How will states adapt to true telecommuters?

Today telecommuting often refers to people who work from home, logging into computer networks to prepare documents and exchange information remotely.

However across the world we're starting to see examples of much broader and more intense forms of telecommuting.

Warfare
Take for example the RQ-1 Predator, an unmanned aerial vehicle that has been used since 1995 by the US Air Force. First used for reconnaissance and armed only with a high resolution camera, the Predator is now routinely equipped with missiles and used to attack ground targets. Predator operators may be hundreds, or even thousands, of mile away and operate their UAVs through video screens like modern computer games.

Similar unmanned devices are being developed for land and sea-based conflict, allowing operators to work normal shifts from bases close to their homes (or even from their homes), while these devices are employed in combat theatres around the world.

Emergencies
Unmanned vehicles are also being adopted in the emergency management field, with controlled robotic devices used to explore hazardous environments ahead of human teams. These devices have been used to map the Chernobyl disaster and recently the CyberQuad was introduced into Australia to support the fire brigade in mapping and fighting large blazes.

Space exploration
Many people will be aware of the Mars Rovers, two robots sent to explore parts of the red planet, seeking signs of surface water and life while expanding our store of knowledge. These robots, similar to those used in emergencies, have been used as a low-cost means of exploring a hazardous and remote environment.

Health
There are pilot programs in a number of countries exploring the potential for doctors, particularly specialists, to remotely diagnose and treat patients. In a world with too few doctors and many remote regions, the ability to have a specialist diagnose patients from a distance is an enormous cost and time saving tool, providing improved health outcomes.

Even more so, the potential for videoconferencing during surgeries, where experienced surgeons can view and collaborate with an on-the-spot colleague during a procedure - or even conduct surgery remotely, employing robotics.

Adult industry
While an area that some might find less delicate, the adult industry has a long history of innovating and employing new technologies. Much of the early innovation on the world wide web had its roots in adult pursuits. Similarly adult operators are exploring the opportunities for remote controlled devices. In fact the field even has a name, coined in 1975, 'Teledildonics' - for computer or remote operator-controlled devices for sexual pleasure.

Entertainment
Virtual worlds and Massive Multiplayer Online Games (MMPOGs) have been around now for a number of years (since 1974 in fact), some as games, some as social entertainment experiences and some as business tools. These worlds are growing in immersiveness and flexibility, providing more and more opportunities to conduct mass meetings remotely, demonstrate designs and working (virtual) prototypes and educate students.

Looking forward
With all these forms of 'telecommuting' developments there's three trends I think are important to note.

• We are increasingly able to control physical devices and perform complex actions at great differences.
• Our virtual environments are improving to the extent whereby almost-physical interaction is becoming possible, and
• we are entering a time where an increasing number of people will be able to conduct their business remotely from other states or nations, significantly complicating how taxes are assessed and laws are interpreted and enforced.

With increasing broadband speeds, such as via Australia's National Broadband Network, it will become possible for a range of telecommuting scenarios such as the following three examples.

• Remote mining exploration and analysisA geologist sitting in their Brisbane office will be able to take control of a contracted robot in the Northern Territory, remotely guide it to an exploration site and conduct a surface analysis and even a seismic survey to assess the mineral potential of the area.
  
  The information and analysis could be immediately visible to their employer, a Perth-based mining company. The site could be mapped digitally and then have geologists from around the world explore the area virtually - literally 'walking' their avatars over the landscape and discussing specific areas in real-time.

• Global industrial design
  Equally an industrial design team operating out of Newcastle as a semi-autonomous unit of a Swedish furniture manufacturer could develop new designs for bookcases and chairs and trial them via virtual worlds with other designers and potential customers around the world.
  
  When a final design is approved it could be automatically loaded into the systems of an offshore manufacturer and produced, either in a fully automatic or manual factory, then shipped to customers around the world.
  
  As a side project, the designs could also be made available for virtual sale into a range of virtual worlds and games, like the Sims - providing a secondary income.

• Remote entertainment experiences
  A resident in a nursing home in Wagga Wagga could remain an active gardener through participation in a robotised market garden in the Adelaide Hills. Every day they could go online and check how their plot was developing, using robotic devices to plant seeds, pull weeds and water. When their vegetables were grown they could be harvested and sent to market collectively, with the profits going to offset the costs of the market garden.
  
