Deployment of Telework in European Public Administrations

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Part Two: Selected Cases

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goals regarding organisational change are an expansion of services, to increase creativity at work,
decentralise services to the public, and to retain experienced staff members by offering them more
individual flexibility. The pilot project has been initiated by the person who is in charge for
computer technologies. Training will be offered to the participants, and guidelines for the pilot
will be elaborated. Equipment will be provided by the employer.
Case No. 8: Ireland - Shannon Development
Policy environment
The Ireland has been at the forefront of the development of certain aspects of telework for a
number of years. The country features prominently for the relatively large numbers employed in
satellite offices offering data entry and knowledge abstraction for foreign firms. These companies
which were supplemented by many telemarketing and localisation companies in the 90s came to
Ireland as a result of the inward investment strategies of the IDA (Industrial Development
Authority). Though these teleworking companies were in the private sector, the initiative to attract
them came from a state institution established by the Irish Government. 
This institution itself became the first public body in Ireland to participate in teleworking
arrangements when its support section for small companies, the MENTOR programme,
participated in the TELEWORK'94 project, EXPUN or Experts Unlimited. The mentors or
experts made themselves available to those seeking advice through a call centre which forwarded
client calls to them over the mobile phone network. The IDA is now split into two sections, IDA
dealing with inward investment per se and Forbairt (which means development) dealing with
established SMEs.
Ireland's Telematic and Teleworking (T&T) initiatives are lead by the state's inward and
indigenous investment strategies concerned with the creation of new jobs, the retention of existing
jobs and the development of rural and peripheral areas.
Recently, problems of traffic congestion and scarcity of office space in the cities are becoming
significant. Though the number of teleworking initiatives in the public sector is still small, it is
pushing innovation and IT dissemination very strongly. This is manifest in the number of reports
published in the past few years including Forbairt's 'Ireland: the digital age, the internet' and in
February 1998, the Government's Report on the Information Society. Recently, the Taoiseach
(Prime Minister) appointed the retiring head of IBM Ireland to chair the review committee for
policy and initiatives in this area.
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Apart from Forbairt, other public bodies involved in telework initiatives include the two regional
development agencies, Shannon Development, Údarás na Gaeltachta (Gaeltacht Authority) and
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