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Maarten Botterman, Expert in the horizontal actions area of the ACTS Programme, specialising in telework.
Email address: 100315.1276@compuserve.com
Bartolome Arroyo, Project Officer in the mobile networks area of the ACTS Programme, European Commission, DG XIII, Brussels.
Email address: bartolome.ARROYO-FERNANDEZ@bxl.dg13.cec.be
Michael Griffith, Expert in the high speed and multimedia networks area of the ACTS Programme.
Email address: 100416.2727@compuserve.com
(ACTS = Advanced Communications Technologies and Services programme, consisting of research and trials, the successor to the RACE programme.)
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Teleworking is made possible by information and communications technologies. Many of the problems facing teleworkers today can be greatly alleviated by new, high speed network technologies. Such problems include isolation from colleagues, slow rates of information transfer, high costs of communication and poor communications facilities in rural areas. These problems are being be addressed by new developments in networks in the next 5 to 10 years leading towards universally affordable teleprescence. In the European Union's ACTS programme, over 150 projects are exploring the many possibilities in research, development and trials throughout Europe.
The views expressed in this paper are those of the authors, and do not necessarily represent those of the European Commission.
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Introduction page 2The changing society page 2The role of ACTS page 6Teleworkers' requirements page 6Worldwide interoperability page 7Fast, universal access page 9Conclusions page 14
A basis for European Union policies on economic growth and employment is the belief that a rapid transition to an "Information Society" through fast deloyment of advanced communications infrastructures and services, will generate competitive advantages for business, greater flexibility in employment and more jobs, and new sustainable economic growth. Communications technology can bring work to people, through distance working and flexible working - telework. It also allows new ways of organising work, and new employment relationships.
Telework is high on the agenda today, both in the public and the private sector. Within a short period of time the number of teleworkers in Europe has grown to a couple of millions. Rather than arguing about the accurate number, it is clear that telework has become a more widely accepted work practice... but the actual uptake is still too insignificant to see it as a main stream form of working.
Amongst the reasons given are: the ongoing resistance by middle management ("How do I know what they are doing if they aren't around...") and uncertainty about the status (legal aspects, etc) and impact ("I hear confusing stories...").
However, the use of teleworksupporting technologies is quickly becoming mainstream practice in a rapidly changing society. What are those technologies, and how can they support teleworkers in overcoming differences in place and time? Which developments will lead towards universally affordable and accessible telepresence?
This paper will try to give you some answers, to sketch some scenarios. Building on an analysis of the ongoing changes in our society today, an attempt will be made to identify the needs of teleworkers in the future, and to link those to the technologies which are expected to be deployed in the coming 10 years... Some of those needs might not be recognised, yet. But then again: who needed absorbent kitchen roll, before it was put on the market... the authors certainly did, if the thought had occurred to them!
The world we live in today is far beyond the imagination of people at the beginning of this century. Who would realise today, for instance, that the first PCs were only introduced in Europe at the beginning of the 1980s? In 1996 there are in Europe 72 PCs per 100 office workers, in the USA 104! And already 24.5 million of Europe's 143 million households have personal computers in the home.
Telephone penetration (residential lines), which was 87% in 1990, has gone up to 96%. Today, in Europe, already more than 9 million of those users have ISDN facilities: a number which is expected to grow to 24 million within 4 years. The first digital mobile phones were available in Europe in 1993. Today there are almost 18 million subscribers in Europe, and over 41 million worldwide in more than 70 countries, and this is expected to grow to 200 million users at the end of the millenium. How does this link in to the changes in the way we live and work?
To understand where we are today we must learn from the past. Looking back at the "waves" in the history of modern man, there are basically three "waves" that have resulted in fundamental transformations of society.
The First Wave brought us the Agricultural Era, when everyone lived and worked on the land and social activities took place in small, decentralised nuclei. Travel was rare, the only individuals with status were landowners (and church).
The "Second Wave" took us into the Industrial Society. Mass production, standardisation, centralisation of the economy, power shifted to capital owners, social domination went to the "majority". Mobility and transportation became increasingly important, since goods were produced centrally and sold where-ever the market was: even abroad.
