Deployment of Telework in European Public Administrations

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Deployment of Telework in European Public Administrations: An Overview
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Our calculations are based on figures as provided by Hillka Paavonen relying on Engström, Mats/Johanson,
Rickard (1997).

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Without having covered every potential teleworking administration in Europe, the sample of cases
we investigated proves that telework in public administrations is a fairly recent phenomenon. The
vast majority of interviewees describe the character of telework practice in their own organisation
as a trial or pilot scheme. The earliest practitioner among our cases started in 1993. Country
reports and the one third of pioneers with stable telework schemes in our sample tend to indicate
a concentration of experiences particularly in the Netherlands and the UK.
Pict. 2: 
Level of telework implementation within the sample*
Comparisons of the proportion of teleworkers within the bureaucracies' total work force highlights
a gap between a majority, for whom telework is a peripheral phenomenon with very few
practitioners, and a minority where the quantity of telework indicates profounder organisational
change. 10.6% of the personnel of the Rijkswaterstaat in the North Netherlands conduct telework,
11.3% of the Council of the City of Sunderland.
A typical example of telework at the organisation's periphery is Espoo, a town that employs
10,500 people in total, of whom only three are teleworkers. Such examples are common
throughout the French administration, or exemplified by the case of Upper Austria and the
Ministry of Social Affairs, Health and Family in Saxonia (Germany). Three teleworkers as cited
in Espoo town is indeed a marginal number, but the discrepancy between the number of
teleworking and non-teleworking employees appears even more drastic as related to the totality
of tasks fulfilled and services provided by the whole community.
In choosing the department or division as a smaller frame of reference, we can roughly distinguish
between telework penetration across different units and concentration of telework in a specific
one. Our sample shows no specific pre-dominance of either the one or the other. Examples of
nearly equal distribution across divisions are given by DG7 at the European Parliament or the
Municipality of Rome, an example of a cluster is provided by Shannon Development's
Communication Department. The proportion of 15 teleworkers out of Shannon Development's
total of 350 employees seems to be small, but they do represent nearly one third of the