Date to be confirmed shortly (late April) at Birmingham City Football Club.

Full details coming soon!

With a strong focus on the changing landscape for Local Government this event will include contributions from a broad spectrum of high profile speakers, an innovation market place, round table discussions, interactive workshops and much more including a ‘taster’ ‘unconference’ session.

Carolyn Downs, Incoming Chief Executive of the Local Government Group will give the headline keynote address. Further speaker and workshop details are here.

Steve Jobs handled the iCloud announcement himself this morning at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. iCloud is the company’s new cloud storage offering that will handle everything from documents to media syncing.

Due to launch in the Autumn (we can’t bring ourselves to say ‘Fall’), iCloud will be free with iOS5 and will include 5Gb of free storage. You can register your interest here.

Nomad notice more than a passing similarity with Dropbox. A cloud utility that we’ve found absolutely invaluable here at Nomad and would have no hesitation in recommending to others. Dropbox does the following;

Any file you save to Dropbox also instantly saves to all your computers, phones, and the Dropbox website.

This event aimed to achieve the following objectives;

• To present the findings of the heat map and establish a common understanding of mobile and flexible working across London;
• To see where the gaps lie (issues faced) in progressing mobile and flexible working;
• To share lessons learnt and best practice stories around implementation;
• To identify and learn from the more advanced Boroughs in mobile/flexible working;
• To network and build relationships with other London Boroughs and support one another in establishing efficiencies, and;
• To discuss technology and delivery partners, experienced in mobile and flexible working.

The event was splendidly captured graphically (click to enlarge image);

Attendees

• 50 Local Council attendees (across 25 Boroughs)
• 4 speakers (Aiden McManus – Croydon Council, Ken Eastwood – Public Sector Nomads, Andrew Richards – Hammersmith & Fulham and Grace Addy – Croydon Council)
• Sponsors (BT, Capgemini, Kirona, NDL and O2)
• Event co-ordinators (Claire Corbett, Charlotte Stothert and Emma Pluck)

Observations

The event went very well and successfully explored common issues and barriers to implementing mobile working and flexible working. The workshop sessions were particularly useful with a number of participants able to enrich the debate with their specific experiences. It was clear that a number of authorities are engaged in quite radical accommodation projects and a number of others expect to be shortly.

There was an appetite on the day to develop closer collaboration and a platform to exchange and share experiences and best practice. Southwark Council, for example, described a manager workshop programme that had successfully encouraged buy-in and understanding of mobile and flexible working. Materials and experiences like this need to be shared across the public sector to avoid duplication of effort.

Panel Discussion

The event concluded with an open panel Q&A session, again expertly represented graphically;

Next Steps

• To explore a buddy-up system whereby councils agree to provide support to others less experienced in mobile & flexible working implementations or to align councils who are at the same stage of implementation;
• Consider a follow up event, and;
• Develop an online forum to enable information to be accessible and provide a platform for open discussion and networking between councils.

The relaunch of our website includes a new membership forum and we hope to be supporting London Council’s on this agenda going forward.

A working group consisting of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has classified the radiation emitted by mobile handsets as ‘possibly carcinogenic’.

The panel of 31 scientists from 14 countries concluded that there ‘could be some risk’ for phone users.

Dr. Jonathan Samet, chairman of the working group, said, “There could be some risk, and therefore we need to keep a close watch for a link between cell phones and cancer risk”.

Science blogger Ed Yong works for Cancer Research UK. He has written a very nice explanation of what the WHO announcement really means;

“It means that there is some evidence linking mobile phones to cancer, but it is too weak to make any strong conclusions. Specifically, IARC’s panel said that the evidence that mobile phones pose a health risk was “limited” for two types of brain tumours – glioma and acoustic neuroma – and “inadequate” when it comes to other types of cancer.

The Chairman of the group, Dr Jonathan Samet, said, “The conclusion means that there could be some risk, and therefore we need to keep a close watch for a link between cell phones and cancer risk.”