  Through virtual technology the resident could walk around, or even fly over the garden with complete mobility. Integrated sensors could simulate the smells and even the feeling of digging in the soil, keeping the resident both entertained and productive, raising their self-esteem and enjoyment of life.
  
  Residents from nursing homes around the country and overseas could work together, sharing their experience with plants and making collective decisions on how to manage the garden. (The original Telegarden was operational from 1995-2004 as a university experiment)

In all of these situations the data would pass through a variety of Australian states and through international jurisdictions. The individuals performing the actual work do not necessarily own the work, it could be a collaborative effort by individuals across different nations.

We're seeing the inklings of this process now with the increasing digitalisation of products. No jurisdictional restrictions on written, audio, visual or digital interactive material can be effectively and universally enforced when they can be transmitted almost instantaneously across the internet to virtually any country in the world.

The creators of these digital works may also be located anywhere in the world. Collaborators may each live in a different jurisdiction and be subject to different laws and regulation. Whose jurisdiction takes primacy for taxation purposes for a truly virtual organisation? What happens when a digital product is illegal in some jurisdictions and legal in others?

It is even hard to enforce regulation or taxation over physical products, unless governments wish to inspect every single mail item - adding enormous time and cost burdens to an economy.

Identifying which jurisdiction's guidelines apply can already be difficult - is it in the jurisdiction that the work originates, where the servers storing the information live, where the organisation is registered or where the goods and services are sold (at least for physical products, who taxes and regulates virtual items)? What if jurisdictions don't agree?

As teleconferencing becomes more prevalent and more global in nation, governments will increasingly have to reconsider their state-based laws, regulations and taxes to contend with hyper-mobile individuals, workers who can deliver a service using remote assistance anywhere in the world, from driving a delivery vehicle to performing operations, without leaving their own home or neighbourhood.

Perhaps governments should already be taking great strides towards normalising their regulatory approaches,to reduce inefficiencies and ensure that their laws and taxes will remain enforceable as telecommuting rises.

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How will a national broadband network help Australian government agencies?

Yesterday's announcement of the Australian Government's plans to build a national broadband network has created a huge amount of buzz online.

If you've not seen the news, yesterday morning the government announced that they have terminated the tender process due to cost concerns and shortcomings in all tender proposals. Instead the government will invest up to $43 billion over 8 years to build a national broadband network using fibre optic cables to 90% of homes and offices, offering 100Mbps broadband.

This technology is also future-proof. Using emerging technologies, fibre-optic cable can be upgraded further to Gigabyte speeds without significant additional investment and over time this is likely to get even faster.

So what will this mean for government departments?

There are many applications for a super-fast network - many of which are beginning to emerge in Japan (with 160Mbps broadband available) and South Korea (with 120Mbps broadband available and moving to Gb speeds).

These include telepresence, a step beyond video-conferencing which allows groups to work interactively together over extended periods despite being physically remote. Conferences could be held without people leaving their offices, both within Australia and internationally - saving vast amounts of money in travel and accommodation and generating environmental benefits as well as saving work hours.

This concept could be further extended to provide access to telepresence staff in government offices. Basically while every office would retain a base level of staffing for activities requiring live interactions, when one office is quiet and another busy the staff from one could be serving customers in the other, via teleprescence. This would dramatically improve staffing management, allowing every office to have the appropriate number of staff at all times. Potentially a core staff group could be available out of the current business hours government operates within, providing access to critical information and services anywhere in the country face-to-(virtual)face.

Equally government office staff could work more readily from their homes, holding conferences via telepresence where necessary and otherwise only commuting to their office for specific reasons, supporting greater diversity and workforce participation.

Medicine is another area that could be revolutionised. With high-speed broadband the ability to use telepresence to oversee and, coupled with robotic aids, to actually conduct operations becomes a possibility. This provides enormous flexibility for a national health system, allowing doctors to be located anywhere in the country (or even overseas) and still provide vital medical services at remote clinics across Australia. Termed telemedicine, this approach is increasingly being discussed and implemented overseas.

