Trans European Telecoms Networks (TEN-Telecom) is not part of the 4th FP RTD but is instead an investment stimulation action in the framework of the Trans European Network Chapter in the Maastricht Treaty. With its main aim at stimulating large scale deployment of Trans European Telecommunication Networks, it can assist in the deployment of projects after research has taken place in cases where additional Commission funding is seen to be an advantage. The development of trans-European frameworks for telework is seen as a key to the further consolidation of the European market and to business competitiveness. At present, a number of these projects are concerned with telework.
The overall budget of TEN-Telecom is quite small at between 25 to 30 MECU/year. Overall objectives are to help launch trans-European telecoms applications and generic services by showing that the infrastructures can be used to help facilitate the transition to the Information Society by:
TEN-Telecom was established in 1994 with a number of preparatory actions following on from the Maastricht Treaty and the Bangemann Report. In 1995, Financial Guidelines for TENs were made available and the Euro-ISDN Guidelines were published, thus providing the first available platform for multi-media services to which all present TEN-Telecom projects are linked. Since these developments, stress has been laid on the fact that applications require an integrative approach to different networks, e.g. ISDN, PSTN, mobile, satellite, more advanced broadband networks, etc., all of which need to be inter-operable. Thus, by mid-1997, new guidelines have been adopted which define a new working environment in which the main features include emphases on full market deployment, public-private partnerships and areas of public interest which can provide the justification for additional Commission funding.
TEN-Telecom's areas of work are defined by these guidelines where the main emphasis is on applications with high public interest like telework, telecom services for SMEs, distance education, transport, environment, culture and health. Another basic line of projects is concerned with inter-operable generic services providing common tools for different types of applications, such as e-mail, but also multi-media tools and other support services like payment systems, etc. TEN-Telecom financial support should be seen as a catalyst which can assist in covering the risks rather than becoming the driving force of a project in its own right. Typically, up to 50% of costs can be obtained for commercial and feasibility studies, but the total contribution cannot exceed 10% for the whole project, including actual implementation.
In order to qualify for TEN-Telecom support, projects should:
One objective of TEN-Telecom is to establish a sound technical, operational and legal framework for a large number of businesses and other organisations to coherently integrate trans-European telework networks. The framework is expected to support European networks of call centres/service centres offering employment near the home in both urban and rural areas, European networks of business centres offering teleworking facilities to business travellers, and European virtual enterprises with a dispersed workforce of teleworkers in various countries.
The aim is to achieve open support frameworks for transborder telework, acceptable to the self-employed and small business, with reliable and secure communications, and with appropriate provisions for data protection, insurance, social security and health and safety at work. The framework(s) will be expected to ensure multi-media access to and from:
Initial feasibility assessments are being prepared and are expected to address technical feasibility, manageability, acceptability to all social partners concerned (notably to potential teleworking users of facilities), and the commitment of a substantial number of organisations to work together in making use of one or more trans-European telework frameworks.
The European Union intervention in support of structural adjustment through its Structural Funds amounts to almost 30,000 million ECU per year. There are four structural funds: the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), the European Social Fund (ESF), and funds for the agricultural sector and for fisheries, as well as the Cohesion Fund.
Whereas the RTD funds are managed by the Commission, most of the Structural Funds are not. Only 9% is set aside for Community initiatives, the main part being managed by the member states, and indeed individual regions, themselves. In some of the Community initiatives, attention on new ways of working plays a role, for instance in Employment NOW (New Employment Opportunities for Women). A specific mention of teleworking is given in the description of one of the four priority themes, i.e. the reconciliation of work and family life, where it is explicitly stated that measures for avoiding negative effects, like isolation and loss of social protection, should be included. The main initiatives are, however, to be found in LEADER and ADAPT.
In order to bridge the difference between regions in terms of the development of new ICTs, Article 10 of the ERDF and Article 6 of the ESF identify the translation of the Information Society concept into real life in the regions as a priority. This is achieved through the demonstration of innovation applications and services as one of the priority areas for pilot actions, of which telework is often an important component.