IARC classifies different things according to whether they are likely to cause cancer, from tobacco to viruses to certain jobs. They are the gold standard for this sort of thing. They have five possible categories of risk:

Group 1 is the highest, reserved for things like smoking, asbestos, alcohol and so on. It means that there’s extremely strong evidence that the thing in question causes cancer.

Group 2A includes things that are “probably carcinogenic to humans”. Here, the evidence is “limited” in humans, but “sufficient” from animal studies.

Group 2B – this is the one that mobile phones now fall under – means something is “possibly carcinogenic to humans”. It means there is “limited evidence” that something causes cancer in people, and even the evidence from animal studies is “less than sufficient”. Group 2B means that there is some evidence for a risk but it’s not that convincing. This group ends up being a bit of a catch-all category, and includes everything from carpentry to chloroform.”

It would appear that a decade after the Stewart Report (Independent Expert Group on Mobile Phones) we are no further on in our understanding – there is still insufficient evidence to conclude either way whether using a mobile phone does or doesn’t increase the risk of cancer.

The UK government’s ‘precautionary approach’ for mobile phone use, which includes the recommendation that mobile phone use by children for non-essential calls should be discouraged, still stands.

Image: Hello Operator, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from derekolson’s photostream

The Act requires agencies across the US to step up efforts to implement telework to help ensure continuity of operations, reduce management costs and improve employees’ ability to balance their work and life commitments.

The United States Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has reviewed all agency policies against a best practices checklist, developed by an interagency team of telework experts and all agencies have received customised feedback on their policies, to assist each agency revise its telework policy in accordance with the Act.

The Act requires each agency to designate a senior management official as the Telework Managing Officer (TMO) to help transform the use of telework.

By June 9, all agencies must revise their telework policies, determine the eligibility of all employees and notify all employees of their telework status. The Act also requires that all eligible employees and their managers receive interactive telework training and enter into written telework agreements.

As the lead agency for implementation of the Act, OPM has been tasked with coordinating resources to help agencies meet the requirements of the Act as well as best practices so that agencies may successfully use telework as a management tool to get work done.

It is clear that the drive towards higher levels of teleworking are driven, at least in part by the recognition of the contribution telework capabilities can make to national resilience. Having a dispersed, connected workforce is seen as an important step to ensuring that the United States Government can continue to carry out mission-critical activities in the event of an emergency.

By helping support a distributed workforce, telework is a tool for emergency planning at all levels – from snowstorms that close offices in a region for a day or two, to pandemic influenza that may affect operations over the course of weeks or even months.

The key to successful use of telework in the event of a crisis is deemed to be an effective routine telework program. Managers are required to ensure as many employees as possible have telework capability (i.e., current telework arrangements, connectivity, and equipment commensurate with their work needs and frequent enough opportunities to telework to ensure all systems have been tested and are known to be functional). This will require creative thinking beyond current implementation of telework, drawing in employees who otherwise might not engage in remote access and ensuring their effectiveness as a distributed workforce.

Read more about telework in the United States at www.telework.gov

On average,  UK workers spend one day every fortnight travelling to and from work.  25 million commuters go to a fixed place of work every day and of these 18 million go by car, compressed into a few hours in the morning and evening rush hours.  Annual UK Office commuting alone produces19.7 million tonnes of CO2 emission.

With cost pressures,  performance and carbon emission targets becoming increasingly challenging,  coupled with high workplace stress levels and long working hours,  is it still sensible for people to spend long hours commuting to “the office” ?

While car travel is one of the big carbon emitters,  buildings (and particularly offices) are by far the biggest  source accounting for over 40% of the total UK emission of 153 million tonnes of CO2.  So reducing the daily commute in “gas guzzling” cars is one way of helping sustain the planet,  but perhaps using this to also reduce the need for “carbon guzzling” under utilised office space is even more effective in reducing carbon footprint.