The Third Wave, which we are now experiencing, resembles the first, in that work is relocating back to where people live. It is dubbed the Information Age, the Age of the Global Village. The balance of power is shifting again, this time to users of information. National borders are becoming blurred and the regions are growing in importance. Democratisation is being translated into the decentralisation of power. Minorities have gained a voice and diversification is increasing, all in a single synergetic movement. The individual is becoming important. In just one century, thanks to increased prosperity and faster and cheaper modes of communication and transport, the places where people choose to live are becoming increasingly independent from the places where they work, whereas they were once totally dependent on the location of the workplace.
However, until today employment has only partly followed this displacement.
There is no doubt that the world is changing faster and faster. One of the concerns of the society of the future is that automation will increasingly put the squeeze on employment. And most of whatever work is left will be done at home. The home of the future will be different: as well as a telephone and cable or satellite television, almost everybody will have a personal computer connected to Internet. Television sets will also access the Internet as the broadcast culture converges with the World Wide Web culture. People will use this equipment for their private needs:
These developments are all taking place very quickly, and, with the breaking of the monopolies of national telecoms operators, the possibilities will increase even more rapidly. From 1998 in the EU the telecoms market will be deregulated. The resulting entry of new competitors to the market is likely to ensure that altermative infrastructures are put in place, and will probably lead to a sharp decrease in prices
Modern technology is rapidly penetrating the average home. Thanks to "PC Privé projects" in the 1980s [schemes under which employees are encouraged to buy their own PCs through the provision of advice, favourable terms, etc.], experience with PCs at work and rapidly falling prices, more and more people have an increasingly better quality PC at home. And these are more and more connected to the Internet. Today (1996) there are already over 100 million PCs equiped with CDROM readers in the US and Europe, with a growth rate of 30% a year. Over 44 million people have Internet access, and over 10 million host computers can be accessed, each with its own store of information and services, with a growth rate of about 100% per annum.
The growth of information technology and our information-based society are making it possible for much of our work to be done away from the centralised workplace. Everyone is now caught up in these changes, whether they are defending the old or promoting the new, or whether they are merely adopting a wait-and-see attitude or are actively exploiting opportunities.
The European Commission addressed these changes in 1993, in the White Paper "Growth, Competititveness and Employment; the Challenges and Ways Forward into the 21st Century". With a strong focus on employment, new policy lines were set out, and teleworking was identified as one of the applications which could help Europe in its way forward.
This focus became stronger in 1994, with the publication of the "Bangemann Report", to the Council of Europe. According to this report, which was adopted by the Council in June 1995 at Corfu, it is not only important that Europe look into the possibilities of the new era, but also that it be done quickly:
"The first countries to enter the Information Society will reap the greatest rewards. They will set the agenda for all who must follow. By contrast, countries which temporise, or favour half hearted solutions, could, in less than a decade, face disastrous decline in investment and a squeeze on jobs"
Following the Bangemann Report a lot of member states adopted an Action Plan, in order to boost further developments towards adopting new technologies and infrastructures in working and living.
In order to better understand the ongoing changes, which would allow a more focused policy, new groups of experts were formed. Reports from the High Level Group of Experts of Social and Societal Aspects of the Information Society (sometimes refered to as the "Soete", or: "Flynn" group) ond the Information Society Forum provided important input for the Green Paper "Living and Working in the Information Society: People First". This was launched in September 1996 in Dublin by Commissioner Flynn, who is responsible for Employment and Social Affairs.
The two main concerns in this are:
Quoting the Irish Minister for Labour Affairs, Ms Eithne Fitzgerald, on the employment effects:
We wouldn't want to, nor can we like the Luddites, defy the march of technology. The task of society and of governments is to anticipate and master change; to redeploy resources freed up by technology into higher output, greater creativity, more leisure, and to harness the potential to deliver a more open and creative society. The Information Society has not signalled the end of work. Rather it has opened up new job opportunities in servicing this rapidly growing sector, and it has generated new sources of wealth. The European computer industry has seen a growth of 40% in employment and the number of jobs in the telecommunications industry is set to triple in the 1990's, from 18 million to 60 million.
One important aspect in the avoidance of exclusion is Universal Service Provision: which services should be accessible and affordable for everybody? As Peter Johnston of the European Commission DG XIII explained:
The old concern that rural communities will be disadvantaged because of technical difficulties in providing access, or because of the high cost of providing access, is disappearing. However, "critical groups" today are the homeless, unemployed, children and the poor: they often don't have any money for communications services. As part of the social welfare system a free, or subsidised access, to communications services would be a necessity.
