Filenews 28 June 2025 - by Eleftheria Paizanou
The Council of Ministers will decide the maximum number of working days that employees in the public sector will be able to work with the method of teleworking, according to the government bill approved on Thursday by the Ministerial Office.
Teleworking will be applied in cases where the duties of employees can be performed remotely, based on their nature and the technological means required to perform them, as judged by the Head of Department.
It is noted that teleworking will not be applied to employees employed by the shift system.
In addition, the Council of Ministers will be able to exclude other categories of workers from the implementation of teleworking.
In order to be able to work with the method of work, one's appointment in the public service must have been validated and one must have completed at least 2 years of continuous employment in the state machine.
In the case of a fixed-term employee, he/she must work for at least one year in the specific tasks. However, in order to work remotely, someone must have a service laptop and it is estimated that today 3,150 employees own this equipment. There is the possibility of securing additional laptops to cover a larger number of personnel, after submitting relevant requests to the General Accounting Office.
With laptop only
Based on the conditions set by the law, services and departments should provide teleworking employees with the necessary technological equipment and software to effectively perform their duties. Actions must be taken to connect the service laptop to the company phone (via Cisco Jabber software) and the Office Automation System (eOASIS), if this is necessary to carry out the employee's duties.
At the same time, specific Microsoft 365 applications should be installed by the IT Services Department on each service laptop, which concern e-mail for receiving and sending e-mails, the cloud application (Microsoft OneDrive) for the purposes of storing files and accessing them from the workplace, as well as a communication platform (Microsoft Teams) for conducting video conferences and facilitating remote communication.
On each service laptop, the IT Department will install all the necessary security tools.
Conditions
In the first stage of the implementation of the measure, employees who will have to use specialized information systems in the context of their duties will not be able to telework, since remote access to them requires an upgrade of the technological infrastructure, for the purposes of security of documents and information, for which energy is promoted by the IT department.
According to the Ministry of Finance, the existing technological infrastructure is only possible for the use of the office automation system (eOASIS), the installation of which in the services is a prerequisite for teleworking, so that the employee has access to correspondence and official documents, under conditions of protection and security of official documents, unless the duties of the official are such that access to the system in question is not necessary.
Online applications
Those interested in teleworking should submit an online application, so that data are available for monitoring and evaluating the implementation of the measure. All services should provide an appropriate electronic system for recording the time of arrival and departure of employees.
Those services that have these systems will have to adapt them to include the possibility of submitting an online application for teleworking.
Manual with instructions
The Ministry of Finance will issue guidelines and guidelines for the effective implementation of teleworking.
Details on the procedure for the implementation of teleworking have been included in a Manual with guidelines, prepared by the Department of Public Administration and Personnel, in collaboration with the Department of IT Services and other involved Services to guide the Services, employees and employees on the implementation of teleworking, which is noted to be released after the approval of the bill by the Parliament.
Binding directives will also be included on the basis of which security, personal data protection issues will be regulated, as well as the obligations of supervisors to ensure uniform application of the European regulation. For the effective implementation of teleworking, the Cyprus Academy of Public Administration will implement a state-of-the-art online training program.
