At the Dutch Government sponsored congress Front runners and Go-getters a new initiative is being presented: Double U Smartwork. This network of Smart Work Centers (SWC) is part of a collaboration between Cisco and the City of Amsterdam under the Connected Urban Development program (CUD), which serves to address modern urban challenges including mobility, climate, energy and sustainable ways of working. The Double U Smartwork aims to be a one stop shop for location providers, individual users, independent professionals and corporate users, where all Double U SWCS can be booked directly by a central booking tool.

Cisco, ABN AMRO, Rabobank and Touchdown Center are the founding parties. Double U is supported by Amsterdam Topstad and the City of Amsterdam which, as an employer, will be a launching customer for  Double U Smartwork.  A smart work center is a physical facility where high quality workplace solutions are offered to professional workers in a neutral, centrally located and easily accessible environment. To minimize traffic, a Smart Work Center is located in the vicinity of roads, traffic junctions, stations and residential areas. Currently there are several providers of SWC-like facilities in the Netherlands. The Double U Smartwork Foundation serves as a coordinating platform for SWC providers and aims to develop a national network.

Double U Highlights:
• Nationwide network of Smart Work Centers
The starting point for the creation of Double U Smartwork is to achieve national coverage of locations with an initial focus in the Randstad region, and the second stage in other parts of The Netherlands. Any user, regardless of where they live or reside, should have access to a good workplace within biking distance. Until recently, existing smart work centers were too fragmented and locally focused, therefore, employers operating on national level were not interested in offering their employees an alternative working spot. Double U links a network of over fifty open and smart work centers, with the plan to extend to one hundred national centers.
• Facilities
Smart Work Centers are well-equipped and go beyond providing a workplace. The services and facilities are not only meant to facilitate work itself, but also to provide work related services as  daycare and catering facilities as well as public TelePresence, Cisco’s immersive meeting technology. The first flagship SWC location, ‘Amsterdam Bright City’ in the Amsterdam South, will be the first to be equipped with TelePresence with several centers to follow across the country. In a later stage, the Dutch TelePresence sites will be linked to the international network of Tata, so SWC-users can collaborate worldwide.
• Central Booking Tool
Anyone can use the facilities offered by one simple online booking system. Through the portal, www.w-smartwork.nl,  users can quickly find the nearest location with the right facilities, whether they are on the road or at their workplace. The available providers are automatically displayed, or, in case in the requested location a facility isn't yet present, the nearest centers.
• iPhone app Worksnug
The new augmented reality app for the iPhone, Worksnug contributes to the user friendliness and the innovative nature of the SWC sites. By using global positioning in combination with the iPhone camera, Worksnug shows the best workplaces in the area around the camera image. The Double U smart work centers in Randstad will be included later this year.

Supporting Quotes:

Coks Stoffer, General Manager Cisco Netherlands: "As one of the initiators of the Connected Urban Development (CUD) program, we strive after  an environment friendly, smart working country without traffic  jams. By making work, space and time independently we do not only improve mobility but also productivity, work-life balance and climate. By working place and time independent, workers not only improve their mobility, but also their productivity, work-life balance and the environment in general. The experiences that we gained last year with the pilot in Almere, now sets the example for the new network of Double U. By deploying our IT solutions for the new way of working within the smart work centers, we bring work to the worker in a professional and approachable manner."

External Quotes:
Annemarie van Doorn, chairman of the Double U Foundation: "Double U aims to provide everyone a high quality and flexible work facility within cycling distance in order to achieve a smarter, more sustainable and distributed Netherlands. We bring work to the worker and not the other way around."
Mark de Kruijk, program director Amsterdam Topstad, City of Amsterdam: "This is going to be the new way of working. I am convinced that SWC contribute to a cleaner environment and an accessible city. It also contributes to a new attitude within the community: executives will start managing  more and more on output. And eventually I even anticipate  financial savings, because we need less office space in the city. "

Additional information 

This network of Smart Work Centers (SWC) is part of a collaboration between Cisco and the City of Amsterdam under the Connected Urban Development program (CUD), which serves to address modern urban challenges including mobility, climate, energy and sustainable ways of working.
• The Double U Foundation is one of a number of landmark projects that have resulted from Cisco's participation in the Clinton Global Initiative and its  pledge to reduce carbon emissions. Launched in 2006, CUD is a public-private partnership aimed at addressing the unique environmental problems facing urban areas and at developing ICT solutions for cities around the world.
• Cisco has collaborated on the Double U Foundation with industry like ABN AMRO, Rabobank and Touchdown Center, the Dutch government and academic leaders, such as the city of Amsterdam, Amsterdam Innovation Motor (AIM) and Amsterdam Smart City (ASC).
• Cisco's Smart+Connected Communities initiative helps transform physical communities to connected communities and achieve economic, social and environmental sustainability. Cisco works with customers, from idea to execution, leveraging vertical solutions built on the network as an open integrated platform, a broad ecosystem of partners and innovative business models to change how communities are designed, built, managed and renewed.

Availability:
• The Double U booking tool is scheduled to be available for public use by citizens of Amsterdam and the randstad region of the Netherlands on March 23. Within a few months 50 SWC will be linked to the booking tool.
• The WorkSnug application for Amsterdam and the Randstad region of the Netherlands will be announced on 23 March. The first weeks they will test the application for Dutch data, but end of April it is expected to go life.

Links/URLs
• Double  U portal, www.w-smartwork.nl
• Congress Front runners and Go-getters: http://tfmm.nl/index-loc1-28-soc1-28-art-28-naam-Aanmelden+Congres+23-03-2010.html
• Connected Urban Development program: http://www.connectedurbandevelopment.org
• Cisco Smart+ Connected Communities:  http://www.cisco.com/go/smartconnectedcommunities
• Cisco Telepresence http://www.cisco.com/web/NL/producten/telepresence.html
• Smart Work Center pilot launch, September 2008: http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2008/prod_092308b.html

Supporting Resources:
• Smart Work Center fact sheet:
http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac79/docs/cud/SWC_Fact_Sheet_051209_FINAL.pdf
• Connected and Sustainable Work whitepaper:
http://www.connectedurbandevelopment.org/whitepapers/cisco#connected-and-sustainable-work-whitepaper-presentation