As the monopolies of national telecom operators are torn down, full geographical coverage including unprofitable areas might be difficult to uphold without subsidies. In June 1996 the Council of Europe adopted a Common Position paper9, that provides guidelines for national regulatory bodies. It is proposed that the telecoms sector should fund universal service, by means of national universal service funds, which telecoms operators would contribute to or draw on according to appropriate rules. The level of universal service envisioned in this document is telephony, which also allows the use of fax machines and modems.
In the future, a higher grade of universal service facilities might be provided via "kiosks", but a general feeling is that, if services are not available on the spot, people will not build their lives around them. Telecentres (neighbourhood telework centres) are already providing a kind of universal service at a higher level of facilites than telephony in some communities. Satellite communications, being distance independent, could offer a technical solution. A vision is needed,as to what type universal access should be provided in the future; the R&D programmes directed by the European Commission can play an important role in this.
The Advanced Communications Technologies and Services Programme was established as a successor of RACE under the Fourth Framework for EU Research, technology development and demonstrations (1994 - 1998). It provides incentives for industry, operators, research and educational institutions and major users of communications to work together in new technologies and services and brings together over 1000 companies, public sector organisations, schools and research institutes, all over Europe, sharing an EC contribution up to 671 MECU, which is about 5% of the total budget available for European Research under the Fourth Framework Programme. Each of the 150 or so projects is carried out by a consortium whose members must be based in more than one EU country. The EC normally funds projects up to 50%.
The ACTS Programme involves the largest set of linked trials and demonstrations of new communications services anywhere in the world. The high-speed "National Host" infrastructures provided by the public and private sectors at national level as the basis for service trials represent the first Trans-European Information Infrastructure – a web of high-capacity optical fibres, cables, radio and satellite links that is a foretaste of the infrastructure that will change everyone's life and work within 20 years. This first interconnected set of national hosts will allow over 10,000 businesses and over a million Europeans to participate in trials of new services over the next three years.10
The use of advanced communications technologies will make traditional services cheaper and make many new services economically viable: services like videophony, multimedia mail, electronic libraries and home shopping in the broadest sense. Research shows that an advanced communications infrastructure will create new job opportunities in all areas of the economy, not just in the communications sector. The project FAIR concludes in its studies on the socio-economic impact of advanced communications that, if we want to reap the benefits of investments in advanced communication technologies and services, it is key to address universal access, pricing of Internet access, consumer choice and prevention of anti-competitive practices.
In the ACTS Programme chains of projects are working together on interoperability issues and the development of guidelines, as well as the implementation of teleworking opportunities and electronic commerce.
The basic networking requirement of teleworkers is in theory very simple - overcoming separation in time and space! What does this mean in practical terms? It implies access to a high speed, open, global information highway, that supports real time audio and motion video as well as text communications. It includes fast access to the Internet and to employers' corporate networks from home or from local telecentres.
Class of Examples Bits per second
applications required at the
workstation
(approx.)
Conversational Videoconferencing, desktop to desktop, 128 Kbits/sec for
audio-visual multi-person, with open low resolution, to 2
interoperability and instant conference Mbits/sec for TV
set-up. Including shared PC screen and resolution.
keyboard, and shared whiteboard.
Virtual meeting rooms supporting Around 1 to 2
videoconferencing. Mbits/sec
Videophony 64-128 Kbits/sec
Non real time Multimedia email (with audio and video 128 Kbits/sec
interpersonal clips); upwards
Computer Supported Co-operative Working 64 Kbits/sec upwards
Transfer of high resolution graphics 64 Kbits/sec upwards
files (Computer Aided Design).
Retrieval and Access to Web and other servers 1 to 2 Mbits/sec
transactions. supporting real time audio and motion downstream to the
video. workstation, 64
Kbits/sec upstream
from the
workstation.