Implementing and developing agile working can if managed well meet the sustainability targets of reducing both travel and the office footprint for many organisations.  This twin  focus on agility and sustainability – sustainagility – can reduce environmental impact as well as property related costs,  but also improve service resilience,  business and individual productivity,  customer focus,  and create better “work life” balance and CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility).

Increasingly,  forward thinking management aware of sustainagility benefits are allowing,  promoting,  setting up and supporting more staff to work ‘agile’ and remotely - from home on a regular or ‘ad hoc’ basis,  from ‘third places’ and on the move – utilising technology to limit the need to come into the office,  working closer with customers and in the community,  whilst also staggering work patterns so employees can avoid peak travel times,  overall enabling more productive working.

In the public sector,  Ofsted is the largest home-based government organisation employing over 2,000 staff,  of which 60% are home-based inspectors.  For Ofsted the idea of homeworking is not about reducing costs,  but about improving efficiency through flexibility and locating staff where the work is.  Nevertheless,  the move to homeworking significantly reduced Ofsteds building footprint from 8 to 3 buildings.

In other organisations the drive to reduce carbon footprint coupled with a desire to move resources to a more variable cost base is encouraging a change towards a virtual existence.  BT has 70,000 remote enabled workers as well as 15,000 registered Home Workers which has allowed the Company to reduce its office space by 50% in the last decade.  Supporting agile workers through BT’s extensive use of teleconferencing has eliminated the need for over 850,000 face to face meetings a year,  saving £135m in travel related costs and 97,000 tonnes of carbon as well as £103m in productivity benefits.

Unilever’s Agile Working programme made new software available to enable employees to hold virtual meetings through online discussion forums,  document-sharing and presentation capability.  This enabled its people to work more flexibly and interact with their colleagues from work,  home or while travelling.  By 2009  some 97,000 virtual meetings were held,  and with over 40 000 employees using the technology,  savings on travel costs,  CO2 reductions and improved work–life balance are significant.

One of the largest Local Authority investment programmes in progress,  Birmingham City Councils “Working for the Future” is designed to transform the Council’s operational property portfolio to enable improvements in customer service delivery,  offer new ways of working and enhance the work environment for employees.  The key elements are focused on enabling agile working across the Council through the introduction of new work styles,  working practice guidance and new ICT technologies,  as well as providing improved more sustainable workplaces.

The City Council aims to make savings of £100m over 25 years through consolidating the council’s office portfolio.  The programme is also significantly reducing the Council carbon footprint not only through creating the ability for people to work remotely – reducing unnecessary travel, but also by reduction in floor space (35% reduction in its 1 million sq ft back office estate) as well as  upgrading and trading in old inefficient space for 3 new “green” buildings on “brownfield” regeneration sites.

The “drivers” (excuse the pun) and enablers of change for new ways of working are clearly visible and available to most organisations.  So has there ever been a better time or justification to implement and gain the benefits of sustainagility?

Paul Allsopp, The Agile Organisation
www.agile.org.uk

The CEO of Jersey Telecom,  Graeme Millar,  said (Mobile Europe);

“LTE is an important step in our Gigabit Isles strategy,  which will deliver the most advanced broadband access for business and domestic consumers in Europe.  LTE complements our strategy perfectly and users can look forward to improved quality of service and faster speeds enabling their mobile devices to download HD quality movies and stream live television,  download music in seconds and instantly update all their social networks.  This demonstration will give us valuable insight into the technology and its application within our markets,  and give islanders a chance to glimpse the mobile technology of the future.   The Channel Islands is a world-renowned finance centre and the business community here has very specific needs,  LTE will deliver the advances they seek and will redefine the mobile office,  enabling business applications and tools to be accessed on the move.”

It’s understood that the existing 1800MHz radio spectrum band will be used to deliver the LTE service and download speeds of up to 50Mbps are anticipated.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dreamisles

However,  it ignored smartphone-based mobile broadband use, including the tethering of smartphones to laptops. Ofcom said such use may form part of future studies if and when they take place.