LEADER1 is the French anagram for Links between actions for the development of the rural economy. The Community's participation has been set at 1,755 million ECU of which 900 million ECU are for the regions of Objective 1 (lagging behind in development). LEADER's was established to bring the operation of the Structural Funds into closer collaboration with the Commission's RTD initiatives, such as ORA in 1990 and 1991. LEADER II applies for the duration of the new period of reform of the Structural Funds from 1994 to 1999.
LEADER covers geographical areas of limited size with a strong local identity. It is based on the active involvement of the local people, firms, associations and authorities. It serves as an incentive for development strategies adapted to the area's characteristics using a global, multi-sector approach.
Among the eight key points for rural territories2, four of them may concern teleworking: activities and jobs; migrations and social and vocational integration; technological developments; competitiveness and access to markets. Several teleworking projects have started under the "rural innovation programmes" (measure B), the "transnational cooperation" (measure C), as well as the European network for rural development (measure D). These are included in Annex 2.
Rural development is increasingly understood as sustainable integrated development to include social, cultural, economic and environmental dimensions within a framework of diversity. Issues about new ways of working with IT have been tackled by many project holders within the LEADER framework, with some success and many failures. In rural areas, when major structural problems are present such as poor telecom connections and overpriced local service provision, the strongest factors of resistance tend to come from the firms which are reluctant to outsource the work to unknown distant teams (risk management), and from local governments which fear unpredictable changes in the population's social and economic status, especially women returning to work and qualified young people.
Further efforts are being put forward to bring IT closer to any activity or service bringing benefits to local people in rural areas and it is believed that innovative aspects of such projects will continue to be supported by the European rural development initiative.
ADAPT is an initiative financed by the European Social Fund which aims to assist the workforce adapt to industrial change. Thus, the Information Society and advances in ICTs are looked at from the human resources development perspective, issues which are of direct relevance to telework. The Social Fund is contributing 1.6 BECU over five years and, together with Member State co-funding, this reaches 3.2 BECU. Currently, there are 1,400 projects underway in all EU countries, but with the new call recently completed this is expected to rise to about 3,500.
The issues being addressed by ADAPT are the problems thrown up when traditional jobs in traditional sectors disappear, whilst the new jobs which emerge in new sectors typically require different types of work patterns and work organisation. At the same time, more women are working (or wishing to work) and the workforce is ageing. In the future there will be fewer young people entering the labour market, 17% less than today in 2005, and thus proportionally more workers in the age categories 30-50 and 50-60. The latter categories constitute the most experienced and best trained workforce there has ever been, but, at the same time, their education is typically at least ten years old, and often much more.
On the technology side there is a continuing and deepening revolution which is not only changing the work for those who work directly with ICTs, but for everyone else as well. Furthermore, it is reckoned that only about 20% of the technologies being used today will still be in use in ten years time. The skills gap revealed by the ageing workforce and the ICT revolution means that an investment in human resources is probably the most important investment Europe needs if we wish to remain competitive. These are the issues that ADAPT is trying to address, as a direct follow up to the December 1993 White Paper on Growth, Employment and Competitiveness.
ADAPT's specific aims are to anticipate industrial change, to accelerate adaptation by the workforce, to increase the competitiveness of industry and particularly SMEs (given their special problems and the fact that they employ two out of three European workers), and to accelerate job creation. Four types of measures are being employed by ADAPT:
All these are well known measures, but what makes ADAPT different are the characteristics which allow it to be more effective in tackling its policy aims:
The main beneficiaries of ADAPT are individuals who are employed but are in organisations where they are threatened by unemployment, workers who have just recently lost their job because their companies are undergoing industrial change, workers who have contracts temporarily suspended, workers who are employed only part-time as a result of re-organisation in the workplace, or workers who are potentially employable in new sectors but who need specific training. Typical ADAPT projects focus on:
Taken together, all the ADAPT projects constitute a huge laboratory of change for experimentation with new ideas, concepts and methodologies, in order to extract lessons for wider use in labour market policies.
