‘It’s time for change... it’s time for distance working’

We have all heard the term ‘distance learning’ in which we use the medium of information technology to study instead of having to travel long distances to universities or places of further and higher education.

I believe that the same principle could be applied to ‘distance working’, particularly for those who normally have to travel to work in government departments in Belfast.

Distance working is a flexible arrangement which allows workers to complete their work duties remotely or from their own home.

If mainstreamed, then distance working would relieve the many civil servants who have to travel from West of the Bann or rural areas to Belfast on a daily basis and who spend hours unproductively negotiating the perils of slow-moving traffic on single-lane carriageways.

On arrival at their respective government departments, the majority of these civil servants spend their entire working day sitting in front of a computer with a similar return journey ahead of them. Week in and week out!

Why should they have to make round trips of 150 miles and more, adding anything up to four or five hours to their working day in this technological age? With facilities such as the internet, broadband, webcams, teleconferencing, etc., there is no logical reason that they could not perform their duties just as efficiently from workstations in Derry, Dungannon, Limavady, Omagh, or elsewhere.

If this Covid 19 crisis has taught us anything, then, surely, one of the lessons is that it can be done.

The facilitation of distance working would not even entail the decentralisation of entire government departments from Belfast; it would simply require the departments to acquire and utilise the adequate amount of office space that is locally available to accommodate their staff or to install home working stations for those who choose to work from home.

Departments could even save costs by sharing offices as well as saving on travel and other expense. Most areas have available office space that could accommodate all of those civil servants now travelling to Belfast.

Not only would it be more efficient, but I also believe that it would greatly reduce stress-related absenteeism by removing the stress of having to battle traffic congestion to and from work every day.

In an environmental context, the mainstreaming of distance working would also help to reduce carbon emissions as it will eliminate the need for workers to take long journeys to commute to work. The latest Assembly report on flexible working proved this. It found that teleconferencing in companies such as Vodafone had reduced carbon by 12,000 tonnes per year.

The predominance of civil servants being located in Belfast perpetuates regional disparities in terms of jobs and investment. The Belfast centric focus encourages those who make economic decisions on investment and infrastructure to give priority to those projects that will impact on the political centre to the detriment of other areas.

But, if some of those who influence these decisions were detached from the ‘centre’, then they may be better motivated to make a greater impact on decisions affecting regions outside of the main conurbation.

The location of large numbers of civil service jobs to regional areas through ‘distance working’ would help stimulate local economic activity that would, in turn, attract further investment and create opportunities for local industries.

It is well documented that investors and developers are attracted to locations that contain a concentration of government departments and agencies. It is obvious that this principle is well enough understood at the senior policy-making level and, yet, the fixation about investing in Belfast and consolidating government in the Belfast metropolitan area continues unabated.

It is time to challenge this orthodoxy; it is time for a change. It is time to invest in teleworking technologies, challenges and opportunities.

The over-concentration of government-related work in Belfast, when viewed over decades, has contributed to rural depopulation, poverty, and deprivation in many areas. The old unionist regime’s discriminatory practices towards West of the Bann contributed to its urban decline. The current reality is that more than 75% of all investment in the North is still being located in Belfast.

Departments and Agencies need to work proactively to eliminate regional disparities. Flexibility, in terms of working hours and location, could help address this issue and, simultaneously, achieve financial efficiencies without reducing frontline services.

It is happening now through forced necessity during the present coronavirus pandemic - but it could be more effective and efficient if it were to be done in a more planned and deliberate way.