eSangathan Newsletter N°7

April 2008
Last minute • First eSangathan International Conference was held in Mumbai on April 17, 2008.
• The European Commission presents the results of a review of the i2010 strategy half-
way through its term. In addition, apart from outlining the i2010 agenda for 2008-2010,
the mid-term review sets the ground for a longer-term discussion on how to develop the
policy beyond the lifespan of the i2010 initiative.
• eSangathan deliverables and presentations available on Scribd or SlideShare.

Editorial Enterprise 2.0 and Corporate hierarchical organization for content pro-
duction. So the intranets were at the be-
A few years ago, telework was a hot topic Governance ginning a cultural revolution in most of
in most developed economies. Research has
What are the links between e-manage- our businesses, but at the end the impact
been financed by the European framework
ment, web 2.0 and corporate governance? in terms of management finally was very
programmes to analyse the impact on the
They are in the fact that it is clearer every weak.
organisation and the tools best suited for
day that participatory tools and collabo-
such a change in behaviour and relation to
rative working environments are changing It’s totally different with the participa-
the hierarchy. Most of the experiments and
drastically the human interactions within tory web, where the questioning of ma-
pilots have concluded that when telework
corporations, and impacting first the or- nagement is complete, and hence the
was properly introduced in an organisation,
ganization and the management. For the organization of the enterprise itself. That
it was beneficial for both the employees and
benefit of the corporation itself, thanks is why we can replace the previous-deca-
the employer. In some countries where a
to the raise of a new level of collective de-words «e-management» with «Mana-
permanent negotiation process is on to in-
intelligence, and a new standard of pro- gement 2.0», and «e-organization» with
troduce adequate and justified changes or
ductivity. «Enterprise 2.0». Not to be hype with a
when business competitiveness is the driver,
telework has become a normal way of orga- « 2.0 » acronym, but because the prefix
The use of participatory technologies in «e-» hasn’t been disruptive for organiza-
nising work. In others, where the hierarchy
the company is changing radically rela- tions and management. The «2.0» prefix
is still statutory, organisational changes are
tionships between individuals. Breaking by contrast illustrates this qualitative and
slow and can be source of social conflicts.
top-down hierarchies, we are moving to a fundamental leap that we can no longer
Now, fighting for such rearguard battles is a
Network Centric Management, where the go back.
waste of time in the new 2.0 world of work.
supervisor will no longer base his legiti-
It is not a question of hype or fashion; it is to-
macy on his statutory authority to direct The Enterprise 2.0 will be a cross-orga-
day reality which is having direct impacts on
the work of others, but where he’ll be at nization, where information should flow
competitiveness, attraction and retention of
the same time a competent coordinator, seamlessly and securely, and where the
talents as well as quality of life and work-life
moderator, advisor and arbitrator of his creativity of everyone will be unleashed
balance in a stressful world.
teams and employees. giving to everybody the opportunity to
The major characteristic of a 2.0 manage- write, to say, to show, to talk, to share,
Lying, incompetence and other bad habits to discuss, to participate, and ultimately
ment style and attitude is to accept partici-
of a lot of deviated organizations that can to build together.
pation from all, in order to stimulate crea-
be more easily concealed in an authori-
tivity and innovation of everyone. Once it is
tarian management will be unveiled in Other virtues will then appear as a result
understood and agreed by the formal hierar-
broad daylight in a participatory mana- of this liberation, such as individual and
chy that such a new behavioural code can
gement emerging from the use of these collective efficiency, increased producti-
exist in the organisation, it is most probable
new tools. vity, quality improvement and transpa-
that employees will imply themselves more
and better in order to achieve corporate rency.
The introduction of these technologies in
© eSangathan Consortium All rights reserved

goals as well as personal well being. Of cour-

se, the hierarchy should communicate to
build trust. To be physically every day in the
corporation is not what is important! What
counts is how the employee feels him/her-
self involved in the corporate goals and part
of the achievements. Well chosen and used
appropriately ICT tools are enablers and
social networks are facilitators. So, for the
sake of good results and a better life, let’s
agree that change can be beneficial for all.
Nicole TURBÉ-SUETENS
DISTANCE EXPERT
Project co-ordinator
the enterprise, and even within the ex- Business leaders, from large and small
tended enterprise (customers, partners organizations, that will anticipate at first
and subcontractors), will change these these new usages, both within and out-
things, it is inevitable. Why ? Because in side their company, will be the first to
the same way, when intranets arrived in reap the real benefits of this new corpo-
the companies, they first came mostly for rate governance. It is necessary to invest
publication. Although employees tried to massively, to train and to support users,
use them in a more participative, the hie- from the assistant to the CEO, because
rarchy put workflows and securities. This adopting these practices doesn’t happen
way no change was generated by the in- overnight.
tranets.
