Are Existing Security Models Suitable for Teleworking?

The availability of high performance broadband services from the home will allow a growing number of organisations to offer teleworking as an employee work practice. Teleworking delivers cost savings, improved productivity and provides a recruitment policy to attract and retain personnel. Information security is one of the management considerations necessary before an effective organisational teleworking policy can be implemented. The teleworking computing environment presents a different set of security threats to those present in an office environment. Teleworking requires a security model to provide security policy enforcement to counter the set of security threats present in the teleworking computing environment. This paper considers four existing security models and assesses each model’s suitability to define security policy enforcement for telework. The approach taken is to identify the information security threats that exist in a teleworking environment and to categorise the threats based upon their impact upon confidentiality of data, system and data integrity, and availability of service in the teleworking environment. It is found that risks exist to the confidentiality, integrity and availability of information in a teleworking environment and therefore a security model is required that provides appropriate policy enforcement. A set of security policy enforcement mechanisms to counter the identified information security threats is proposed. Using an abstraction of the identified threats and the security policy enforcement mechanisms, a set of attributes for a security model for teleworking is proposed. Each of the four existing security models is assessed against this set of attributes to determine its suitability to specify policy enforcement for telework. Although the four existing models were selected based upon their perceived suitability it is found that none provide the required policy enforcement for telework

A systematic review of the energy and climate impacts of teleworking

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) increasingly enable employees to work from home and other locations (‘teleworking’). This study explores the extent to which teleworking reduces the need to travel to work and the consequent impacts on economy-wide energy consumption. Methods/Design: The paper provides a systematic review of the current state of knowledge of the energy impacts of teleworking. This includes the energy savings from reduced commuter travel and the indirect impacts on energy consumption associated with changes in non-work travel and home energy consumption. The aim is to identify the conditions under which teleworking leads to a net reduction in economy-wide energy consumption, and the circumstances where benefits may be outweighed by unintended impacts. The paper synthesises the results of 39 empirical studies, identified through a comprehensive search of 9,000 published articles. Review results/Synthesis: Twenty six of the 39 studies suggest that teleworking reduces energy use, and only eight studies suggest that teleworking increases, or has a neutral impact on energy use. However, differences in the methodology, scope and assumptions of the different studies make it difficult to estimate ‘average’ energy savings. The main source of savings is the reduced distance travelled for commuting, potentially with an additional contribution from lower office energy consumption. However, the more rigorous studies that include a wider range of impacts (e.g. non-work travel or home energy use) generally find smaller savings. Discussion: Despite the generally positive verdict on teleworking as an energy-saving practice, there are numerous uncertainties and ambiguities about its actual or potential benefits. These relate to the extent to which teleworking may lead to unpredictable increases in non-work travel and home energy use that may outweigh the gains from reduced work travel. The available evidence suggests that economy-wide energy savings are typically modest, and in many circumstances could be negative or non-existent

PhD teleworking

Amongst some bosses there appears to be a mentality that if you are not in the office then you can’t be working. I suspect that this attitude comes from how they themselves operate if they are not in the office. Maybe their attitude towards teleworking says more about their own working practices than anything else. Thankfully, attitudes appear to be changing. There has been steep rise in the number of people who engage in 'teleworking' (i.e., people working from home). Teleworking is no longer the sole domain of the self-employed or low-paid outworkers. Many jobs do not lend themselves to working from home, however, academia is one profession that working from home can bring great dividends. Many people love the thought of a day at home working without gossiping colleagues, non-essential meetings, and constant interruptions. This may also be very attractive to those working on a PhD! Surveys have shown that teleworkers are 60% more efficient when compared to their officebased counterparts (Lawrence, 1999). One in twenty people in the UK now work at least one day a week from home (Welch, 1999a; Lawrence, 1999) and save themselves an average of two hours commuting time (Welch, 1999b). According to the Henley Centre, more than 50% of the workforce will be working from home by 2010 (Cook, 1999)

WP 7 - Teleworking policies of organisations - The Dutch experience

The over-all picture concerning the diffusion of telework stemming from research undertaken in 2000 and 2001 is rather negative. Teleworking policies of organisations hardly go beyond the minimal definition that we used in analyzing Dutch surveys from these years (organisations offering the opportunity for teleworking and, if they were asked for, paid for the necessary facilities). The conclusion is not exaggerated that a large majority of Dutch organisations are playing a waiting game on teleworking, even in sectors where jobs show a rather high ‘teleworkability’. The few exceptions (Interpolis, TNO Arbeid), mainly seizing the opportunities of building new offices or relocate their businesses, to combine flexible offices with teleworking policies, soon get nation-wide attention. Meanwhile, various surveys indicate a further growth of telework in the Netherlands in the 1999-2001 period, although this expansion seems to concentrate on multi-site telework by mainly self-employed – largely a ‘new economy’ phenomenon (Van Klaveren and Van de Westelaken, 2001). In this country, teleworking is apparently spreading rather informally and implicitly, leaving a wide gap between the policies of organisations and the preferences of many workers.

