Deployment of Telework in European Public Administrations

12
Deployment of Telework in European Public Administrations: An Overview
25
The term „telework-community’ here is used in a similar loose way as e.g. the term 'academic community'. It
refers to the little universe of European protagonists (researchers, consultants, politicians, managers, civil
servants) dealing continuously with the specific issue of telework in studies, pilots, projects, workshops and
conferences.
26
DIPLOMAT-survey on the „Deployment of Telework in Europe’, Deliverable D 20, July 1997, and Catral
(1997).

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For some of the Member States, we could not be sure of finding even one single case. Hence, due
to this exploratory aspect of the study, selective criteria for the targeted institutions were ‘soft’ and
were mainly exclusionary in character.
It has been already stated that the term ‘public administration’ according to different frameworks
in different countries, covers a complex variety of activities and professional tasks. For example,
in many countries teachers, university teachers and employees of museums are formally civil
servants. Researchers were asked to:
1. exclude private institutions that formerly had been part of the public sector, e.g. telecom
providers.
2.
focus more on the administrative core work of authorities than on services provided by them,
such as public health care, social work, training and education.
Nevertheless, in many cases administrative tasks and services are linked with each other. Such
services were only regarded, if traditional office work and the administration of these services
were carried out at a distance from traditional workplace.
For the majority of the Member States such a ‘soft’ catalogue of criteria proved to be justified as
the number of teleworking public authorities is marginal. From a retrospective view only in four
countries - Germany, The Netherlands, Sweden and the UK - the absolute number of practitioners
might have justified a more diversified approach and selection.
For the overview we were interested in:
l
the proportion of teleworkers in the respective administrations, units, departments, or
divisions;
l
the type of work (tasks) carried out via telework;
l
the types of telework-practise (alternating, home-based, mobile, telecentres, mobile, remote
office sites);
l
the original reasons for the implementation of telework;
l
the fulfilment of original expectations;
l
obstacles and difficulties in implementation;
l