New Ways To Work And
Electronic Commerce

The year 1998 marks a turning point in the development of new working practices in Europe. Although definitions are very difficult in this rapidly changing field, current best estimates indicate that about 4 million Europeans, about 2½% of the workforce, are teleworking in one form or other. This is twice as many as 2 years ago. In addition, what we termed "telework" a couple of years ago is now considered a "normal" way of working. Telework is rapidly developing into a mainstream work practice.

The changing employment situation in Europe is driving people and organisations towards new ways of working and of organising work, and technology itself is arguably the major enabling factor. The increase in telework is a consequence of the rapid development of key technologies, such as mobile telephony (mainly GSM, currently with 85 million subscribers globally), the Internet, and the increasing use of intranets within business organisations and extranets. The technologies underpinning call centre development, for instance, have already resulted in new employment for about 400,000 Europeans.

The shift from the Fourth to the Fifth Framework Programme, and particularly to the Information Society Thematic Programme, is well on track for decision and implementation by the end of 1998.

For the first time, this Commission proposal for the Fifth Framework Programme brings together in one Key Action (Key Action 2 of the Information Society Technologies programme) all actions related to helping individuals improve the quality of their working lives; helping companies operate more efficiently,, as well as in trading goods and services.

It is expected that the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament will agree to approximately 500 MECU of support for the Key Action on New Methods of Working and Electronic Commerce.

This will give a significant financial boost to the development of more flexible working practices, as well as to the quality of working life for all working people. It represents a major effort to put Europe at the forefront of the next generation of technology development and support for new working practices and employment opportunities.

The basic task of the European Union’s research and technological development policy is to ensure that advances in knowledge and technologies serve the purposes of the Union and its policies. From this perspective, the two inseparably linked objectives of this policy, taken into account during the preparation of the Fifth Framework Programme proposal from the Commission, are:

The aim of this work is to develop Information Society technologies to enable European workers and enterprises, in particular SMEs, to increase their competitiveness in the global marketplace, whilst at the same time improving the quality of the individual’s working life, through the use of Information Society technologies to provide the flexibility to be free from many existing constraints on both working methods and organisation, including those imposed by distance and time. It covers both the development and the trading of goods and services, in particular in the electronic marketplace, and takes into account the different requirements of the individual worker, consumer and of businesses and organisations, and includes related

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training. Considerations of the global context, in particular the rapid evolution of the marketplace, and socio-economic factors will guide the work, and the objective will be to develop and demonstrate world-best work and business practices, exploiting European strengths such as electronic payments, smart cards, mobile systems, software for business process modelling and enterprise management and consumer protection

1. context of a genuine ‘European research area’, the research potential of European laboratories, universities and companies and their ability to produce knowledge of the highest level and high-quality technologies
2. to help ensure that European research serves the Union’s economic and social objectives, in other words, European research at the service of the citizen and European competitiveness in a global framework.

The Objectives and RTD priorities of the Key Action on New Ways to Work and Electronic Commerce are defined in the Specific Programme as follows:

It is the intention to form the Key Action around four groups of Action Lines which, while each has its own separate focus, are integrated together.

1. The first group of Action Lines (Flexible, mobile and remote working methods and tools: Human Workspaces, Shared Spaces for Collaborative Work, Dynamic Networked Organisations) are those that bring together the needs of the individual and then those of teams and finally those of organisations, and their interaction with their environments.
2. The second group (Management systems for suppliers and consumers: Digital Design & Development, Customer-Product Relationships, New Marketplaces, Financial Services for Trade & Commerce) lead naturally on through the development of new goods, systems and services, the management of customer relationships, and the trading and the financing of products and services in the new market places.
3. These two groups are underpinned by a number of Action Lines related to security (Information security: Digital Object Security Management, Acceptable Authentication Architectures, Components & Services for Non-Cash Payments).
4. The whole is tied together by Action Lines that cut across the Key Action and link through to activities elsewhere in the IST Programme and in the other thematic programmes and in other European policies.

This grouping, however, is subject to further development of the Work Programme for the IST Programme. It is the intention to consult with an external advisory group in October 1998, and to propose the Work Programme to the European Council of Research Ministers by the end of the year, followed by a proposal to the IST Management Committee.

Consequently, the first Calls for Proposals are to be expected in early 1999.

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