Teleworking practice in small and medium-sized firms: Management style and worker autonomy

In an empirical study of teleworking practices amongst small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in West London, organisational factors such as management attitudes, worker autonomy and employment flexibility were found to be more critical than technological provision in facilitating successful implementation. Consequently, we argue that telework in most SMEs appears as a marginal activity performed mainly by managers and specialist mobile workers

Homeworking, telecommuting and journey to workplaces - Are differences among genders and professions varying over space?

The aim of this paper is to assess differences on homeworking and teleworking behaviour among genders considering age groups, professional statuses, household structures and car access. The analysis is based on a sample of more than 30,000 workers responding to the 2001 origin-destination (O-D) survey data in Quebec City (Canada). Moreover, this paper puts specific emphasis on linking those differences in behaviour to the location of workplaces related to living places of the respondents. During the O-D survey, every worker was asked to disclose the frequency of homeworking and teleworking he/she was experiencing during the preceding weeks. Answers were later aggregated into six categories: never working at home (88.4% of respondents), working at home 1 day per two weeks or less (4.8%), 1 day per week (1.7%), 2 or 3 days per week (1.2%), 4 days or more per week (0.7%), always working at home (3.2% – homeworkers). However, those patterns show significant differences among genders (higher proportion of females are working entirely at home; higher proportion of males are occasionally working at home), age groups (younger workers seldom work at home and the proportion of teleworker increases with age – about 16% among the 55-64 years old and 27% among the elderly) and professional status (proportion of teleworkers is strongly related to qualifications and decisional status of the person, yielding higher levels of teleworking for managers, self-employed persons, professors and lawyers than for office clerks, technicians and non-qualified workers). This last relationship is very strong suggesting that job empowerment (especially ability to control time schedule) is of paramount importance for the development of teleworking. However, having higher family constraints, lone parents are seeking more flexibility on their work agenda: 12% are experiencing some level of teleworking on top of 3% of them which are homeworkers. Again, the difference appears more significant among male than among female workers, suggesting again a better control of the first group on their work schedule. Moreover, owning a driver license or holding a bus pass does not have the expected effect on teleworking: car drivers are working at home more frequently than other people; conversely 92% of bus users are going to their work place every weekday, leaving a mere 8% to teleworking and homeworking. Significant differences appear when considering workplaces and home locations within the city. People working near the city centre are more willing than others to consider teleworking, people living in the suburban areas show higher levels of homeworking. Finally, significant differences of travel time from home to work were found among various categories of teleworkers and homeworkers. Preliminary results suggest that the development of teleworking could be highly rooted to labour market and household structures as well as to the urban form. Urban sprawl is probably impeding development of teleworking, at least for Quebec City.

Atypical working practices in the East Midlands

The aim of this research was to examine the extent and nature of atypical working practices in the East Midlands region and, in particular, look at the way in which these forms of work are likely to encourage employment and economic development in remote rural areas, and more generally, promote social inclusion

E-work and IT for developing rural areas in Hungary

Information Technologies (IT) are a powerful driver for economy-wide productivity, growth and jobs – and are arguably Europe’s best-bet investment for the future. They give great potential to transform the way in which we work, live and interact. The digital convergence of media and information services, networks and devices provide unique opportunities: for firms, to modernize their business processes and deliver a wide range of services; for consumers, for individuals to find and do remote e-work. The ratio of teleworkers compared to all employees is estimated to reach around 5% in Hungary today. The main objectives of the New Hungary Development Plan being the successor of NFT. Being part of the plan package, the Operative Program for the Development of the Economy significantly focuses on the support of the utilisation of ICT technologies and applications. This and the Hungarian Rural Development Starategy will support the exploitation of teleworking opportunities, thereby contributing to the employment of the disabled, persons with changed working capabilities and women

Implications of the Information Technology Revolution for People with Disabilities

The paper focuses on opportunities for the integration of persons with different types of disabilities in the information technology (IT) labour market. Recent IT developments are identified and examined for their potentially harmful or beneficial effects on access to the IT labour market for persons with disabilities. The opportunities created by new job creation, new forms of training, teleworking, and the role of assistive technologies in facilitating workplace accommodations are briefly described. The focus is on new options for the design and implementation of computer-related assistive technologies in the workplace, and the impact of teleworking and the World Wide Web on employability and work-related training of persons with disabilities. The paper closes with a brief discussion of the roles that government agencies, business firms, labour unions, non-governmental organisations and education can play to help people with disabilities join the IT revolution and share its benefits