Deployment of Telework in European Public Administrations

Deployment of Telework in European Public Administrations: An Overview

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another. As already mentioned above, the statements of our interviewees present a neutral
behaviour. Neither reduction nor expansion of staff was intended. Reduction of labour costs,
down-sizing and outsourcing do not belong to the preferably articulated aims. Whereas ICTs
provide the possibility for work relations across national boundaries, public authorities on
national, regional and local level predominantly stick to their territorial boundaries in their
recruitment of staff. Hence, transborder issues of telework (the threat of export of work to low
wage countries, social security matters and taxation) do not apply to public authorities, at least as
long as their traditional reference to territorial sovereignty is expressed by the localisation of their
workers within this territory.
Certainly our cases show a variety of working arrangements with different standards of security
for the employees. Referring to the general trend of reducing state expenses for the public sector
in the last decade, apart from large scale privatisation and outsourcing in several Member States,
public administrations have been starting to use cost saving methods of employment like short and
medium term contracts and contracts that provide the employee lower or fewer benefits from
welfare funds and insurance. Throughout different economic sectors a growth of (often
involuntary) part-time work and temporary work can be observed in many OECD countries
during the 1980s ‘indicating greater labour market flexibility in terms of working arrangements.’
(OECD 1994, p. 8/9) Given these macro-trends and a lack of transnational data on ICT
deployment in public administrations, the impact of technological and organisational change on
employment in this specific sector is difficult to assess.
Contracts
National labour law, in most of our cases, is not regarded as a hindering factor for a deployment
of telework by the practitioners. Six out of the 22 cases do not have any further regulations in
place which deal with telework in particular. The most widespread practice (16 out of 22 cases)
is a working agreement within the administration with the individual and the organisation as
partners. In the case of one of the British administrations we found a local collective agreement
in place. We asked for the contents of these contracts in an open question. When we compared the
replies with supporting documentation we found that the answers given in many cases did not
cover all of the actual contractual items. There follow elements of these contracts.
Voluntariness
Voluntariness of participation in a telework-trial or scheme is part of the majority of agreements.
The contract used by DG7 of the European Parliament, for example, regulates precisely the
methods of how and when to start telework and how and when somebody can return to work in
the main office. Often the time span of the telework experience is connected with the duration of
the entire trial in place.
In most of the cases telework from both, the employers' and employees' perspectives is not seen
as something people would be forced into. On the contrary, it is undertaken and seen as a