Where in the World? E-work Location in a Digital Global Economy

This ground-breaking conference took as its starting point the proposition that the new technologies mean that work involving knowledge and information processing can be carried out anywhere in the world where the right infrastructure is in place and the right skills can be found. But it went on to ask: how much is this actually happening? Where is the work going? Why are these locations being chosen? And what are the policy implications?

The conference was sponsored by the EMERGENCE Project, in association with two other socio-economic research projects funded by the European Commission’s Information Society Technologies programme, TOSCA and ANGELO.

Hosted by the National Bank of Hungary in Budapest on October 24-25 2000, the conference featured presentations on:

• The new digital global economy: an overview

• Global launch of first results from the EMERGENCE survey

• The new global division of labour in knowledge work

• Identifying a local niche in a global economy

• Information Society Technologies and the development of rural regions

• The call centre as an instrument of regional development

• Regional case studies including India, Hungary, Ireland, Australia, Sweden, Canada, France, Morocco, Italy and South Africa

• The policy implications