Deployment of Telework in European Public Administrations

1.4. Methodology
Design
The prior objective for our study was to identify public administrations that could be used as
teaching examples and analyse the way in which they organised telework. For the overview we
cooperated with colleagues from experienced research institutions in each Member State. Based
on the assumption of a low proportion of public administrations as telework practitioners in the
majority of Member States, the first objective for these researchers was to find out about those on
national, regional and local level which either a) successfully implemented teleworking as a
common pattern of work, b) had a telework pilot in place, or c) showed documented and explicit
intentions and first steps to introduce a telework scheme in the near future.
Within the available resources this activity was based on already existing experiences within the
‘telework-community’
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, research for publications and unpublished reports (official reports as
well as feasibility studies, internal work reports and evaluation) and following document analysis.
For a systematic analysis of the identified cases we designed and distributed a questionnaire
which also considered experiences already identified.
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A pre-test was carried out in a Swedish
and an Austrian organisation. The researchers were asked to target middle managers in charge of
the introduction of telework schemes (IT-project leaders, telework managers, staff managers, and
heads of divisions) and interview them either face to face, or via phone, fax or email. These
interviewees were supposed to be able to provide us with comprehensive and complete
information. Results have to be read as reflecting the interests and specific institutional position
of this group. Further, the researchers were asked to deliver a short country report on national IT-
policy and activities hindering or supporting the implementation of telework in public
administrations.