Deployment of Telework in European Public Administrations

Part One: Telework and Public Administrations
Source: Korte/Wynne(1996:29)
Germany
5.4
France
0
UK
4.4
Italy
7.7
Spain
0
16
Frissen, Paul (1997), p. 111.
17
Catral (1997).
18
With the exception of some cases so rare that they cannot apply to the general situation, no company in Italy so
far has been brave enough to introduce teleworking on a large scale and to believe in its potential (...). De Massi,
Domenico (1995), p. 5.

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Generally, it has to be considered that breakdowns showing the percentage of organisations with
teleworkers reveal little about the entire quantity of teleworkers. Cases like the UK, Germany, or
Sweden
19
indicate that the existence of telework in public administrations, albeit a marginal
phenomenon, is supported by factors such as high standards of available technology, low telecom
costs and ICT-strategies on the political agenda. However, these can be supporting, but not
sufficient and the only influential factors as illustrated by the case of France, where at least some
of these factors apply, and considerable supposed overall telework penetration finds no expression
in the public administration. Studies of telework in the past left us with the impression that a
remarkable discrepancy between a higher telework deployment in the private sector and relatively
few applications in public administrations had also to be expected also in countries such as
Austria, Belgium, Finland or Ireland.
We assumed that this had to be seen in the context of the specific nature of the public service and
its traditional hierarchical/bureaucratic work organisation. In the majority of the Member States,
public administrations so far have been characterised by:
l
less exposure to pressure from market mechanisms;
l
conservative internal hierarchical organisation;
l
a specific emphasis on confidentiality of information;
l
the need to publicly justify internal change linked with a general tendency of institutional
avoidance of explicit decision making.
In going back to the media revolution of the 19th century, an historical reconstruction reveals that
the use of communication technologies by public administrations in most of the European
countries has been characterised by several ambiguities. In certain aspects, public administrations
have actually been among the most advanced users of new communications. Around the middle
of the century, in contrast with the USA, in the majority of European countries (with the exception
of the UK) telegraphy became introduced under the monopoly of the state. The new possibility of
transferring information with a minimum of time delay and thereby nearly overcoming the
distance factor, was accompanied by the expectations of politicians, engineers and high level civil
servants to ease central control over imperial territories and their peripheries.
Besides the state and the press (whose control by the authorities differed from country to country),
the stock markets were among the first users of the new technologies. By according privileges to
the stock markets the state supported the communications aspect of the Industrial Revolution, but
at the same time was forced to apply the technologies within the administration to control,
monitor, and influence economic developments. For example, the first phase of the new
pneumatic dispatch in Vienna in the late 19th century linked ministries with each other, and an
exceptional link was made between the Ministry for Trade and the stock market. On the other
hand the administration showed patterns of resistance. As a prominent representative of the
paradigm of control and discipline in the 19th century, which was based on components like