of - or perhaps never knew - the key factors that differentiate the World Wide Web from other information and communications media." Spelling out the key factors, Mitchell recommends a "low cost, high value" approach to the web, and asserts that success on the web is a matter of "adding care rather than adding cost". The article is not yet another "how to" piece about placement in search engines, rather it is aimed at managers and executives who need to be able to judge for themselves whether the people designing and running their sites are doing a good job at a fair cost or just taking them to the cleaners. The article, "Websites: Low Cost, High Value an essential element in telework, telecooperation and teletrade", is online at: http://www.nectar.org/journal/02/009.htm Country News Bulgaria The Bulgarian Telework Association (BgTA) was established on April 30, 1999. Dr. Roumen Nikolov, Ph.D, Assoc. Prof., Sofia University, was elected for Chairman of the Association. Representatives of the Ministry of Education and Science, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Social Care and the Employment Agency, and lecturers from the Sofia University took part in the foundation meeting held in Sofia. Roumen has maintained European Telework Online's Bulgaria Pages since 1997 and has now been instrumental in setting up the first telework association in Eastern Europe. He says: "I would like to thank the European Telework Development team for their support." Dr Nikolov can be contacted at: Tel: +359-2-6256 511 Fax: +359-2-656157 Email: roumen@fmi.uni-sofia.bg For further details about Telework in Bulgaria please see: http://www.eto.org.uk/nat/bg/ Holland Traffic reducing plan "fileverdunningsplan" At this moment a feasibility study is being conducted into a traffic reduction plan in the Netherlands. This plan aims to reduce the morning traffic jam by giving 25.000 employees a professional workplace at home. Media Plaza was the initiator of this plan and The Dutch TelewerkForum decided to perform a feasibility study to investigate the willingness of employers to participate in this project. The Ministry of Transport is financing one half of this study and the other half comes from contributions of the association ICT , Toshiba, Media Plaza , KPN Telecom and the TelewerkForum. The success of project depends on 25.000 employees in the Amsterdam, The Hague and Utrecht triangle working at home until 9.30 each morning using a PC and Internet connection. They are allowed to use the car only after 9.30. The Dutch TelewerkForum stimulates telework in the Netherlands by bringing the advantages of telework to the attention of government, employers and employees. Full details of the plan can be found at the TelewerkForum web site: http://www.telewerkeforum.nl Email: info@telewerkforum.nl Telework Knowledge Database Online The knowledge database on the TelewerkForum web site is now open to the public. More than 250 studies on the subject of telework are in the database. The information is indexed on keywords and can be retrieved via a search or via a telework guide. See: http://www.telewerkforum.nl under "kennisbank" Ireland Telecom Eireann Promotes Flexible Working Telecom Eireann, Ireland's largest telephone company, is to spend up to £IR3m (3.8m euros) over the next year to promote flexible working through direct mail, press, radio and possibly TV advertising campaigns. Responses will be handled by a four-person team of experts located in Ballina, a small town in north-west Ireland. The telephone company has already held "Real Issues" seminars with its large corporate clients around the country that included a session on flexible working, as well as a business breakfast in Dublin attended by over 300 companies. Irish businesses rate flexible working as their number two business issue (after managing growth) according to Telecom Eireann. Call for More Reliable Statistics Ireland's Information Society Commission in its second annual report of April 1999 has, for the second year in succession, called on the country's Central Statistics Office to remedy a "serious lack of reliable statistics" by including standard questions on teleworking in the collection of Labour Force data. Proceedings on Disability and Teleworking ETD has published proceedings from its disability and teleworking conference on the Communications Workers Union website http://www.cwu.ie. These proceedings will be used as the base material for a newsletter on assistive technology and teleworking opportunities to be mailed to Irish disability organisations and disabled people. The newsletter will be funded through the Aphrodite project in the Horizon scheme. Employment through Teleworking South Kerry Development partnership has appointed a development officer to persuade highly skilled IT workers currently living in Dublin and abroad to relocate to the rural county of Kerry through teleworking in an attempt to broaden the Kerry economy beyond tourism and agriculture. The partnership has also commissioned a report on employment opportunities through teleworking from Ms Sheila McCaffrey of the KITE Telecottage, following from a series of seminars on teleworking held in the area in 1998. Multilingual Call Centres Ireland now has some 11,000 people working in the call centre industry according to Industrial Development Authority figures. Skill shortages are beginning to affect this sector, particularly in relation to foreign languages. Around 36% of those working in multilingual call centres are foreign nationals and this figure is expected to rise to 40% over the next year, mainly due to shortages of German speakers. Job Web Sites offer Flexible Working Several job web sites in Ireland are now hosting information on flexible working options and