November 1, 2011

 
The Telework Coalition (TelCoa), America’s leading nonprofit telework education and advocacy organization, based in Washington DC, was established in 2002 by a group of professionals with experience in addressing the benefits, adoption, and implementation of telework and telecommuting programs. This was in response to a growing need for a single, reliable source of reference material about technology’s impact on our economy, environment, energy usage, and our society in general. TelCoa focuses on how this technology is changing our lifestyles, organizational structures and workplace management, along with the policies, processes and procedures that support them.

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore recommended TelCoa as the source for telework information in his bestselling book An Inconvenient Truth. Legislators, scholars, government officials, organizations, teachers, media industry professionals, and hundreds of thousands of Internet users have turned to TelCoa for authoritative information and insight.
 
TelCoa has been featured as a dependable source in many public forums including the National Institutes of Standards and Technology, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), part of the Department of Commerce, and media such as ABC, PBS, NBC, Fox television, and Voice of America, The Washington Post, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and ABCNews.com.
 
We are multidisciplinary in our approach, believing that expertise of many different types is necessary to enable our society to reap maximum rewards from technological and workplace changes. Therefore, we work with organizations in both the public and private sectors, guided by our Board of Directors and an Advisory Board that include  leaders in the fields of information technology, business continuity, state and regional economic development, the U.S. Federal Government, transportation organizations, academia, call centers, telework consultants, legal advisors and workspace management professionals. These resources have enabled us to create a valuable reference library which continues to grow.
 
TelCoa prides itself in the diversity of the viewpoints that it seeks to reflect. We have received financial support from major technology organizations such as Intel and AT&T as well as from many smaller technology firms and call center organizations. We heavily rely on our members and sponsors for their support and backing. We work with and are involved with a wide range of organizations related to the advancement of telecommunications and information technologies, America’s national security, environmental matters, energy concerns, economic and employment issues, including creating opportunities for disabled and older workers, and life style benefits.
 
TelCoa analyzes, evaluates, reports on, and distributes information and the latest nationally and internationally relevant research about the implications of advanced technologies, legislation, and workplace policies across the U.S. We create and share bulletins, white papers and opinions regarding our findings and those of other reliable sources for the use of government policymakers, business leaders, scholars, educators, technologists and the general public.

While others have followed TelCoa’s pioneering lead in spotlighting the combination of evolving information technologies along with the necessary policies, processes, and procedures as a major new framework for policy thinking, we occupy a unique niche as a central clearing-house of ideas and research findings and welcome partnerships with peer organizations.

I want to thank Advisory Board Member N.J. Slabbert for his assistance with this article.

CW