An In-Depth Examination of the Implementation of the Disability Equality Duty in England: Report for the Office for Disability Issues

This seven-month study examined the implementation of the Disability Equality Duty (DED) in England. The DED, introduced through the Disability Discrimination Act 2005, applies to public authorities in England, Wales and Scotland. The DED comprises a general duty and specific duties. The general duty requires public authorities to carry out their functions with due regard to the need to promote equality between disabled and non-disabled people. The specific duties require public authorities to publish a Disability Equality Scheme (DES) setting out how they intend to fulfil their general duty and specific duties. In addition, certain Secretaries of State must publish an overarching report for their policy sectors every three years. A Code of Practice1 to assist authorities with implementing the Duty was published by the then Disability Rights Commission

An in-depth examination of the implementation of the Disability Equality Duty in England

This seven-month study examined the implementation of the Disability Equality Duty (DED) in England. The DED, introduced through the Disability Discrimination Act 2005, applies to public authorities in England, Wales and Scotland

City flight migration patterns in the East Midlands

This paper investigates migration to and from the Three Cities of Derby, Leicester and Nottingham. It investigates whether these cities lose more migrants than they gain from more rural parts of the city-regions and the extent to which these flows impact on the demographic profiles of the Three Cities

A Guide to Evaluating Marine Spatial Plans

Marine spatial plans are being developed in over 40 countries around the world, to distribute human activities in marine areas more sustainably and achieve ecological, social, and economic objectives. Monitoring and evaluation are often considered only after a plan has been developed. This guide will help marine planners and managers, monitor and evaluate the success of marine plans in achieving real results and outcomes. This report emphasizes the importance of early integration of monitoring and evaluation in the planning process, the importance of measurable and specific objectives, clear management actions, relevant indicators and targets, and involvement of stakeholders throughout the planning process.

Increasing the value of research: a comparison of the literature on critical success factors for projects, IT projects and enterprise resource planning projects

Since the beginning of modern project management in the 1960s, academic researchers have sought to identify a definitive list of Critical Success Factors (CSFs), the key things that project managers must get right in order to deliver a successful product. With the advent of Information Technology (IT) projects and, more recently, projects to deliver Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, attention has turned to identifying definitive lists of CSFs for these more specific project types. The purpose of this paper is to take stock of this research effort by examining how thinking about each type of project has evolved over time, before producing a consolidated list of CSFs for each as a basis for comparison. This process reveals a high degree of similarity, leading to the conclusion that the goal of identifying a generic list of CSFs for project management has been achieved. Therefore, rather than continuing to describe lists of CSFs, researchers could increase the value of their contribution by taking a step forward and focusing on why, despite this apparent knowledge of how to ensure their success, ERP projects continue to fai

Innovation in Private Infrastructure Development Effects of the Selection Environment and Modularity

This study investigates how the selection environment and modularity affect innovation in private infrastructure development. Our findings stem from an in-depth empirical study of the extent ten process innovations were implemented in an airport expansion programme. Our findings suggest that developer and customers can each occasionally champion or resist innovations. An innovation succeeds contingent upon the capability of the stakeholder groups to develop collectively a plan to finance and implement the innovation, which reconciles subjective individual assessments. Innovations can be particularly hard to adopt when they require financing from different budgets, or when the developer’s investment pays off only if customers behave in a specified way in the future. We also find that the degrees of novelty and modularity neither represent sufficient or necessary conditions enabling or hindering innovation. Novelty, however, makes the innovation champion’s job harder because it leads to perceptions of downside risk and regulatory changes, whereas modularity helps the champion operationalise ways that moderate resistance to innovate.Innovation; financing; implementation

Implementing e-Services in Lagos State, Nigeria: the interplay of Cultural Perceptions and Working Practices during an automation initiative : Nigeria e-government culture and working practices

Accepted for publication in a forthcoming issue of Government Information Quarterly.The public sector’s adoption of Information and Communication Technologies is often seen as a way of increasing efficiency. However, developing public e-Services involves a series of organisational and social complexities. In this paper, we examine the organisational issues of implementing an ERP system, which was designed and developed within the context of Lagos State’s e-Services project. By doing so, we showcase the impact of organisational cultural perceptions and working practices of individuals. Our findings illustrate the strong role of cultural dimensions, particularly those pertaining to religion and multi-ethnicity. Our study provides insights to international organisations and governments alike toward project policy formulation within the context of ICT-based initiatives and reforms that aim to bring forward developmental progress.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Key Success Factors for the Project of Migrating to the Open Office Suite

The penetration and performance of free software is raising issues regarding its true capacities and, particularly, the desirability of choosing it. It is from this perspective that the Linux Migration Project was launched within the Sous-secrétariat à l’inforoute gouvernementale et aux resources informationnelles (SSIGRI). Its accompaniment by a team of researchers from CIRANO is intended to assess the risks and identify the conditions for success. The purpose of this report is to identify and assess the key success factors of this project. Principal results An analysis of the project’s characteristics has enabled its specific features to be identified and the analytical tool to be adapted. From this approach, analysis of the key success factors has revealed that the pilot project substantially contributes to the reflection about migrating to free software. It demonstrates that, despite medium to high risk exposure, such a migration can be controlled. This is supported by considerable managerial ability and the reliability of the technology. Finally, it draws attention to a major problem that arises in a migration context: the absence of a shared interoperability framework, as is seen in two out of three parameters. The assessment grid of the project’s key success factors (Table 1, p. 6) allows the following to be ascertained: The importance of the Risk Assessment and Monitoring factor during the software implementation process. Its estimated value of 3.7, in particular due to the absence of a common interoperability framework and the impossibility of remedying it within the context of the project, lowers the average of the Processes success factor, which is 4.8/7. Managerial skills are high (6.2/7), and the values found for this factor’s components are generally comparable. Technology is assessed at 5.5/7; this parameter covers a contrasted reality: The technology’s intrinsic characteristics (independence with regard to software and publishers, cost controls, data continuity), assessed at 6.6/7, raise this ratio. The technology’s performance, assessed at 4.5/7, lowers this ratio. It implicates both the intrinsically high quality of the software tested, and problems due to the context of the pilot project—characterized, as it was, by the absence of a migration plan (choice of services/people to migrate) and to the absence of a common interoperability framework.