teleworking as a result of work carried out by ETD. These include the Irish Jobs Page http://www.exp.ie, Jobfinder http://www.jobfinder.ie, Premier http://www.premier.cc and Marlborough http://www.marlborough.ie. The text is aimed at recruiters and jobseekers in the IT industries where Ireland is experiencing skills shortages. UK Alan Denbigh, TCA (Telecottage Association) Call centre employment has been much in the news lately, with reports of major recruitment and retention problems and alarmist headlines about stressful working conditions. A need has been identified for some rigorous and objective research, in particular to investigate the rapid growth of outsourcing in this sector, the development of 'virtual call centres' and the spread of call centres into professional and other specialist areas of work. The same technology which allows calls to be rerouted to a single centre from anywhere in the globe at no extra cost to the caller could also be used to disperse the work. Might the call centre worker of the future be a teleworker? And if so, what are the implications? With sponsorship from the business communications company, Mitel and the Gulbenkian Foundation, the Institute for Employment Studies, in partnership with the Telecottage Association, has embarked on a major project to look at the growth in 'virtual call centres' and their potential for offering new employment opportunities to disadvantaged groups. And the researchers particularly want to hear from carers and people with disabilities who may be looking for employment. The researchers will ask potential teleworkers about their attitudes to homeworking, what they seek in a job, and what skills and experience they have. At the same time call centre managers are also being surveyed about their views on using teleworkers. They are asked about recruitment and retention problems, the prospects for virtual call centres and the risks and benefits associated with using teleworkers. Online questionnaires are at: http://www.employment-studies.co.uk/surveys/telework.html - for teleworkers http://www.employment-studies.co.uk/surveys/vcc.html - for call centre managers Participants in this Internet-based survey also earn some money for charity. MITEL will be make a donation for every completed survey to the Leonard Cheshire Workability initiative. This project helps up to 10,000 young disabled adults in the UK with Internet-linked PCs, to train through a Virtual College, and offers advice and counselling in searching for jobs. The TCA (The Telework, Telecottage and Telecentre Association) is Europe's leading telework association and provides information and advice to teleworkers through their publications, enquiry line (Tel: 0800 616008) and web site: http://www.tca.org.uk America Teleworks Too As the US "Year of Telework" builds toward its culmination in Telework America Day on October 27, 1999, the International Telework Association & Council hosted its first Telework America online chat on 28 April. Sponsored by Symantec Corporation, the chat provided information and answers to individuals and companies interested in telework. Topics covered included developing policies and guidelines, training, legal and tax issues, and addressing organizational change and human resource issues. http://www.telecommute.org European Telework Online (ETO) New web pages give ACTS perspectives on Flexible Working Ian Simmins Online Information Coordinator, European Telework Online Pages compiled by the project ACTSline provide information and perspectives on: experiments and trials product opportunities guidelines a Question and Answers section on issues relating to flexible working from an advanced telecommunications perspective. Menus at this site are in English, French, German, Italian but don't be fooled: the primary content is mainly in English only (as at 13 May 1999). Links to this and a wide range of telework-related resources can be found in the Resources Database at: http://www.eto.org.uk/resource/ To find this resource, select "Teleworking" and "Websites". If you have a newsletter, article, product, service, project, presentation, website etc relating to telework or other Information Society applications, you can add it to the database. After review by the database editor, it will be included in the relevant categories and automatically appear in appropriate parts of the European Telework Online site. http://www.eto.org.uk/ More Countries Moldova recently bacme the 28th country to join the network of national telework web sites. You can find the Moldova pages, with online links, at: http://www.eto.org.uk/nat/md/index.htm More Popular than Ever March 1999 usage of the European Telework Online website broke all records, with more than 190,000 hits from users in more than 90 countries, who downloaded over one Gigabyte of information during the month. Other statistics include: Longer sessions - the average user session increased to 11.5 minutes. 46% of hits were from Internet Explorer users compared with 33% from Netscape and 21% from all other browser types, spiders etc. Up-to-date browsers. 80 per cent were using versions 4 (or higher) of the main browsers. Windows95 is still the leading platform - 42% compared with 17% Windows98, 13% Windows NT, 3% Macintosh variants. 24% of hits came from unidentified platforms, probably via corporate firewalls. EU countries account for more than half of total hits, followed by North America (about one third). Australia, Russia, Switzerland, Hungary and Japan. A list of the ten most visited pages is updated monthly at the site: http://www.eto.org.uk/ European Telework Development News Editor: David Skyrme E-mail: david@skyrme.com Tel/Fax: +44 1635 25 35 45 Web: http://www.eto.org.uk/etd/news/index.htm Return To Contents List