Periphera's Activity Page

Periphera's Work Programme

Over its three year life the Periphera project followed a work programme made up of five stages:

Identification of user needs. Each site looked at the real needs of its particular user group and the consortium as whole shared this information to try to learn some general lessons.

Translation of user needs into functional specification. What do want to do? Using what technologies? What selection criteria is appropriate?

Building a demonstration. Having worked out, working closely with the end-users, what technologies and combination of technologies appeared to be useful they need to be actually tested. A real-life experiment.

Validation with users in a real-life situation. This involved a sample of users in a real-life situation to test the technical feasibility of the demonstrator and also yielded preliminary findings on user acceptance.

Exploitation plan. Having developed new ways to use technology to help the socially marginalised how can this be disseminated and exploited ?

Additional text to the workprogram.

Downloads

1. FINAL REPORT- UR 1022 PERIPHERA: Telematics Applications and Strategies Combating Social and Economic Exclusion

The project brought together participants from seven Member States of the European Union, including seven development and training organisations who recognised that training is not enough. What was needed was a more concrete strategy for accelerating previously marginalised citizens into new employment opportunities.

Authors : London Borough of Islington with contributions from all partners

Download the final report in zip format

2. Telework'98 Paper - Reducing Marginalisation Through Telework : PERIPHERA

A general response to reducing unemployment and marginalisation of specific groups of citizens has been that of 'training' which often concentrates on IT and New Media. However, in many areas the main output of training is simply 'trainees' with skills, but still no real prospects of access to work. Telework promises a great deal to European citizens through methods and opportunities for access to work, and a number of training organisations have decided to facilitate the success of trainees by providing 'workspace' and management support to launch 'self-help' actions. This paper presents a number of cases where new forms of organisation have been developed around the ideas of teleworking with remarkable success. The cases are presented in terms of the barriers to be overcome, the strategy employed, and the success to date. A summary of key findings is presented to highlight the main issues in providing access to work for marginalised groups.

Authors : Frank Wilson, Tony Swash.

Download the TW'98 paper in Adobe Acrobat format (pdf)