Table 1. New generic applications for teleworkers in 2002-2006
In order to better understand teleworkers' advanced network requirements, we need to look at the applications they will use. Table 1 gives a summary of new generic applications for teleworkers, that are not in widespread use today but could be by around 2002-2006. It is of course assumed that the existing tools - telephone, fax, email, narrowband Internet/Web - will continue to be used as well. The bits per second figures in Table 1 allow for the fact that improved data compression standards (e.g. MPEG-4, JPEG2000) will be in widespread use. Other possible applications, involving for example virtual reality or the telemanipulation of objects, are not yet developed enough to allow comment on the bit rates required.
Interoperability demands standard interfaces at all layers, from applications, through network switching, to physical transmission media. Outstandingly successful global examples today are the public switched telephone network and the Internet/Web.
The rigid numbering structure of most of today's public telephone networks places many constraints on people on the move and teleworkers. The way telephone sets are wired to fixed points in the telephone exchange ties up terminals with specific telephone numbers regardless of who is actually using the service.
A short term solution is provided by the call redirection facilities that are currently available. This solution is not ideal because it involves having to remember to key in redirection codes.
A long term solution is offered by UPT (Universal Personal Telecommunications) and other IN (Intelligent Networks) concepts, which permit the assignment of numbers to individuals rather than terminals. The personal number will travel with the user wherever he or she goes. To arrive to this point, it is necessary to restructure the current numbering system and to incorporate both mobile and fixed networks in a common numbering structure. The proliferation of competing networks introduces a new element of complexity regarding the numbering aspects and portability of terminal equipment due to the multiplicity of standards. Personal mobility is facilitated by the use of smart cards to register on another network through a terminal adapted to that particular network. Cellular networks are very advanced on this respect. The GSM system provides global roaming and more advanced IN features in a revised standard. The EC is preparing a Common Position paper on numbering policy.
As shown in the figure below the Internet is a global interconnection of networks of data communications routers that use IP (Internet Protocol). The routers are interconnected by means of infrastructure provided by telecoms operators, such as leased lines, dial-up circuits and switched data services. Having originated as a research network funded by the US Department of Defence, the Internet is now largely commercially self supporting. It has become the predominant means of access to all online data services by home and small business PCs, and is now seen by the general public as the global data highway. Internet access is offered by hundreds of private enterprise Internet Service Providers.
Major telecoms companies now offer Internet access. Extrapolating the growth rate of the past decade, the number of host computers on Internet is forecast to grow by a factor of 10 in the period 1997 to 1999, from 13 million to 130 million. The number of users is larger than the number of hosts - estimates put it about 50 million currently.
The Web is a generic application software platform, using the Internet for communications. The phenomenal growth of the Web (from 100,000 to 230,000 Web sites in the first six months of 1996) has led to severe congestion in parts of the Internet. Demand for bandwidth has run ahead of supply (good news for telecoms operators!). The Web is moving rapidly towards greater interactivity and support of audio and real-time video, which will require a great deal more bandwidth. Commercialisation of the Internet is likely to solve this problem, as global operators deploy worldwide, high speed Internet backbones, interconnected with the existing Internet.
User organisations are beginning to deploy Web servers for internal use; corporate networks of IP routers and Web servers are known as Intranets. They can provide employees and customers with ready access to corporate information which has hitherto been hard to find, and they can link seamlessly with the Internet. Intranets are in an explosive growth phase. Figure 1 shows the interconnection relationships between Intranets, Internet services providers Internet backbone networks. Each small segment in the circles conceptually represents a network. The backbone networks switch the aggregate traffic of the access service providers and the backbone routers are interconnected by leased lines of hundreds of Mbits/sec bandwidth, migrating towards thousands of Mbits/sec.
The Internet protocols are being enhanced to carry real time audio and video, while the Mbone is an experimental subset of Internet routers that can emulate broadcasting. At the same time, development work is proceeding rapidly to enable Web servers to have greater interactivity using JAVA software, and to deliver real time audio-video streams. Standards for real time audio-video on the Internet and Web are still at the experimental stage but should be mature by the turn of the century.
Security on the Internet is perceived as a problem, but the issue is being addressed as a matter of urgency by the Internet Engineering Task Force, as well as by banks and credit card companies. Leading credit card companies recently reached agreement on methods of payment across the Internet. Strong firewalls exist today at the entry points to corporate networks, to prevent unauthorised access.
The local public network is often the bottleneck for teleworker's PC communications.
