Cyber maturity in the Asia-Pacific Region 2014

Summary: To make considered, evidence-based cyber policy judgements in the Asia-Pacific there’s a need for better tools to assess the existing ‘cyber maturity’ of nations in the region. Over the past twelve months the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s International Cyber Policy Centre has developed a Maturity Metric which provides an assessment of the regional cyber landscape. This measurement encompasses an evaluation of whole-of-government policy and legislative structures, military organisation, business and digital economic strength and levels of cyber social awareness. This information is distilled into an accessible format, using metrics to provide a snapshot by which government, business, and the public alike can garner an understanding of the cyber profile of regional actors

Towards evaluation design for smart city development

Smart city developments integrate digital, human, and physical systems in the built environment. With growing urbanization and widespread developments, identifying suitable evaluation methodologies is important. Case-study research across five UK cities - Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester, Milton Keynes and Peterborough - revealed that city evaluation approaches were principally project-focused with city-level evaluation plans at early stages. Key challenges centred on selecting suitable evaluation methodologies to evidence urban value and outcomes, addressing city authority requirements. Recommendations for evaluation design draw on urban studies and measurement frameworks, capitalizing on big data opportunities and developing appropriate, valid, credible integrative approaches across projects, programmes and city-level developments

Offenders and E-Learning - a literature review on behalf of Becta

This literature review has been prepared by the Hallam Centre of Community Justice at Sheffield Hallam University, on behalf of Becta. The literature review provides a summary of existing research and knowledge relating to e-learning in the offending learning sector with a view to developing a range of e-maturity indicators across the sector. The review also highlights linkages with current Government policy in relation to offender learning and skills

Business Critical: Understanding a Company’s Current and Desired Stages of Corporate Responsibility Maturity

It’s been a while since the Corporate Responsibility profession took stock of its collective wisdom on where we have been, and where we are going on running businesses responsibly. Meanwhile hardly a week goes by without a helpful suggestion from the outside world on how an organisation should improve its economic value, social usefulness and environmental efficiency; and it is very easy to spot businesses that get their social, environmental and economic decisions out of balance: these organisations hit the headlines seemingly within nanoseconds. On the upside, businesses are increasingly taking an approach that builds an Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) premium into the core economic valuation. This is achieved by those organisations which bring in a diverse set of views to inform risk and reputation management activities, and to build a research and development pipeline for the future. This is managing both the negative and the positive social, environmental and economic impacts

E-democracy: exploring the current stage of e-government

Governments around the world have been pressured to implement e-Government programs in order to improve the government-citizen dialogue. The authors of this article review prior literature on such efforts to find if they lead to increased democratic participation ("e-Democracy") for the affected citizens, with a focus on the key concepts of transparency, openness, and engagement. The authors find that such efforts are a starting point toward e-Democracy, but the journey is far from complete

Venture Philanthropy- the Evolution of High Engagement Philanthropy in Europe.

This article looks at venture philanthropy and the Evolution of High Engagement Philanthropy in Europe

Voices for Change: A Taxonomy of Public Communications Campaigns and Their Evaluation Challenges

Makes the case that communications campaigns cover a broad range of different types and characteristics, and can be differentiated along the axes of purpose, scope, and maturity. Examines what communications campaigns that fall on different areas of these three axes look like, and how where they fall may affect the evaluation approach used and lead to distinct evaluation challenges and needs

The Craft of Incentive Prize Design: Lessons from the Public Sector

In the last five years, incentive prizes have transformed from an exotic open innovation tool to a proven innovation strategy for the public, private and philanthropic sectors. This report offers practical lessons for public sector leaders and their counterparts in the philanthropic and private sectors to help understand what types of outcomes incentive prizes help to achieve, what design elements prize designers use to create these challenges and how to make smart design choices to achieve a particular outcome. It synthesizes insights from expert interviews and analysis of more than 400 prize

A Tale of Evaluation and Reporting in UK Smart Cities

Global trends towards urbanisation are associated with wide-ranging challenges and opportunities for cities. Smart technologies create new opportunities for a range of smart city development and regeneration programmes designed to address the environmental, economic and social challenges concentrated in cities. Whilst smart city programmes have received much publicity, there has been much less discussion about evaluation of smart city programmes and the measurement of their outcomes for cities. Existing evaluation approaches have been criticised as non-standard and inadequate, focusing more on implementation processes and investment metrics than on the impacts of smart city programmes on strategic city outcomes and progress. To examine this, the SmartDframe project conducted research on city approaches to the evaluation of smart city projects and programmes, and reporting of impacts on city outcomes. This included the ‘smarter’ UK cities of Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester, Milton Keynes and Peterborough. City reports and interviews with representative local government authorities informed the case study analysis. The report provides a series of smart city case studies that exemplify contemporary city practices, offering a timely, insightful contribution to city discourse about best practice approaches to evaluation and reporting of complex smart city projects and programmes