Employees wanted to publish information This is not about learning to use software
without constraints. But a few years la- and pushing buttons. This is about thin-
ter, IT people succeeded to master this king and acting differently, working dif-
freedom, and intranets became again a

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 eSangathan Newsletter N°7
ferently, establishing different relationships, and this will not
be done in one day, but in several months. It’s why the change
must start as soon as possible in order to reap the benefits as
soon as possible as well.
We must all commit ourselves to evangelize. We are on a fertile
ground, because we are not at this disruption level only thanks
to the technology. We are facing the convergence of two funda-
mental factors: (1) technology, and (2) the changing usages due
to the Internet being here now for many years.
Most of the technologies of the Web 2.0 have nothing revolutio-
nary, and some of them exist for over a decade! But they have
spread these recent years very quickly because human beings
were ready to receive and exploit them.
We’ve reached the limits of our actual organizations, and it is
not possible to gain in daily productivity continuing to use the
same tools (files, emails, and legacy systems) with the same
organizations, because these tools are not anymore helping to
improve these organizations. They are even creating more and
more disorganization, and people are a lot more conscious of
this now.
This is why we are in the good momentum, because the cons-
ciousness and the demand exist. We must therefore push both
managers and users to be trained to these new usages, in order
to implode the traditional business models and managements,
and usher them in a new era of corporate governance, an era
where individual, its efficiency, creativity, and its relationship
to the team and the corporation, will be at the very heart of
economics and social growth the next few years, for the benefit
of all.
Miguel MEMBRADO
NETCIPIA UK
THE NETHERLANDS
Virtual Management for special groups, youngsters or
50+
1. Innovative with eSeniors
The present newsletter shows a lead to the new trends in ‘En-
terprise 2.0’. Also is stated that the ageing society requires a
radical restructuring of society and its systems: It should enable
fewer to do more for a greater number of (aged) people.
This one option to make advantage of the new possibilities is to
include aged people more into the new managing systems in or-
der to enable to work longer, but more flexible and off-distan-
ce. So, the real challenge is to incorporate this mission in new
experiments to test the feasibility of ‘ageproof’ technological
and social systems. Our eSangathan project is one of them. In
The Netherlands other try outs are busy or just launched.
1.1 Innovative care experiment
Excellent Senior Care - is the name of a Dutch project to faci-
litate 50+ and over in special working settings in a nursing home
for elderly care.
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April 2008
The project involves employed as unemployed 50+ people,
mostly female.
Through a Senior Magazine 50+ were polled at their need for
work in the care. A pre study in the organization was conducted
to the feasibility of a 50+ pilot. It is, under special conditions.
These are :
• A special design of work, with special focus to the physical
part of the work as well as the special senior qualities in
this situation,
• A sustainable designed work setting,
• And a good assistance organization in the process during the
pilot,
• giving room to the 50+ wish to do useful work which gives joy
and internal satisfaction.
For the sake of the project the AgeProof Agency has designed
a special 50+ job profile and 50+ job description, where in we
combined tasks of three care jobs and took all these aspects
into account. The 50+ experiment will last for 1, 5 year. Also
costs and revenues will be examined. eTechnological tools as
domotica and remote managing will be included as much as
possible to facilitate the 50+ care experiment, especially du-
ring the evening and the night.
Source: www.ageproof.nl
1.2 Creative 50+ networking
www.seniorweb.nl - Organisation for 50+ members to stimu-
late senior participation in the information society, already for
years successful thanks to volunteers/ambassadors. SeniorWeb
services can be virtual, interactive, on location in 300 national
SeniorWeb learning centres, or wide spread regional as pc help
on house. Ambassadors perform different activities for the 50+
members: managing a mailing group, giving workshops in lear-
ning centres or writing articles for website or magazine. The
jobs are (assistant) teacher, coordinator, administrator, mana-
ger on ICT systems, public relation, website, fundraising, board
member or pc helper.
www.Route50plus.nl - Just launched in April this year: a digi-
tal knowledge centre/database over the 50+. Heart of the new
website is an extended database with news, actual national and
international articles and knowledge about the 50 plus group.
1.3 Creative educational projects
The projects mentioned below are developed for students, but
the examples given are of the same value for another special
© eSangathan Consortium All rights reserved
group, namely the 50+.
