Proceedings of 8th European Assembly on telework (Telework2001)

117In order to be successful, development strategy must be understandable and acceptable for allsociety, awareness must be created that this strategy benefits everybody, that an opportunity toparticipate in the process is provided to everyone, to each enterprise in every region. Exactly this isthe essence <strong>of</strong> the Socio-economic Programme eLatvia approved by the government.A number <strong>of</strong> risk factors should be taken in account in order to minimize their impact ondissemination <strong>of</strong> the telework:• traditions always are strong, it concerns style <strong>of</strong> work too; Latvians also are quite conservativepeople;• digital divide; people that are not educated, that are not familiar with advanced technologies andprocesses will have very limited participation chances;• self-discipline, high level <strong>of</strong> self-organisation is necessary for teleworker;• due individual work style much more substantial become subjective capability to make decisionswhen traditional communication ties (family, friends, colleagues etc.) have been lost; from otherhand it does not mean full independence in decision making;• philosophy <strong>of</strong> management, relationships between managers – employees, direct managementtraditions should be changed, trust (access and use <strong>of</strong> company and own resources, compensationfor job, monitoring etc.) become an important category;• ethic categories -- privacy (semi privacy?), property, accuracy; life and work in cyberspace isvery near and similar to small village – people do know all about other villagers;• social security for teleworkers (especially on international scale) is an unsolved subject inlegislation;• technological environment as any complicated system can be easy injured -- viruses, hackers,problems in energy supply.Regional initiative is an important aspect for success. Today a number <strong>of</strong> various regional projectsare developed, this is confirmation <strong>of</strong> increasing awareness on municipal level too.It is envisaged that telework will help to reach balanced regional development, to compensatesocio-economic disproportions, to provide all population with equal opportunities to job andeducation, as well as equal social and cultural opportunities, to raise welfare level <strong>of</strong> the society inall regions <strong>of</strong> the country.There is another regional aspect, it is different scale, but the essence is quite similar. Residents<strong>of</strong> Latvia account for only 0.04% <strong>of</strong> humanity and Latvia’s GDP is 0.1% <strong>of</strong> that <strong>of</strong> EU, hence allcountry is a small region in a scale <strong>of</strong> the <strong>European</strong> Union. One <strong>of</strong> the basic principles <strong>of</strong> EU -- freemovement <strong>of</strong> workforce – directly relates to telework.Number <strong>of</strong> specialists, that are trained by many developed countries, is too small for their furtherswift growth. These countries could be characterized by ageing society that is not enough dynamicfor development <strong>of</strong> the information society, stagnant educational system, hypertrophied socialprograms, therefore they need young, high skilled employees who will work and pay taxes.Immigration policy, that has been very strong during many years, is revised both in USA and EUconcerning enlistment <strong>of</strong> skilled specialists.In addition the policy is even double-faced. US are condemned for leading away skilledworkforce from EU countries. In the same time many EU countries (Germany, France, Austria,the Netherlands, Norway etc.) are issuing green cards for specialists from Central and Eastern<strong>European</strong> Countries. Much more, these countries ask for transit period to implement in full freemovement <strong>of</strong> workforce after enlargement <strong>of</strong> EU.