Water and Development Strategy: Implementation Field Guide

This document is intended to serve as a reference tool to help USAID Operating Units understand and apply the agency's 2013-2018 Water and Development Strategy. By publicly sharing the document, USAID aims to ensure coordination of their efforts with the wider water sector. The Field Guide will be periodically updated and comments from readers are welcome

Measurement and reporting of climate-smart agriculture: technical guidance for a countrycentric process

Given the extent of climate-smart agriculture (CSA) initiatives at project, national, regional and global levels, there is increasing interest in tracking progress in implementing CSA at national level. CSA is also expected to contribute to higher-level goals (e.g., the Paris Agreement, Africa Union’s Vision 25x25, and the Sustainable Development Goals [SDGs], etc.). Measurement and reporting of climate-smart agriculture (MR of CSA) provides intelligence on necessary the status, effectiveness, efficiency and impacts of interventions, which is critical for meeting stakeholders’ diverse management and reporting needs. In this paper, we build the case for a stakeholder-driven, country-centric framework for MR of CSA, which aims to increase coordination and coherence across stakeholders’ MR activities, while also aligning national reporting with reporting on international commitments. We present practical guidance on how to develop an integrated MR framework, drawing on findings from a multi-country assessment of needs, opportunities and capacities for national MR of CSA. The content of a unified MR framework is determined by stakeholders’ activities (how they promote CSA), needs (why MR is useful to them) and current capacities to conduct periodic monitoring, evaluation and reporting (how ready are institutions, staff and finances). Our analysis found that explicit demand for integration of data systems and active engagement of stakeholders throughout the entire process are key ingredients for building a MR system that is relevant, useful and acted upon. Based on these lessons, we identify a seven-step framework for stakeholders to develop a comprehensive information system for MR of progress in implementing CSA

Strategy at the crossroads: The case of the navy hospital ships

We examine the state of knowledge in the defense literature on the use of military medical humanitarian assistance missions and examine their implications for navy hospital ships. As humanitarian assistance missions grow in importance for combatant commanders, deployed forces, senior government leaders and the international community, it becomes more important to determine desired outcomes and to set clear priorities for hospital ship use. Only when this is done can activities that promote achievement of policy goals be selected. While traditional hospital ship missions focus on combat support and training, successful humanitarian assistance campaigns typically address improving security and stability in a region, attitudes towards Americans and the West, and health and welfare conditions of local populations. We argue that well-crafted and communicated goals and priorities for the use of hospital ships are essential if the ships are to achieve desired policy outcomes.humanitarian assistance; military medicine; strategic planning

Aligning a Service Provisioning Model of a Service-Oriented System with the ITIL v.3 Life Cycle

Bringing together the ICT and the business layer of a service-oriented system (SoS) remains a great challenge. Few papers tackle the management of SoS from the business and organizational point of view. One solution is to use the well-known ITIL v.3 framework. The latter enables to transform the organization into a service-oriented organizational which focuses on the value provided to the service customers. In this paper, we align the steps of the service provisioning model with the ITIL v.3 processes. The alignment proposed should help organizations and IT teams to integrate their ICT layer, represented by the SoS, and their business layer, represented by ITIL v.3. One main advantage of this combined use of ITIL and a SoS is the full service orientation of the company.Comment: This document is the technical work of a conference paper submitted to the International Conference on Exploring Service Science 1.5 (IESS 2015

Securing intellectual capital:an exploratory study in Australian universities

Purpose – To investigate the links between IC and the protection of data, information and knowledge in universities, as organizations with unique knowledge-related foci and challenges.Design/methodology/approach – We gathered insights from existing IC-related research publications to delineate key foundational aspects of IC, identify and propose links to traditional information security that impact the protection of IC. We conducted interviews with key stakeholders in Australian universities in order to validate these links.Findings – Our investigation revealed two kinds of embeddedness characterizing the organizational fabric of universities: (1) vertical and (2) horizontal, with an emphasis on the connection between these and IC-related knowledge protection within these institutions.Research implications – There is a need to acknowledge the different roles played by actors within the university, and the relevance of information security to IC-related preservation.Practical implications – Framing information security as an IC-related issue can help IT security managers communicate the need for knowledge security with executives in higher education, and secure funding to preserve and secure such IC-related knowledge, once its value is recognized.Originality/value – This is one of the first studies to explore the connections between data and information security and the three core components of IC’s knowledge security in the university context

Discovery and Strategic Partnership Group Concept Mapping: 2014-2015 Progress Report

In 2014, New York State received funding from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Special Education and Rehabilitative Services to begin the NYS PROMISE (Promote the Readiness of Minors in Supplemental Security Income) research initiative. The goal of this initiative is to coordinate the system of support surrounding these youths to better catalyze their potential to transition from Supplemental Security Income (SSI) to a sustainable future of living and earning as independent adults. To guide strategy and support PROMISE priorities over the course of the initiative, NYS PROMISE convened the NYS PROMISE Steering Committee, comprised of appointed liaisons from agencies who are connected to the NYS PROMISE initiative. To support sustainable partnership development for greater progress and impact on the goals of NYS PROMISE, the Steering Committee engaged in a structured, time sensitive strategic planning and partnership framework development effort. To develop the elements of a prioritized strategy, the group used Group Concept Mapping (GCM), and constructed a visual framework, or concept map, that served as the basis for prioritization and strategy development throughout the process. The GCM approach employs a group process to capture individual contributions for consensus around a given topic, using a structured approach with a specific sequence of steps that support timely and consistent engagement in the process. GCM incorporates opinions and values, and presents the results in ways that are understandable and usable. 25 individuals from 8 member agencies took part in the concept map development, contributing elements in response to the following prompt: “To yield enduring individual outcomes, a viable system to support youth with disabilities in their transition from high school to successful adult lives needs to include…

Trust in social machines: the challenges

The World Wide Web has ushered in a new generation of applications constructively linking people and computers to create what have been called ‘social machines.’ The ‘components’ of these machines are people and technologies. It has long been recognised that for people to participate in social machines, they have to trust the processes. However, the notions of trust often used tend to be imported from agent-based computing, and may be too formal, objective and selective to describe human trust accurately. This paper applies a theory of human trust to social machines research, and sets out some of the challenges to system designers

Greater Washington Works: IT and Health Careers with Promise

The Greater Washington Workforce Development Collaborative, an initiative of The Community Foundation for the National Capital Region, has partnered with JPMorgan Chase & Co. to develop new a research report, Greater Washington Works: IT and Health Careers with Promise, released today. The report focuses on how our region can address the skills gap and lift more of our neighbors out of poverty through careers in IT and Healthcare.With over 70% of net new jobs requiring post-secondary education and training, the Washington regional economy continues to be highly knowledge-based. Local employers, however, face challenges in finding skilled workers. Nearly 800,000 individuals in our region have no education past high school, highlighting a skills gap that has the potential to undermine our region's global economic competitiveness.Further, while it is encouraging that our regional unemployment rate has improved to pre-Great Recession levels, many of our neighbors are still struggling to make ends meet. Our region can count 100,000 additional residents living below the Federal poverty level since 2009. African American or Latino workers in the region are three times more likely to earn an income below the poverty level. Addressing our region's race, ethnicity, and gender-based income inequality is a critical challenge for our region to tackle if we want to ensure that all in our region have a fair shot for prosperity