O2′s average speeds were just below 3Mbps, and the operator was particularly ahead of its rivals between the hours of 8pm and 10pm. Next was Vodafone, followed in turn by 3, T-Mobile and Orange. Almost half of O2′s average download speeds were higher than 3Mbps, while most average speeds measured for T-Mobile and Orange were below 2Mbps.

“Our customers are seeing the benefit from the huge investment we’ve made in our network,” O2 chief operating officer Derek McManus said in a statement responding to Ofcom’s study.”

“We always aim to deliver the best network experience for our customers and these results are another indicator that we’re doing just that.”

Not surprisingly, urban areas were found to outperform rural areas in mobile broadband performance. More than 50% of connections in the rural/semi-rural area surveyed (Herefordshire and Shropshire) had speeds of less than 500kbit/s, compared to 25% of tests in Birmingham. Despite the potential for good mobile broadband speeds in the urban city locations covered, the measured performance was highly variable across the city, with no guarantee of good performance offered by a city centre location.

It seems mobile networks and services have some way to go yet before nomads can reliably work across urban centres.

It’s Work Wise Week 2011 and National Work from Home Day on Friday (20th May).

The aim of the week is to promote modern “smarter” working practices such as flexible, remote and mobile working, as well as working from home. It has been organised by Work Wise UK, a national not-for-profit initiative, now in its sixth year, and is backed by the TUC, CBI, RAC Foundation and British Chambers of Commerce.

During the recession and current age of austerity, many organisations have realised the benefits of smarter working practices. Enabling staff to work more flexibly has saved costs and at the same time significantly increased staff wellbeing.

Smarter working can also be part of a strategy to reduce the need for downsizing and redundancy. Having a flexible, agile workforce enables organisations to adapt to changing market and funding conditions more easily.

Like the Industrial Revolution, electronic communication advances have enabled working practices to change for the better. New business management approaches allowing a more flexible workforce is helping reduce cost bases and has allowed organisations to better manage their way through difficult times.

And, more importantly, it will help organisations up-scale operations more easily when the upturn comes. Being able to recruit and train staff is always a major obstacle to the economy at that time, often hindering the return to prosperity.

” A key element to smarter working is changing travel patterns. Working from home reduces commuting, mobile and remote working reduces the need to travel to central offices, and flexible working enables staff to avoid peak commuting times.

Work Wise Week 2011 presents an ideal opportunity to explore how you and your organisation could boost productivity and efficiency in these straightened times, by implementing smarter working practices. The programme this year will focus on the following:

• Smarter Travel

  Changing the time at which you start your journey or travelling by public transport instead of by car can reduce the peak rush hour, and make the commuting experience far more bearable for many.

• Mobile Working

  Encouraging people to work while on the move, instead of travelling to a central office.

• Virtual Meetings

  Encourage employees and clients to conduct meetings by audio or video conferencing or go online instead of travelling to meetings.

• Working Remotely

  Allow your staff to use remote offices instead of travelling to a central office. These include serviced office space, touch down centres or even hot spots such as coffee shops.

• National Work From Home Day

  The 6th annual National Work from Home Day will again encourage people to work from home for the day instead of commuting to their usual place of work.

Work Wise Week is being supported this year by StaffShare www.staffshare.com, a new social enterprise, online skill exchange and secondment service launched in January.

David Lennan, former director general of the British Chambers of Commerce and a founding director of StaffShare, commented: “There are a range of innovative business management practices that have emerged which have changed the way we work. Smarter working practices have developed as a result of technological advancement and enable a far better use of limited resources and time.

“Secondment and skill sharing is another innovative business practice which is just emerging. During these difficult times, this new smarter way of managing staff is proving an effective alternative to redundancy in many cases, and provides the flexibility to allow organisations to react when the upturn comes.”

What are you doing this week to promote new ways of working? Let us know.

For more information on Work Wise UK please visit www.workwiseuk.org