Figure 2. Access network alternatives
Table 2 gives some typical data transfer times for different types of access network. These transfer times will only be achieved if the stated bandwidth is available end-to-end. In practice, when transferring data across the Internet for example, congestion may occur at Web servers, or in parts of the Internet itself as discussed above.
Time to transfer a Time to transfer a
Connection type and speed 1min. audio-video normal resolution
clip, 1/16 of TV full screen still
resolution, (file picture,
size 1 Mbyte) (file size) 50
Kbytes
Telephone modem, 28.8 Kbits/sec 4.6 minutes 14 seconds
2 simultaneous ISDN calls 1 minute 3 seconds
combined, 128 Kbits/sec
Cable/ADSL/optical modem running 8 seconds 0.4 second
at 1 Mbit/sec
Table 2. Likely data transfer times
As in Table 1, the bits per second figures in Table 2 allow for the fact that improved data compression standards will be in widespread use in 2002-2006.
Faster telephone modems, 56 Kbits/sec as compared with today's maximum of 28.8 Kbits/sec, will soon come on to the market. ISDN service (with two B-channels each of 64 Kbits/sec) is widely available in most European countries.
Both telephone and cable television operators are progressively bringing optical fibre nearer to the home. Fibre all the way to the home or telecentre is generally too expensive today, because of the cost of optical-to-electrical conversion, but may be economic by 2002-2006. using existing copper cable for the last kilometre, cable televison operators are beginning to offer Internet access via cable modems working around 1 Mbit/sec downstream and some tens of Kbits/sec upstream (Figure 3). A standard for cable modems has been issued by DAVIC (worldwide Digital Audio Visual Council) and a slighty different version called 802.14 is being developed by the IEEE (US Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers).
Similarly, telephone companies will soon offer ADSL (Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Loop) modems, which will work at speeds similar to cable modems, using standards developed by the ADSL Forum. Volume production is likely to bring the price and cost of acquiring and using cable and ADSL modems down to the level of today's telephone modems, by about 2002-2006.
Figure 3. Cable modem network architecture - example
Call setup times are also important. With a telephone modem, call set-up takes tens of seconds. With ISDN it takes up to about a second and with cable and ADSL (Asymmetrical Digital Subscriber Loop) modems it can be zero. This is because these modems can have a permanent physical connection to their local IP router.
A number of ACTS projects are investigating the use of wireless technologies - terrestrial and satellite - to extend the reach of the fixed access networks. Telecoms companies, cable television operators and satellite television operators are all interested in these possibilities.
The terrestrial developments mainly come under the heading of 'Interactive MMDS' (Multi-Microwave Distribution Systems), or 'cellular television'. By the period 20022006, in addition to relaying hundreds of television channels to rural customers, such networks could provide 64 Kbits/sec two-way channels, at a cost equivalent to that of today's telephony. ACTS projects are carrying out trials of interactive MMDS, aiming to achieve upstream bit rates of 2 Mbits/sec eventually.
The satellite developments use VSAT (Very Small Aperture Terminal) two-way communications technology based on geo-stationary satellites. In the longer term, there are plans to launch hundreds of LEO (Low Earth Orbit) satellites, which will provide full global coverage. They will offer access channel bandwidths from around 8 Kbits/sec to 2 Mbits/sec, but the cost could be significantly higher than the same bandwidth on wired networks.
Technical advances and significant changes in regulatory environments, backed by strong political European vision and commitment from the telecommunications industry, led to the commercial emergence of second-generation digital systems and a much wider telecommunications market. This market encompasses cellular radio and the closely related personal communications network system, else known as the "GSM family". The term "GSM family" is taken to include GSM 900 as well as DCS 1800 and its North American derivative PCS 1900. In a broader sense other members of the GSM family cover a variety of application environments such as low-power short-range cordless telephones and cordless PBXs (Private Branch Exchanges) for domestic and business applications (CT2/CAI and DECT), paging systems (ERMES), wireless computer data links (HiperLan), radio-based local-loop systems (DECT), trunked radio systems for public service operations and hand-held terminals for air-to-ground passenger telecommunications service.
World-wide, GSM is the most feature rich cellular digital system for mobile communications with most operational networks supporting basic services such as voice, facsimile, short message service and circuit switched data services. In addition, forwarding and barring services are offered in all networks and a number of supplementary services will be introduced in the phase 2 of the standard.
