Telecommuting BOF (TELEWORK) Reported by Paul Mockapetris/Information Sciences Institute Introduction The chair presented some information from a study conducted by the US Department of Energy, including a lot of information from a Department of Transportation study. The number of US telecommuters was: 0.4 million in 1990, 1.4 million in 1991, and 2.4 million in 1992. The expected number of US telecommuters is: 10 million in 2000, 30 million in 2010, and 50 million in 2020. Telecommuters are people who spend at least one whole day away from the central workplace. Since this represents 1.6% of the 1992 work force, and is expected to represent 5-10% of the 2002 work force, there is little danger of running out of potential telecommuters any time soon. Another point was that while 99% of the 1992 telecommuters work at home, the study predicted that by 2002, telecommuters would be evenly divided between those working at home and those working at telecommuting centers. Telework combines telecommuting along with new tools and social structures to support workers. Discussion The following goals for telework were identified: o Preservation of families. o Convincing management of effectiveness of telework. o Defining when a teleworker is ``on duty.'' o Creating a social structure that allows people to avoid feelings of isolation and ``be visible'' as members of an enterprise. The remainder of the session was devoted to a discussion of the state of enabling technology for telework. o Teleconferencing technology was seen as a key component. The present use of conferencing and whiteboard programs is encouraging, but more widespread standardization, available source code, and bandwidth were seen as necessary. o State caching, in the form of replicated file systems with one copy in a laptop, with automatic consistency upon connection, were seen as essential. o Security is a big issue. o A ``home-worker MIB'' was suggested as a way to address management concerns, but this was referred to the SNMP directorate. The BOF participants did not reach any conclusion regarding future work. A similar BOF will be held at INTEROP in Las Vegas. Attendees Jim Barnes barnes@xylogics.com Carsten Bormann cabo@informatik.uni-bremen.de Sepideh Boroumand sepideh@jacks.gsfc.nasa.gov Lloyd Brodsky lbrodsky@rocksolid.com Susan Calcari susanc@internic.net Ann Cooper cooper@isi.edu Peter DiCamillo Peter_DiCamillo@brown.edu Judith Grass grass@cnri.reston.va.us Richard Graveman rfg@ctt.bellcore.com Terry Gray gray@cac.washington.edu Darren Griffiths dag@ossi.com Scott Hinnrichs smh@netserv.com Bent Jensen bent@cisco.com Kyungran Kang krkang@cosmos.kaist.ac.kr Robert Kummerfeld bob@cs.su.oz.au Arthur Lin yalin@srv.pacbell.com Michael McLay mclay@eeel.nist.gov Gerry Meyer gerry@spider.co.uk Kenneth Mueller ken@cmc.com Joseph Pang pang@bodega.stanford.edu Peter Phillips pphillip@cs.ubc.ca Doug Schremp dhs@magna.telco.com Chris Seabrook cds@ossi.com Steven Waldbusser swol@andrew.cmu.edu Shinichi Yoshida yoshida@sumitomo.com