The number of large-scale mobile working projects being implemented by local authorities is set to triple over the next three years.
While some 17% of such initiatives involved more than 100 users this year, the figure was expected to jump to 56% by 2014.
Four out of five of the 160 local authorities and housing associations questioned in a survey of Town Hall leaders by software supplier, NDL, also said that they intended to have a mobile working project up-and-running within those three years.
But the biggest hurdle in getting such initiatives off the ground was the cultural change involved rather than technology cost. Some 57% of respondents likewise expected the economic climate to have an impact on future programmes, however, although 36% believed that budget cuts would actually encourage mobile working.
Declan Grogan, NDL's managing director, said the figures suggested that: "We’re on the cusp of a revolution in mobile working, with the practice rapidly gaining credence in local government circles. Having said that, we all know the pressure local authority budgets are under so it would be wrong to ignore the impact this financial pressure may have on the future of mobile working.”
Some 71% of respondents this year said that they made cost savings from such schemes, up from 27% in 2010, while four out of five said that administration costs fell, up from 60% in 2010.
