eWORK 2000 - European Telework Week

New Ways to Work 2000European TeleworkSwedenSeminar/work-shop at the Swedish Transport and Communication Research BoardThe topic of the workshop held in Stockholm on Tuesday November 2 was the impact of teleworking and newways of organising work on transport and the environment. It was organised by the Swedish Transport andCommunication Research Board, which runs a fund to finance research into transport and communications. Itscurrent key areas for research are decision tools for traffic policies, traffic security and the consequences ofICTs on society.Organisations represented at the workshop were Stockholm University, University of Linköping, University ofLund, University of Gothenburg, Ministry of Industry, Employment and Communication, SwedishEnvironmental Protection Agency and Swedish Institute for Transport and Communication Analysis.Inauguration of Herrgården at Masugnen, a Telework and Telelearning centre in LindesbergLindesberg is a small town with a successful telework strategy. The telecentre provides a base for about 50people working in training and tele-learning and thirty others engaged in research and development issues.Among the latter are the staff of Kopernicus Interactive AB, an enterprise which develops multimedia productsand teaching media for distance training, a 5 person research group from the National Institute for WorkingLife, and representatives of the University of Örebro.On Tuesday November 9, the inauguration took place of a new building which considerably expands thepremises of the centre and allows a adoption of new activities. Among the speakers at the event were the headof the University of Õrebro, the head of the Masugnen training centre, the head of the local community andtelework consultant Walter PaavonenWorkshop on Regional and Local Telework strategies, Ronneby, SwedenThis one-day workshop, held on November 17, was aimed at discussing how to take advantage of teleworkingand new ways of organising work in a regional context. The province of Blekinge in southern Sweden has formany years focused its activities on ICT-related businesses and has successfully built up an appropriateinfrastructure for high level education and distance independent businesses. The region today is home to one ofthe most successful Swedish mobile phone operators, Europolitan, and opinion poll companies Sifo and Gallupalso operate from Blekinge.Media interest in SwedenOctober: An 8 page supplement on Teleworking appeared in the October issue of the SAS Magazine. Thearticles (one of which explicitly mentioned the forthcoming European Telework Week) addressed theincreased productivity achieved by teleworking and discussed how to avoid drawbacks such as isolation. Oneof the articles was about a telework arrangement in Swedish Lapland where a female teleworker is takingdirectory enquiries from her home in a small village with only 6 inhabitants. Her regular workplace is 310kilometres away. From her remote workplace she has access to phone numbers to 550 million subscribers in260 different countries.October 13, 1999: A half page article about Teleworking was pubished in Computer Sweden. In it JonRognes, a researcher at Stockholm Business School, argues that home based teleworking is decreasing inSweden, while there is increase in mobile working. On November 2, 1999: A short article aboutTeleworking appeared in Metro, a free-of-charge daily newspaper distributed to train and metro commuters inthe Stockholm area. On November 10, 1999: A front page article and additional half page was published in- 158 -