With teleworking moving beyond the "early adopters" phase towards a much wider uptake, new challenges now need to be met. The present status of telework in Europe, as a major item on the agenda of many decision-makers, needs to be built upon in the future if its benefits to Europe's economic and social well-being are to be optimised. Telework’s clear attention in the social debate is crucial in this: in practice the social framework has changed already, although not all institutions have yet found their new roles. Technology has become a driving factor for change. Nevertheless, ongoing investments need to be made supporting a wide uptake of place-independent work for anybody who wants to benefit from this ‘new flexibility’. In particular, the major restraining factors, as mentioned in preceding sections, need to be tackled and the major drivers strengthened.
The European Commission has a major role to play in all this, but this can only be successful in cooperation with other powerful actors, like the social partners, national and regional governments, employers and industry. Following the recommendations in the Communication on The Social and Labour Market Dimension of the Information Society80 the creation of an adequate framework for telework has the attention of the parties concerned, and has even become part of the Employment Debate, which resulted from the Amsterdam Summit in 1997.
The objective of the Commission is to improve the conditions for the development of telework. The Commission is preparing for consultations with the social partners on whether, and to what extent, Community action on the protection of teleworkers is advisable.
In its Proposal for the Fifth Framework RTD Programme, a specific Key Action will focus on New Ways to Work and Electronic Trade. Following a favourable Council Decision, about 500 million ECUs will be made available for developing RTD in this domain by the end of 2002.
The Commission, in recognising the importance of directly experiencing telework for itself, has launched the first two pilot projects in DG V and DG XIII. These experiences will feed into a proposal for wider uptake within the Commission after two years.
Today, although still not a major type of work organisation, telework is developing fast, so that about 4 million Europeans are teleworking in some form or other81. The nature of telework has changed as both managers and the workforce, as well as families, are now becoming more aware of the benefits of being able to work where and when it seems most appropriate to do so, from both a commercial and a personal perspective.
Much of this has been driven by continuing rapid improvements in the availability and affordability of advanced technologies, including in recent years the unprecedented growth of both on-line and mobile communications, and of new services, with a clear boost now being given by the liberalisation of telecommunication in most EU countries.
The problems of working together over distance will be lessened, even more, in the coming years. Teleworking and flexible working are set to become easier, less expensive, and applicable to many more people. High quality bandwidth is available, although still expensive, all over Europe. Even for those who are restricted to narrowband access, it will be easy to hold daily videoconferences with superiors, colleagues and customers, and to access audio, graphical and text information worldwide.
It is clear that available technology and its falling cost is yet another stimulant for the further expansion of telework practices. Therefore, the need for a clear social and legal framework is growing every day.
Summarising the major initiatives of importance in 1998 and beyond, related to the further development of new ways of working in the Information Society and teleworking, mentioned in previous sections:
and, from 1999, new projects in support of new ways of working
This section presents future perspectives relating to new technology opportunities, as well as outlining the support that the Commission is providing through its actions.
Rapid technology change can be baffling and unnerving to those who don't use the technologies concerned and see what is happening only from an outside, superficial perspective. For the active user of PCs and Internet, news of a new breakthrough in cheaper, faster bandwidth is very welcome and the results eagerly awaited. For companies running successful websites as a vehicle for market expansion or better customer services, news of new, low-cost devices for home access strengthens the case for yet more investment in online marketing innovation. But the citizen who is not yet connected only sees and hears - but doesn't understand - strange new jargon in advertisements (website URLs) and radio programmes (email addresses). The owner-manager of a bookshop in a country where one in a hundred citizens are connected sees in the trade press that a bookseller elsewhere has trebled turnover through his website; what does this mean - and can I do the same? Citizens and managers need to know about these technologies; they also need to know what they mean in the context or their own lives and work.
It would be inappropriate to attempt to list here the very many technology and application developments that are expected in the next few years. Instead, we select some trends and examples that have particular relevance to telework. The medium term future can most readily be understood in the light of three undisputed facts:
Teleworking in its many forms is part of the response by individuals and organisations to the new opportunities presented by these factors.
EITO reports each year on the pattern of prices for PCs:
A machine that was the ultimate in performance in 1991 had become, by 1997, effectively obsolete for business purchasers and only dubiously appropriate as one of that year's household Christmas buys for a reasonably affluent household in Northern Europe. The earliest PCs (c. 1981) had either no fixed storage at all or at most perhaps 10 or 20 megabytes of disk. Today's most heavily advertised PCs (mid 1998) have several gigabytes of fixed storage - several hundred times the capacity. A colour printer was a significant corporate purchase shared between many users as recently as 1994-5; today good quality colour printing can be had for around 200 ECUs. So we see that each year the underlying improvements in price-performance of the technology bring new capabilities within reach of the citizen. They also bring new reasons for buying the technology and new challenges to existing enterprises. Consumer applications for colour printers now include design and production of greetings cards at around the same cost as shop-bought cards, and reproduction of photographs taken with digital cameras without the need for the commercial processing associated with conventional colour photography. Sophisticated digital cameras may cost several thousand ECUs but basic ones are already available for a few hundred ECUs.