Students learning for virtual manager - Under the name of
Bizzkids 5500 students of 250 schools in The Netherlands and
Belgium are busy in the management competition. The students
form a team of managers in a virtual enterprise. Within this
team all decisions are taken, which eventually will lead to the
title ‘Manager of the Year 2008.’ (Metro-23-1-2008)
Distant education for ill or handicapped students - Students
with an illness or handicap are more tired and not always able
to visit the school. More often then normal they stop without
having a diploma. E-learning turns out to be a good alternative
to prevent this. The project Eminus is developed to help young
 eSangathan Newsletter N°7
people with a physical or mental handicap. The Distant Lear-
ning project will eventually lead a job in the teleworking and
work in an optimal way. Cooperation of some enterprises is re-
levant. To participate in the lessons students and teachers need
to have special computers, where also other fellow students
and teachers are available. In this way a distant class arises.
Condition is a good working internet and professional helpdesk
(Metro-23-1-2008)
2. Free Enterprise 2.0
Attention should be made that It technology is not used as a
new controlling managing system. In The Netherlands for ins-
tance there is distrust about a new technology in which mana-
gers get information about the amount of stress at the working
place. The patent was requested by Microsoft. The new tool
recognizes frustration and stress of the worker. Psychological
changes are recorded to compare the workers profile in which
weight, age and health are recorded. This technology makes it
possible observe workers constantly. This questions the degree
of privacy for workers.
Marianne ZIEKEMEYER
AGEPROOF
SWEDEN
Extract from the report “An Environmentally Appropriate Infor-
mation Society in 2020” by the IT Policy Strategy Group, Swe-
den.
Like the rest of the world, Sweden faces major challenges in
which climate change, competition for natural resources, de-
mographic change and growing economies must be managed.
Innovation and new thinking are required to turn these chal-
lenges into opportunities. There is also rapid development in
new technology that is making a major contribution to changes
in society. Properly used, technology can be a tool to extract
economic and environmental benefit from the increased needs.
IT is a key factor and can contribute to breaking the negative
trend, in which increased growth leads to greater environmen-
tal impact.
This report by the IT Policy Strategy Group contains a proposed
national strategy for an environmentally appropriate informa-
tion society, the intention of which is to demonstrate the op-
portunities afforded by IT for exploiting environmental challen-
ges to bring about greater efficiency, productivity, innovation
and increased exports.
Sweden is often held up as a leading IT country and should ex-
ploit the opportunities afforded by IT in the form of resource-
and energy-efficient solutions, increased efficiency, scope for
modified lifestyles and international competitiveness. Environ-
mental technology is a sector for the future with a growing
international market. By investing in increased use of envi-
ronmental technology solutions, the Swedish market can grow
and innovativeness within the sector can increase. This creates
greater profitability for consumers and producers and, espe-
cially, it means less environmental impact on our society.
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April 2008
Effective work travel
The ever more globalised economy will undergo dramatic chan-
ges up to the year 2020 after a number of oil price rises. The
increased fuel costs, together with the greater importance of
the climate issue, will have led countries and enterprises to ra-
tionalize transport and travel. Flexible forms of work will have
become the norm and development will have been driven by
the insight that flexible work can increase productivity, reduce
costs for premises and increase comfort and wellbeing. Virtual
meetings will also have become the norm and will largely have
replaced physical meetings.
This development will have brought about a reduction in work
journeys, which will have contributed to increased productivity
and economic savings. The technology was in place early but
it required a number of measures and behavioral changes for
flexible work forms to make a breakthrough. An important part
of the technological development was the new laser projectors
which made virtual meetings extremely flexible. In 2020, howe-
ver, retinal projectors have been begun to be used increasingly.
The development towards more efficient travel has led to a
large reduction in carbon dioxide emissions from people trans-
port and major economic savings have been made as regards
previously very costly work journeys.
Flexible work
In step with the increasing IT use outside offices, above all of
mobile telephones, computers and broadband connections, it
becomes technically possible for more and more people to work
flexibly. But although the technology exists and many would like
to work flexibly to a greater extent, the employer’s attitude to
flexible forms of work often puts a stop to the development. If
distance-working is permitted to a greater extent than today,
this form of work can contribute to a reduction in work jour-
neys. An active introduction of flexible forms of work also has
an environmental potential in the form of reduced needs for
heated office space and for travel in the course of work.
For the employee, there can be greater flexibility and time-
savings. This can, however, also result in increased costs and a
requirement for extra space for the employee in the home en-
vironment. In the longer term, there can also be consequences
for social planning and housing patterns, which will need to be
studied to provide the basis for sound development in this area.
