Minimizing Desktop Downtime and Improving Business Productivity at Hanover Insurance

The goal of this project was to provide recommendations on ways to improve the impact of downtime to business productivity at Hanover Insurance Group by reducing downtime of desktops. To help formulate these recommendations, the team developed an as-in state by conducting interviews with Hanover Technology Group (HGT) managers, shadowing different departments within HTG, and by analyzing service center incident ticket data. Consequently, a to-be model was developed through industry best practice research and interviews with managers from the Computing and Communication Center (CCC) department at Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Improvement of Information Technology Infrastructure in Higher Education using IT Balanced Scorecard

Today the use of Information Technology (IT) in business is a must since IT is useful to obtain competitive advantage. It can be achieved by alignment of IT and business, which is performed by developing a good IT infrastructure. Higher educational organization is one of business which requires competitive advantage to compete with their competitors. However, there are some problems encountered. These include the lack of a systemic approach to IT implementation, the lack of awareness to use IT, the lack of commitment and the leader's interest to implement IT, the weakness of technical support for IT implementation, poorly targeted staff development, lack of ownership and insufficient funds. Furthermore, an evaluation is need to determine the condition of IT infrastructure problems to deal with issues faced by a higher education organization. Balanced Scorecard is potential framework for analyzing IT infrastructure since it is one of the well-known performance measurements which embrace the important aspect in business. To do performance evaluation in the IT of higher education organization, Balance Scorecard perspective needs to be customized since IT division is more likely to serve internal rather than external parties commonly. The results of this study are expected to give an illustration of the state of IT infrastructure governance of higher education according to four perspectives in IT Balanced Scorecard. Based on this illustration, it can be identified critical recommendation to IT Infrastructure governance in higher education

Accountability to Affected Populations and Cost-Effectiveness in Humanitarian Outcomes

Accountability to Affected Populations (AAP) seeks to ensure that the rights, dignity, perspectives and security of all groups of an affected population are protected, and that gender, age, disability and diversity identify their particular needs. This rapid review summarizes the available evidence on how/if Accountability to Affected Populations (AAP) is leading to cost-effective humanitarian outcomes as well as if certain AAP mechanisms are more effective than others (although the evidence on the latter is very limited). Overall, AAP has been a well-recognised principle of humanitarian action for two decades. The humanitarian sector has made commitments on five ‘pillars’ of AAP through the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC) and other related forums, namely: leadership and governance; transparency; feedback and complaints; participation; and project design, monitoring and evaluation. Nevertheless, a comprehensive review on the ‘state of the humanitarian system’ by ALNAP discovered that there was ‘no progress in engaging local participation’ and ‘little evidence of affected populations’ input into project design or approach’. Further, much of the available evidence confirms that the humanitarian sector has had a ‘poor record’ in fulfilling its pledge to use power responsibly by taking into account, transparency and accountability of the people it aims to support

Lessons from Conflict Resolution Interventions

The following report is a rapid review of a broad literature on conflict resolution systems and peacebuilding. Section 2 discusses the concept of Infrastructure for Peace (I4P), setting up of functional structures for successful and sustainable peace. I4P can be either bottom-up or topdown and take many different forms. Areas of support suggested for these structures includes: executive leadership; rule of law and law enforcement; fiduciary management; public administration; security; and natural resource management (Giessmann, 2016). Section 3 reports evidence from reviews on local peace committees (LPCs), which can be formal or informal. Informality has the benefit of allowing creativity, but can be insufficient in reaching powerful political leaders. Formal local peace committees are linked to national agendas. This ensures information flows and removes political blockages, but can be restrictive and corrupted by local power-plays. Local buy-in is particularly important in more formal committees, and must be supported by a functioning peace architecture. Recommendations for successful peacebuilding are drawn from the country case studies (section 4), approaches in Europe (section 5), and learning from Christian Aid programmes (section 6). These reiterate lessons from the reviews. They suggest: involvement of local leaders, Local Councils, and community members; factoring in time for results and accepting the continuous nature of a peace process; providing sufficient resources; encouraging the role of women; focus on long-term objectives for sustainability; pacts need to continue with dialogue; understanding and using mediators; building trust with outside actors, and connection between different levels (local, national, regional) and between state and non-state. Potentially relevant lessons from a review on reducing armed violence are described in Section 7. Section 8 touches on the role of police institutions with an example of community policing in Bougainville. And Section 9 begins to explore the involvement of women in conflict resolution. All of these sections require deeper analysis outside the scope of the helpdesk