In terms of inter-regional cohesion in Europe, recent statistics indicate that the least-favoured regions are faced by a "technology gap" twice as great as the differences measured by income per head. In line with the priorities of Article 10 approved for the 1995-1999 period, innovative measures aimed at developing new ways of introducing innovation in the regional development agenda of the less favoured regions of the European Union have been introduced. These include "increasing awareness in SMEs from less favoured regions about research and technological development activities" and, more generally, about the regional economic implications of technological change, as suggested by the Regional Commission of the European Parliament.
One of the priority areas for pilot actions under Article 10 of the ERDF and Article 6 of the ESF for the 1995-1999 period is the translation of the Information Society concept into real life in the regions through demonstration of innovative applications and services, i.e. Regional Information Society Initiatives (RISI).
RISI has two elements:
The Information Society is revolutionising the ways in which we work and live together. For the regions of Europe, their future economic and social well being will depend to a large extent on how they are able to participate in the Information Society in the making. This pilot action therefore aims to help regions benefit from the opportunities now opening up to them and to minimise the risks of being left behind in this revolution.
The overall policy in the Information Society Strand of Article 10 is to pursue an active learning strategy both within a region and between regions. This will take place through the stimulation, experimentation, evaluation and diffusion of best practice in the creation of the necessary socio-economic conditions for the development and implementation of teleworking, SME networking and other information society services and applications which will in turn contribute to regional economic development, in particular in the less favoured regions (LFRs) of the European Union.
Projects under RISI 1 (Information Society Strategy and Action Plan) draw on the lessons and follow the pre-pilot experience, launched in 1995, of IRISI (Inter-Regional Information Society Initiative) in six test regions in the Union (Piedmonte, Valencia, Nord Pas de Calais, North West, Central Macedonia and Saxony) 3. The overall aim is to enable regional partnerships to make better use of existing resources for developing the Information Society.
These pilot projects follow an interdisciplinary approach and are being followed and managed jointly by DG XVI (Regional Policy and Cohesion) in cooperation with DG V (Employment, Industrial Relations and Social Affairs) and DG XIII (Telecommunications, Information Market and Valorisation of Research). 4
RISI 2 (Pluri-regional Pilot Applications) projects focus their scope on the Less Favoured Regions (LFRs). Rather than identifying specific basic services and generic applications, these projects try to demonstrate innovative uses of validated information and communication technologies in working and trading in LFRs. The focus is on the adaptation of existing validated technologies, rather than on new ones.
ISPO is part of DGXIII and has the objective of promoting co-operation and development in the Information Society in Europe. ISPO's role is as a service unit established by DGIII and DGXIII to act as a bridge builder between Commission Services and external counterparts active in Information Society issues, including technological, social, economic, etc. ISPO is part of the Information Society Activity Centre (ISAC) whose role is to raise awareness of the opportunities and impacts of Information Society development by arranging special events, providing a leadership role in running conferences, participating in other relevant conferences, workshops, seminars, etc., and in participating in selected projects. The intention is to be present whenever Information Society related issues are discussed, whether these are positive or negative.
ISPO operates a series of information services, based upon alternative information distribution technologies and channels, for example
The brokerage of ideas, applications and services is an important function of ISPO, and it is especially interested in best practice lessons and success stories which have a portable value. ISPO also provides guidance on Commission funding instruments, especially for newcomers who have a good idea but need relevant contacts in the Commission. The collection of information from a variety of sources is another area of activity, to which value is added in order to provide open information inventories. This also involves linking to external information services, thus maintaining a network of networks to provide easy access to relevant information through a concept of decentralisation in which each information source is maintained where it has been established and where the interest and expertise is to keep it up-to-date, rather than by ISPO itself.
ISPO also establishes and manages small scale programmes and projects with its own calls under the umbrella of Information Society promotion. The first call in 1966 received over 100 proposals, from which 16 were funded. There was a second call in June 1997 which had as its main areas of focus, all of which could potentially include telework:
The European Information Society Week, which will take place again this year in October 1997, offers a platform for raising awareness of Information Society applications such as telework. ISPO also supports DG XIII in advertising European Telework Week.
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