Also in the medical sphere, anyone who requires ongoing medical monitoring could be monitored remotely using their broadband connection. This would significantly reduce demand on hospital beds and allow many people to recover at home without sacrificing quality of care. Of course there would need to be a balance between the speed of access to medical personnel in emergencies, however ongoing monitoring would provide early warnings of medical issues and provide greater flexibility to respond appropriately.

Education is another service that benefits from fast broadband services such as telepresence and the ability to stream video and audio in real-time. Experienced teachers could teach classes anywhere across Australia, and students, also spread across the country, could interact in real-time - supporting home schooling, subjects with fewer students and better use of good teachers.

Infrastructure management also benefits from faster and more reliable internet speeds. Every piece of infrastructure in the country, roads, bridges, tunnels, dams, power plants and more can be monitored remotely. This would help identify issues before they become life-threatening and allow governments to pre-emptively address failing infrastructure. This type of technology is already in use in some international engineering projects, monitoring bridges and dams for stability and reporting back to central offices using the internet.

In the service provision sphere, all the services currently provided by government online or by phone could be provided in a far more interactive and engaging way. Full-motion video could provide walkthroughs on how to use services, and video-based help would be available. This would encourage increasing take-up, particularly as phone services gets integrated into online, meaning that people could easily start a telephone call then, using a video and internet-capable phone, directly receive the forms they need and be supported through an online transaction while continuing to speak with the government customer service operator.

These are only a sample of some of the opportunities for government to provide more cost-effective and convenient services using real high-speed broadband. Many others already exist and are being rolled out elsewhere in the world and more wait to be discovered.

Of course government will need to be more open, flexible and innovative in its thinking around the online channel. There will be the need to rethink the entire approach to many services.

However I believe that if the Australian government is capable of rolling out a real national broadband network it is also capable of developing innovative and effective services for citizens and business to run across it.

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Using teleworking to drive outcomes-based governance

I keep a watch on events in the teleworking world as an adjunct to egovernment - it is a move away from geographically restricted service provision and a strategy for betters managing recruitment and retention outcomes.

If much of a government's business is conducted online and by phone, and widespread broadband access allows teams to be in constant communication by video, voice and chat, the reasons for co-locating teams diminish.

This type of change requires leadership at the top to fully buy into the model and make it part of the organisational culture.

Over in Virginia in the US, led by the Governor, they've run the state since 2005 on an outcomes-focused model of governance, with the emphasis on results rather than traditional time-based measurement methods.

Reported in The Teleworker, one of the key initiatives Virginia has implemented was a teleworking program that is,

...enabling state agencies to improve productivity significantly, slash turnover rates and excessive leave time, and save money.

Quoting from The Teleworker,

"Governor Kaine immediately acknowledged that when it comes to managing by outcomes, the very natural question is: ‘Why do we care where you work?'" [Aneesh] Chopra [ecretary of Technology for the Commonwealth of Virginia] recalled, noting that one of the Governor's very first actions was to create an office to promote telework, managed by Karen Jackson, and he set an ambitious goal of enabling 20 percent of the Commonwealth's workforce to telework on a regular basis by 2010. "Telework became a very natural priority for us as we thought about outcomes-based government."

The outcomes have been amazing, from the article,

"This has rocked our culture," Chopra stated. "Prior to this, the attitude was, ‘Yeah, telework is important for the agencies because those people process paper, but we're really important people in the Cabinet. It's going to be hard for us to telework.' Gov. Kaine said, ‘Not in my administration.' Now, I must report weekly who teleworked and how many days, by name. That's leading by example."

The Tax Department, meanwhile, volunteered to conduct a telework pilot program, and the effort effectively illustrated telework's benefits - but with a few surprises, Chopra noted. Teleworkers who do mail processing achieved an 80 percent improvement in productivity when compared to the standard by which they're supposed to perform, while data-entry workers at home showed efficiency rates of 110 percent above the standard. In addition, employee turnover is considerably lower among full-time teleworkers at the Tax Department, just eight percent versus the overall agency average of 58 percent. This retention rate, coupled with productivity gains, translates into $141,000 in measurable decreases in retraining and job vacancy costs.

Today, the Virginia Tax Department's top executive teleworks, as do 62 percent of its eligible workers. All of this shows, Chopra told his audience, that telework "is not a nice-to-have but a need-to-have - especially in this budgetary environment. It's why more and more agencies are looking to telework as a strategy to meet the tough goals."

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