The Official Student Newspaper of UAS

UAS Answers: everybody's got one -- On Indian Point -- City looking for feedback regarding Indian Point -- UAS In Brief -- Sustainability takes a village -- Increase tuition? No way! -- Help with UAS Home -- Funding student research -- Discussing gun violence and Humans vs. Zombies -- Graz, Austria -- Climate change and students -- The "all Alaskan diet" -- Get to know abusive behavior -- Helping Hurricane Maria victims from 5,000 miles away -- Combatting seasonal depression -- Knowing the signs -- Off campus calendar -- On campus calendar -- A mushroom hik

An Overview of ICT for Education of Refugees and IDPs

This rapid review examined examples of ICT approaches to address the education needs of those living in IDP and refugee camps and lessons learned from these experiences. Although ICT is considered a good system to fulfil the education needs within refugee settings, many studies conclude that access to ICTs in schools or at home is not sufficient to improve learning outcomes. It is due to the role of a mentor or tutor figure is seen as key to productive learner engagement with technology, and the effectiveness of ICT-based education is reliant on appropriate teacher training to ensure successful up-take at the classroom level (Tauson & Stannard 2018: 47, 62; UNESCO 2018: 74; Carlson 2013: 30). Secondly, in terms of content, ICTs for education should provide content that is responsive or adaptable to the learners’ level, is implemented in line with the local curriculum and also is relevant to the learners’ context (Tauson & Stannard 2018: 36-38, 61). Despite this potential for ICTs, there remains a broad lack of evidence related to education in refugee settings (Burde et al. 2015; Tauson & Stannard 2018; World Bank 2016). In particular, more information is needed on pedagogic design, on the effective use of ICTs for learning, on the role of ICTs in ensuring continuity of and linkages between learning in formal and non-formal settings, on the role of ICTs in educational data-gathering, and on the cost-effectiveness of ICT-led interventions (Burde et al 2015; Tausin & Stannard 2018; Carlson 2013). In light of the availability of evidence, some of the studies cited here instead supplement their findings by drawing on observational studies, and on studies on effective ICT usage from learners in non-refugee contexts (Burde et al. 2015; Tauson & Stannard 2018)

Social and Behaviour Change Communication Interventions in Mozambique

Social and behaviour change communication (SBCC) is the use of communication to change behaviours by positively influencing knowledge, attitudes and social norms at the individual and community level. Approaches to SBCC include, but are not limited to: media campaigns, peer educators and mentors, small group sessions, community dialogues and events, and digital tools. This rapid literature review focuses on SBCC interventions in Mozambique across four sectors: family planning (FP); girls’ empowerment; water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH), and nutrition. The most common SBCC approaches across the four sectors include: Inter-personal communication, Community participatory approaches, SMS based platforms, and Media channels. This review draws on evaluations of SBCC intervention, donor reports, and qualitative evidence collected by implementers and funders. There is a relatively large evidence base for FP and nutrition interventions, and a comparatively smaller one for WASH and girls’ empowerment. No lessons learned from integrating WASH and nutrition programming could be found during the course of this review. Although there are examples of nutrition programming including WASH in their counselling interventions, as well as calls for the development of multisectoral programmes. For example, in 2017, UNICEF signed a multi-sectoral proposal covering WASH, nutrition, and behaviour change funded by the EU. The programme will work in Nampula and Zambezia Provinces between 2017 and 2021