The very success of second-generation equipment in becoming more cost-effective and increasingly cost-attractive justifies the projections that they will rapidly reach capacity and service saturation in Europe's major conurbations. In this context, the increased demand for mobile communications networks that are global, accommodate full multimedia applications and full mobility services will lead to the emergence of third-generation systems, Universal Mobile Telecommunications Systems (UMTS). These systems are presently the subject of a considerable research effort in the ACTS programme, and it is expected that the first UMTS networks will be deployed at the turn of the century.
Figure 4. Positioning of UMTS, MBS & WLAN's
Third generation systems are designed for smooth support of a wide range of multimedia broadband services within the various environments. Figure 4 shows the relative position of cordless, cellular, UMTS, WLANs (Wireless Local Area Networks) and MBS (Mobile Broadband Systems).
The multi-layer cell structure in UMTS aims to overcome the limitations of second generation systems by overlaying, discontinuously, pico and micro cells over the macro cell structure with wide area coverage. Global/Satellite cells can be seen in the same sense to provide wide area coverage where macro cell constellations are not economic, or/and to support long distance traffic.
Figure 5. Hierarchical Cell Structure
The set of services and mobility features that can be provided, will be different for each cell type as shown in Figure 5.
In an increasingly competitive telecommunications world, operators and service providers are forced to customise their service offerings to be able to increase market share and avoid customer churn. Current technology allows a number of possibilities that were unthinkable a few years ago. For each category of users there are a multiplicity of technologies that can satisfy its telecommunications needs. Wireless access provides a clear example of this. Wireless Local Loop can be realised at a comparable cost to the user, by cordless technologies in connection with the fixed networks, or by cellular technologies restricting mobility to a cell and hence reducing the service costs.
The main driver for mobile technology developments is to be able to extend to people on the move the full range of services offered by the fixed network while maintaining its quality of service. The question remains whether the costs will be comparable to the fixed access costs and whether the scarcity of spectrum will allow the provision of services to a sizeable number of users in the various environments.
Provision of low mobility broadband services is best served by WLAN's (Wireless Local Area Networks) and MBS (Mobile Broadband Systems). UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications Services) will provide by the turn of the century access bit rates ranging from 244 Kbits/sec up to 2 Mbits/sec, depending on the environment. Bit rate requirements are usually lower in high mobility scenarios and could go up to 2Mbit/s or even 20Mbit/s and more in the so called "picocells" (mobile computing).
On the issue of costs, the very dynamic development of mobile and wireless technologies and services and the high degree of flexibility that allows the optimisation of the network capabilities for the various environments, will permit a competitive range of broadband wireless services to be offered at prices comparable those of the fixed networks by the year 2002.
The conclusions ventured here are based on the assumption that de-regulation of the communications markets in Europe continues on its present course, so that the necessary technical developments and investments in new networks are forthcoming, stimulated by open competition between network operators. It also assumes that the new technologies will become socially embedded in a proper way, using them to their best extent.
The advanced applications we see in the near future, that will people facilitate in doing their work from where they want (Table 1) may be divided into two categories:
The problems of working together over distance will be be lessened. Teleworking and flexible working are set to become easier, less expensive, and applicable to many more people. Even for those who are restricted to narrowband access, it will be easy to hold daily videoconferences with boss, colleagues and customers, and to access audio, graphical and text information worldwide.
It is clear that available technology and communications, and the pricing of those, will stimulate further expansion of telework practices. Therefore the need of a social, and legal, framework is growing every day. The longer debates on these issues take, the more choices will be made by the natural development of the market place.
The European Commission, aware of these developments, launched in September 1996 the Greenpaper "Working and Living in the Information Society: People First" (available at http://www.ispo.cec.be), with the aims to help define policies which will accomodate the changes associated with the Information Society whilst meeting the aspirations of Europeans and preserving the diverse cultures and tradition of solidarity in Europe. The feedback obtained untill the end of 1996 will feed into an Action Plan, to be published early 1997.
For those making plans to support corporate teleworking, we would suggest some networking ingredients for success:
Please do keep yourself informed on the latest initiatives in this area through visiting the following WEB sites:
Information Society http://www.ispo.cec.be
European Policy http://europa.eu
ACTS http://www.infowin.org
Telework http://www.eto.org.uk