At the European Telework Development Initiative website
ACTS Telework Chain (GAT: General Access - Telework)

Note following 23 October 1996 GA Chains Group Meeting

A note by Horace Mitchell, European Telework Development Initiative. I hope this will be useful input to the GAT meeting on 4 November and a background to GAT representation at the Concertation Management meeting in Brussels on 4 November.

At the workshop there was no formal meeting of the GAT Chain, which has its own meeting in Vienna on 4 November 1996. However, GAT and associated projects was well represented by Paul Devoldere (GAT acting Chair) and Christian Van Asbroeck (GAT Secretariat), as well as several of the GAT active projects also represented by people who attend GAT meetings.

These comments are a personal view, any additonal comments please send to Christian, stating whether they are private or may be displayed at the website.

What is a Guideline?

The draft document Marketing the Guidelines (Note: 42k, WfW6 file) seems now to be the best source for a clear understanding of the intentions for Guidelines. It suggests:

MoUs and Guidelines

There is clear linkage between MoUs (Memoranda of Understanding) and Guidelines, wherever a MoU is appropriate to the topic, particularly for example when recommendations for policies or implementation need to be supported by consensus among market actors. An example of an MoU is one on Global Access to Electronic Commerce for SMEs. In the GAC Chain (Museums and Cultural Heritage), where a Memorandum of Understanding has been in circulation for some time and has been signed by many relevant institutions, the Chain is working to distil Guidelines from the MoU-related work and documentation. In other cases Guidelines may lead to MoUs.

In the case of the Telework Chain, the ACTS project DIPLOMAT (Note: site requires frames-capable browser) has the development , completion and signature of MoUs as a primary task, but in this case the work is just starting and Guidelines activity must be driven in parallel.

Terminology

I for one have been much misled by the use of the term "users" in the context of Guidelines, and I believe it would be more helpful to use the term "target audiences". In the market, "users" is generally taken to mean users of the applications rather than suppliers. In the ACTS Guidelines environment it has been applied to include anyone and everyone who may receive and gain benefit from a Guideline, including ACTS projects participants, Telcos, ICT developers, manufacturers and suppliers, politicians etc etc, with the more commonly understood "user" of technologies as opposed to supplier of technologies scarcely featuring in the intentions of some Chains. One chain, part of whose deliberations I attended, appears to have standards bodies as its primary intended audience, with any other audiences to be considered when Guidelines are further advanced.

Within GAT I suggest that when we talk of people who might get some value from Guidelines we use target audiences and when we intend what the computer industry used to call "end users" we call them ultimate users, commercial enterprises, consumers or other suitably focused words. We are all users now!

Choice of Guidelines for focus within GAT

Among the types of Guidelines (see above) I suspect that the choices we make in the GAT chain will very strongly depend on which projects choose to participate: The impression gained from Commission staffs is that GAT may be one of the Chains from which the Commission might most expect to obtain inputs in the Policy Guidelines area. Only in the last one can we seriously expect to get a lot of interest from RTD projects within ACTS, though in the case of the larger participating enterprises we can expect to gain attention from non-RTD departments as and when we are able to circulate drafts.

Top Down or Bottom Up?

During the meeting it occurred to me that a top-down approach might in some cases be more efficient for GAT than the bottom-up approach suggested by ETD's current draft for an Interoperability Guideline. By top down I'm suggesting that we might:
  1. Quickly draft an "Aunt Sally" version of a proposed Guideline - in other words a cheap and dirty approach that can be read and critiqued, so that its assumptions and conclusions can be challenged;
    (Note: Aunt Sally is not a relation of mine, its an old English pub game where a dummy is "put up" in order to have things thrown at it with the intention of knocking it down!)
  2. Collect initial comments from a reasonably small group of people with some known interest in and expertise in the topic;
  3. Re-draft the Aunt Sally, and trawl for inputs from a wider audience or a more varied audience;
  4. Re-draft again, this time with supporting arguments distilled from all the comments received and the references uncovered;
  5. Assuming some degree of consensus is emerging, work towards adoption and endorsement as a Guideline.

Endorsement

Marketing the Guidelines (Note: 42k, WfW6 file) suggests that there are two types of endorsement - soft endorsement and hard endorsement - and that endorsement is a critical aspect of the success of a Guideline. I imagine that a fully signed MoU represents hard endorsement, and indication of general support from relevant people and/or institutions might represent soft endorsement. We need to seek clarification on this, or, as usual, I may have missed something. The document suggests that a strategy/procedure of endorsement should be part of the overall plan for a Guideline. In principle DIPLOMAT provides the machinery for this, especially to the extent that GAT Guidelines map well to the themes identified by DIPLOMAT>

Impact on GAT Workplan

The current GAT workplan suggests:
  1. a Guideline focused on interoperability, of interest to all three groups, but based on the perception of the topic, of primary interest to the technology development constituency;
    (Note: The "groups" refered to are the technology development constituency, the social/industrial and political constituencies; and the independent teleworkers and networked SMEs constituencies. See 4 October 1996 - Note on Chains and Guidelines.)

  2. a Guideline focused on access to telework opportunities by the self employed and micro-enterprises, of primary interest to the independent teleworkers and networked SMEs constituencies but also of increasing interest to the social/industrial and political constituencies, given the perception that small firms are the main dependency for future employment creation and economic success;

  3. a Guideline focused on the role and impact of telework in the processes of job creation and job destruction, which will be of primary interest to the social/industrial and political constituencies.
which appear to map very approximately to the types of Guidelines suggested in Marketing the Guidelines (Note: 42k, WfW6 file) as follows: We appear to be lacking in the technology area, but ECODIS have shown some willingness to lead in developing a Guideline on Implementation of Telework and Telecooperation Applications and Services in a multi-site Enterprise, and I wonder if this might lead to (or even start from) a Guideline on Technology issues arising in the Implementation of Telework and Telecooperation in a multi-site Enterprise?
Any comments on this note please address to Christian Van Asbroeck (GAT Secretariat)

ACTS Telework Chain Index Page

European Telework Development Initiative - Home Page
Page address http://www.eto.org.uk/gat/agendas/note2410.htm
Last updated 24 October 1996