An important development in 1997-1998 has been a new focus among PC suppliers on producing lower cost systems specifically targeted at the consumer. In the past, consumers have simply bought the machine that corporate users were buying three years earlier; typical selling prices seldom dropped below 1500 ECUs before the configuration was effectively obsolete. Now, sophisticated and current models for the consumer are being promoted at or below 1000 ECUs and the trend is downwards. This is an early response by the PC industry to another consumer-focused development, TV-based technologies targeting the mass market for Internet access. Within a few years, such developments may start to transform access by households and smaller firms in countries with lower per capita GDP and lower PC penetration. Greece may have only one quarter the level of Internet use of (say) Belgium, but it has an almost identical level of television ownership per head of population. Developments such as the network PC82 may offer similar opportunities to accelerate use of ICTs in government, public services and industry.
Mobile technology already plays a key role in many countries as the first personal experience of the locational flexibility associated with an Information Society and a networked economy. Here again we can expect significant changes in both performance and costs. And a close link between technology and teleworking. The same mobile phone is used by many people for both work and non-work calls, in the same way that many office workers have made essential "private" calls using the company phone while at work and essential "business" calls using their own phone when at home. When a teleworker answers his or her mobile phone, the caller has no idea whether the teleworker is at home, in a company office or at the airport. Mobile telephony is one Information Society technology in which Europe leads the world; this lead is being underpinned by research and investment in the next generation of mobile communications, UMTS83. This is just one more example of technology enabling "anything to be done anywhere", and providing the opportunity for individuals, companies and society to re-examine our perceptions of what we want to achieve through both work and leisure.
An important new focus towards the end of the Fourth Framework Programme is on so-called "intelligent agents". The term "intelligent" often confuses in the context of ICTs. We are a very long way from computers that are intelligent in the sense that we understand human intelligence in everyday conversation, but computer applications can have a lot of useful "specialist knowledge" built into them so that they behave in focused and narrow domains in something like the way we would expect a human to behave. From the user's standpoint the issue is not whether they are "intelligent", but whether they are useful! "Agents" are software applications that can to some extent act independently in carrying out some task. For example instead of the teleworker undertaking a search of the Internet, an agent that embodies knowledge about search methods and sources and knowledge about the interests of the particular teleworker can undertake the search and report back its results. The idea of intelligent agents is that they will learn and improve as they work.
A new ACTS project, ACTSLINE, is assessing, inter alia, the particular technology requirements that can be identified from experience in teleworking. Needs already identified through the ETD project include:
The work of ACTSLINE, together with continuing inputs from experienced practitioners and through workshops and conferences, is important in ensuring that today's research is more rapidly convertible into products and services that solve problems and succeed in the market.
As well as mechanisms for informing the research and development community (and suppliers of products and services) about the needs of the market, we also need more and better ways to assist decision makers and users to see beyond their experience of last year's and this year's technology so that there is less surprise and confusion when new technologies appear and so that today's decisions are less likely to look dated and irrelevant in future years.
An important aspect of telework and related programmes in 1998 and beyond is to more effectively communication visions and images of forthcoming technologies in terms that make sense to ordinary citizens and those who represent them. Some success in this is being experienced by initiatives such as the MediaPlaza in Utrecht and Échangeur in Paris89. Large numbers of senior executives and policy makers and advisers have gained both insights and confidence through intensive exposure to working examples of the technologies in action at these future-oriented showcases and learning environments. The investment and skills needed to develop and sustain a convincing and realistic experience of this nature are both very high, but essential in seeding the economy and society with senior individuals who now feel able to make sound decisions and successful investments.
For the ordinary citizen, the Internet itself provides the lowest cost and (for those actively connected) the most effective way to gain experience and reassurance through confidence and competence. A useful development in 1997-1998 has been the emergence of local community networking initiatives in several countries and the proposed formation of a European Association for Community Networking. Senior executives in national and regional organisations need the kind of "global view" provided by MediaPlaza; ordinary citizens need to gain confidence through meeting online the people and services they already meet locally every day. Local community networks exhibit strong synergy with local telework activities such as telecottages and telecentres, as well as telework applications in local authorities and public services. These activities provide the essential "human face, human scale" to the Information Society that is often lacking in the coverage given by national and international media. Technology is and must remain society's servant not its master. Local, national and European efforts are all needed to deliver the knowledge and understanding this requires.
Next section
Previous
section
Return
to Status Report contents page
Return to European Telework Online home page
This html version of the European Commission report is provided and maintained by Marco
Colonna, Telework Specialist in the European Telework Online website team.
Please address comments, suggestions and corrections for the status report to editors-tw98@eto.org.uk
This page address: http://www.eto.org.uk/twork/tw98/htmpages/tw98-5.htm
Page last updated: 12 October 1998