IT is nevertheless to a large extent a precondition for flexible
© eSangathan Consortium All rights reserved
forms of work, through technical solutions for distance-work
and a well-developed public IT infrastructure.
Changed age structure
One of the most interesting trends in the coming decades is the
demographic change in the world’s age structure. This will re-
quire a radical restructuring of society and its systems to enable
fewer to do more for a greater number of people in the ageing
population. The global change in age structure has meant that
fewer people support a greater number of the old. In 1950, 12
people supported each older person, today it is 9 people, and
by the year 2050 there will be 4 people to support each older
person. The change can contribute to a shift to a more environ-
ment-friendly society and hence to a great need for IT to make
 eSangathan Newsletter N°7
society more efficient.
Clear goals and focus areas
The way to an environmentally appropriate information society
in 2020 is through coordination and the creation of networks,
setting up clear goals and focusing on a number of areas.
There are now good prerequisites for carrying forward the work
within this field and it is important to take early action.
To achieve an environmentally appropriate information society,
transport must be made more efficient, travel and mobility
should be replaced by accessibility, construction and housing
must be more energy-efficient and the environmental impact of
IT products themselves must be reduced. This strategy includes
proposed measures and in all these fields, IT is both a catalyst
and a tool.
Source: http://www.regeringen.se/sb/d/6320/a/75131
Martina SOPHIA BACH
FOLKUNIVERSITETET
Flexicurity
At the request of the Council, the Commission has launched a pu-
blic initiative, in close cooperation with the European social par-
tners, in the form of a «Mission for Flexicurity».
This initiative aims to help Member States integrate the Common
Principles of Flexicurity in the national processes and promote the
practical implementation of the principles in the different national
eSangathan Newsletter is published by : eSangathan Consortium
Editorial Coordinator : NicoleTURBÉ-SUETENS (Distance-Expert)
assisted by Marie-France MÉDANA
europe@distance-expert.com
Editorial Board: Martina SOPHIA BACH, Leif Bloch RASMUSSEN, Chitresh MARKANDA
, Miguel MEMBRADO, Mandar VARTAK and Marianne ZIEKEMEYER
eSangathan is supported by : European Commission (DG INFSO)
Contract FP6-IST-035064, eSangathan Specific Support Action
For more information: info@esangathan.eu - http://www.esangathan.eu
4/4
April 2008
contexts.
Flexicurity is a new way of looking at flexibility and security on
the labour market. It sets out from the awareness that globali-
sation and technological progress are rapidly changing the needs
of workers and enterprises. Companies are under increasing
pressure to adapt and develop their products and services more
quickly. If they want to stay in the market, they have to conti-
nuously adapt their production methods and their workforce.
This is placing greater demands on business to help their wor-
kers acquire new skills. It is also placing greater demands on
workers with regards to their ability and readiness for change.
At the same time, workers are aware that company restructurings
no longer occur incidentally, but are becoming a fact of everyday
life. Protection of the specific job they have may no longer be suf-
ficient, and might indeed be counterproductive. In order to plan
their lives and careers, workers need new kinds of security that
help them remain in employment, and make it through all these
changes. New securities must go beyond the specific job and ensu-
re safe transitions into new employment. Flexicurity is an attempt
to unite these two fundamental needs.
The basic principles behind the flexicurity approach are very much
in line with the central elements of the EU strategy for growth and
jobs. The revised Lisbon Strategy promotes an active response to
the challenge of globalisation. Flexicurity relies on a high level of
workforce training, another priority in the updated strategy. In par-
ticular, Guideline 21 of the Employment Guidelines stresses the
need to promote flexibility combined with employment security
and reduce labour market segmentation, having due regard to the
role of the Social Partners.
The calendar of the Mission for Flexicurity is set by December 2008
with the presentation of the final report to the European Council
(EPSCO).
A number of countries have already embraced the concept and as
usual Denmark is a forerunner in this field. One can even say that
the concept was born in this country where social dialogue is a per-
manent process. France is generally not a leading country for such
reforms and an interesting analysis was made by two economists
when the concept came out. Nevertheless, a French report was
issued in February 2008. The Swedish case is well described in a
document from the European Employment Observatory as well as
the Dutch situation.
© eSangathan Consortium All rights reserved
Nicole TURBÉ-SUETENS
DISTANCE EXPERT
Project co-ordinator
Useful links :
@ Denmark : Flexicurity
@ France : ICT Conference 2008
@ India : Mumbai Conference
@ The Netherlands : Slow Management
@ Sweden : Policy for IT Society