Designing Administrative Organizations for Health Reform

Describes proposals to create new entities to research comparative effectiveness, make coverage decisions, manage health insurance markets, or offer a public health insurance plan. Discusses types of agencies and considerations for organizational design

Formalization of the partnering structure for networked businesses

Rapidly changing market demands and increasing competitive pressure cause many businesses implement changes to the way they conduct business. One of these changes is the decision to collaborate with other businesses, forming what we call a 'networked business'. Networked businesses are formed by different organizations working together to reach a common goal. For the participating organizations in a networked business to be able to promptly react to their customers' needs, they must set up as cornerstone a well-defined collaborative partnering structure. In this report we discuss the partnering structure of networked businesses and present a framework for its formalization. Using a case study, we illustrate that existing approaches for value modeling, roles specification, and responsibilities definition can be used successfully if employed in a unifying way to address this structure concept

Migration of Legacy Systems in New Public Management – the Swedish Rescue Services Incident Reporting System

The Swedish Rescue Services are migrating from an incident report system to a fully-fledged incident learning system, as part of new public management strategies. The migration process has been studied in an effort to identify challenges and complexities that can offer advice for future system migration projects. The system migration objectives expressed by the central agency leading the studied migration process clearly aimed at implementing double-loop learning in the organizations. The study reveals that in practice this objective has been lost along the way, with the agency in reality focusing more on cosmetic changes, such as terminology, attributes and labels. Meanwhile end-users expressed different and concrete needs, requiring new functionality, process improvements and organizational development. The study highlights the importance of early, active user involvement in the migration process for dual use legacy systems, to avoid losing explicitly articulated high-level objectives, such as improved performance and dual-use of the system

Modernizing a Preventive Maintenance Strategy for Facility and Infrastructure Maintenance

Preventive maintenance (PM) is defined as regularly scheduled maintenance actions based on average failure rates. A properly implemented PM strategy can provide many benefits to an organization in terms of extending equipment life, optimizing resource expenditures, and balancing work schedules. Periodic evaluation of a PM strategy can help identify ways to improve efficiencies and maximize effectiveness. This research effort was accomplished by performing a case study of the United States Air Force’s infrastructure and facility PM program known as the Recurring Work Program (RWP). The methodology consisted of two phases. The first phase, intended to develop an understanding of the gap between the current program and what it needs to become, consisted of two segments: data collection and a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis. Data was collected during 25 interviews with a wide variety of Air Force members highly experienced with the RWP. Using the interview data, the SWOT analysis compared the state of the current program to relevant maintenance management theory and best practices from industry; this analysis resulted in the identification of one strength, six weaknesses, eight opportunities, and seven threats to the RWP. The second phase of the methodology consisted of developing a model to bridge the gap between the current RWP and what it needs to become. It resulted in eight Focus Areas (FAs) that were based on the findings from the SWOT analysis; each FA represents a unique theme of practical recommendations for improving the program. As a result of this research, maintenance managers have a practical tool to help evaluate and modernize their facilities and infrastructure PM strategy. Additionally, the Air Force has a model for modernizing its RWP

Environmental governance in China

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Public-Private Partnership, Contracting Arrangements and Managerial Capacity to Strengthen RCH Programme Implementation

Strengthening management capacity and meeting the need for Reproductive and Child Health (RCH) services is a major challenge for the national RCH programme in India. Central and state governments are working through multiple options to meet this challenge, responding to the complexity of issues in RCH which cut across social, cultural and economic factors, as well as reflecting the immense geographical barriers to access for remote and rural populations. Other barriers are also being addressed, including lessening financial burdens and creating Public - Private Partnerships (PPP) to expand access. For example, the NRHM has been initiated with particular focus on rural population. However, there are a number constraints faced by departments of health in implementing these initiatives. In this paper we focus on one key area: the development of management capacity for working with the private sector. A synthesis of the learning from three case studies of public-private partnerships in the RCH area is discussed. Two case studies pertain to state level initiatives in Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh and third study focuses on the national level mother NGO scheme. The objective of these case studies was to investigate how management capacity was developed through the implementation of these three public-private partnerships initiatives and contracting out of RCH services. The case studies also focused on the partnership in service delivery setting by examining the structure and process of partnership experiences, understanding the management capacity and competency in make-up of various public-private partnership initiatives in RCH, and identify pathways towards developing management capacity of partners to address key challenges in implementation.

Performance evaluation in research departments: from the Balanced Scorecard to the Strategy Map

Notwithstanding a growing interest towards performance management systems for universities, little is known on their application to academic departments. Being an institution dedicated to research, a department presents specific characteristics: creativity, professional autonomy, low degree of repetitiveness, uncertainty on results, unclear relation between input and output. Such peculiarities make the evaluation and measurement of its performance particularly difficult. The purpose of the paper is the exploration and development of a performance evaluation approach which is suitable for the particular features of an academic department. As this paper is explorative in nature, we use a qualitative methodology, to identify dimensions of performance evaluation suitable for application to an academic department. Data are collected for the case study of a department of the University of Padua, Italy. After identifying the relations between the four perspective of the balanced scorecard and identifying the strategic maps, the case study proposes a set of goals and measures which are suitable to satisfy the managerial needs of the analyzed department. The paper contributes to the performance evaluation literature in three main ways. It extends the concept of customer by considering a wider systems of stakeholders; it emphasize the strategic role of the financial dimension as a driver for achieving the mission and it highlights the need to coordinate the different stakeholders involved in the enhancement of strategy, from academic and administrative staff, to different types of customers and the community in general.performance measurement, strategy map, balanced scorecard, university, departments

Migration of legacy systems - the Swedish Rescue Services incident reporting system

The Swedish Rescue Services are migrating from an incident report system to a fully-fledged incident learning system. The migration process has been studied under the lenses of organizational learning theories, to identify challenges that can offer advice for future system migration projects. The objectives expressed by the central agency leading the studied migration process aimed at implementing organizational double-loop learning by using the incident reports as enablers to learn from the rescue operation and improve future operations accordingly. In practice this objective has been lost along the way, with the agency focusing more on cosmetic changes, such as terminology, attributes and labels. Meanwhile end-users expressed different and concrete needs, requiring new functionality, process improvements and organizational development. The study highlights the importance of early, active user involvement in the migration process for dual use legacy systems, to avoid losing explicitly articulated high-level objectives, such as improved performance and dual use of the system