149,040 research outputs found

    National models of ISR: Belgium

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    Strengthening Out-of-School Time Nonprofits: The Role of Foundations in Building Organizational Capacity

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    Placing nonprofits in the larger context of city, state, and national policy, explores the capacity-building support nonprofits running afterschool and summer programs need to provide high-impact networks of learning and developmental opportunities

    Putting Data to Work: Interim Recommendations From the Benchmarking Project

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    Calls on policy makers and funders to foster continuous improvement in workforce development by supporting consistent performance measures, easily exchanged data, useful reports on trends, peer learning opportunities, and broader project participation

    Teaching and learning of performance measurement in OR/MS degrees

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    A review of existing UK MS/OR undergraduate programmes was completed to assess the extent and nature of performance measurement teaching. In addition, a survey of performance measurement practitioners was undertaken to obtain views on what should be taught in relation to performance measurement. A survey of 23 undergraduate MS/OR degrees in the UK revealed that all the academic respondents supported the inclusion of PM teaching. However, only four distinct PM classes could be found amongst these degrees. The PM techniques taught were broadly similar although the wider context of PM was taught in only 2 of the classes. A survey of a small number of PM practitioners revealed that the Balanced Scorecard and Benchmarking were the two most commonly applied PM techniques with the majority of respondents learning about PM from personal experience and reading rather than through formal education. It appears that there is an opportunity for MS/OR teaching to make a major contribution to the development of PM as a discipline. However, academic respondents whose MS/OR degree course did not teach PM indicated that lack of staff expertise in PM combined with an already full syllabus were the main barriers to introducing a PM class

    A model and framework for online security benchmarking

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    The variety of threats and vulnerabilities within the online business environment are dynamic and thus constantly changing in how they impinge upon online functionality, compromise organizational or customer information, contravene security implementations and thereby undermine online customer confidence. To nullify such threats, online security management must become proactive, by reviewing and continuously improving online security to strengthen the enterpriseis online security measures and policies, as modelled. The benchmarking process utilises a proposed benchmarking framework to guide both the development and application of security benchmarks created in the first instance, from recognized information technology (IT) and information security standards (ISS) and then their application to the online security measures and policies utilized within online business. Furthermore, the benchmarking framework incorporates a continuous improvement review process to address the relevance of benchmark development over time and the changes in threat focus.<br /

    Principles in Patterns (PiP) : Evaluation of Impact on Business Processes

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    The innovation and development work conducted under the auspices of the Principles in Patterns (PiP) project is intended to explore and develop new technology-supported approaches to curriculum design, approval and review. An integral component of this innovation is the use of business process analysis and process change techniques - and their instantiation within the C-CAP system (Class and Course Approval Pilot) - in order to improve the efficacy of curriculum approval processes. Improvements to approval process responsiveness and overall process efficacy can assist institutions in better reviewing or updating curriculum designs to enhance pedagogy. Such improvements also assume a greater significance in a globalised HE environment, in which institutions must adapt or create curricula quickly in order to better reflect rapidly changing academic contexts, as well as better responding to the demands of employment marketplaces and the expectations of professional bodies. This is increasingly an issue for disciplines within the sciences and engineering, where new skills or knowledge need to be rapidly embedded in curricula as a response to emerging technological or environmental developments. All of the aforementioned must also be achieved while simultaneously maintaining high standards of academic quality, thus adding a further layer of complexity to the way in which HE institutions engage in "responsive curriculum design" and approval. This strand of the PiP evaluation therefore entails an analysis of the business process techniques used by PiP, their efficacy, and the impact of process changes on the curriculum approval process, as instantiated by C-CAP. More generally the evaluation is a contribution towards a wider understanding of technology-supported process improvement initiatives within curriculum approval and their potential to render such processes more transparent, efficient and effective. Partly owing to limitations in the data required to facilitate comparative analyses, this evaluation adopts a mixed approach, making use of qualitative and quantitative methods as well as theoretical techniques. These approaches combined enable a comparative evaluation of the curriculum approval process under the "new state" (i.e. using C-CAP) and under the "previous state". This report summarises the methodology used to enable comparative evaluation and presents an analysis and discussion of the results. As the report will explain, the impact of C-CAP and its ability to support improvements in process and document management has resulted in the resolution of numerous process failings. C-CAP has also demonstrated potential for improvements in approval process cycle time, process reliability, process visibility, process automation, process parallelism and a reduction in transition delays within the approval process, thus contributing to considerable process efficiencies; although it is acknowledged that enhancements and redesign may be required to take advantage of C-CAP's potential. Other aspects pertaining to C-CAP's impact on process change, improvements to document management and the curation of curriculum designs will also be discussed

    EU and OECD benchmarking and peer review compared

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    Benchmarking and peer review are essential elements of the so-called EU open method of coordination (OMC) which has been contested in the literature for lack of effectiveness. In this paper we compare benchmarking and peer review procedures as used by the EU with those used by the OECD. Different types of benchmarking and peer review are distinguished and pitfalls for (international) benchmarking are discussed. We find that the OECD has a clear single objective for its benchmarking and peer review activities (i.e. horizontal policy transfers) whereas the EU suffers from a mix of objectives (a. horizontal policy learning; b. EU wide vertical policy coordination and c. multilateral monitoring and surveillance under the shadow of hierarchy). Whereas the OECD is able to skirt around most of the benchmarking pitfalls, this is not the case for the EU. It is argued that, rather than continue working with the panacea OMC benchmarking and peer review currently represents, EU benchmarking should take a number of more distinct shapes in order to improve effectiveness. Moreover, in some areas benchmarking and peer review are not sufficient coordination tools, and are at best additional to those means of coordination that include enforceable sanctions
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