Deployment of Telework in European Public Administrations

Part Two: Selected Cases

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Case No. 5: France - The administration at the University Marne,
La Vallée
Policy environment
According to available evaluations (see Table 2), telework penetration in France ranks at EU
average, whereas PC deployment and provision of email is at quite a low level. A special interest
group on telework has been set up in the National Assembly, and further interest exists within the
Senate. One of the major unions (CFDT) is dealing with the social impact of distance work.
In the political arena telework is considered as a new workstyle rather than a specific type of
work. Hence, the tendency is to apply existing labour law regulations to different practices of
telework, whereby three main patterns are taken as a basis. The self employed teleworker, the
home-teleworker, and the ‘common’ employee conducting telework including mobile work.
As a further interest group the French Telework Association (AFFT) was created in March 1997.
It organises annual telework conferences with high level political participation in Serre-Chevalier.
Since 1993, Catral, an agency of the Ile-de-France regional government has been one of the major
protagonists in promoting telework. Catral has developed a neighbourhood office project,
whereby one of the defined goals is a reduction of urban traffic volumes. In 1996, the concept
received a European award for a ‘best practice’ telework application in the context of the
‘Bangemann challenge’.
At the request of Central Government, Catral carried out a survey in 1997 on the implementation
of telework in public administrations. Telework practice could be found in fewer than 5%
of the 
responding organisations. All in all just 55 teleworkers could be identified. The principal barriers
for teleworking were found in the so-called ‘closed mentalities’ towards modernisation and the
implementation of new technologies. Environmental benefits such as reducing traffic have been
identified as potential advantages of teleworking, whereas the image of teleworking regarding
social coherence is viewed critically. Telework is considered as tending to cause isolation and
precarious working conditions. In the comparative summary of expectations and results the
quality of life, productivity and organisation of services obtain high scores, whereas services
delivered to the public and staff economy rate lower than expected. 75% of the identified telework
practitioners expressed their interest to continue with this workstyle. The analysis show that flow
of different definitions of teleworking, mixing up telework and working at home, communication
failures in general, and the persistence of hierarchies are the main reasons for contradictions
regarding expectations and results.