Enabling Social Applications via Decentralized Social Data Management

An unprecedented information wealth produced by online social networks, further augmented by location/collocation data, is currently fragmented across different proprietary services. Combined, it can accurately represent the social world and enable novel socially-aware applications. We present Prometheus, a socially-aware peer-to-peer service that collects social information from multiple sources into a multigraph managed in a decentralized fashion on user-contributed nodes, and exposes it through an interface implementing non-trivial social inferences while complying with user-defined access policies. Simulations and experiments on PlanetLab with emulated application workloads show the system exhibits good end-to-end response time, low communication overhead and resilience to malicious attacks.Comment: 27 pages, single ACM column, 9 figures, accepted in Special Issue of Foundations of Social Computing, ACM Transactions on Internet Technolog

A Midpoint Report on the True North Fund

In July 2010, the Social Innovation Fund (SIF) awarded the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation (EMCF) $10 million (the first of three$10 million awards) to increase the scale and impact of youth development organizations whose programs have been shown to produce positive outcomes in communities of need across the United States. EMCF and its co-investors are tackling the immense problems confronting America's low-income youth -- for example, more than 22 percent of all children in the U.S. live in poverty, and 30 percent of public school students fail to graduate from high school, leading to a lack of educational success and employment among youth and young adults across the country. In 2011, EMCF launched the True North Fund (TNF) to aggregate private growth capital in support of nine initial (and subsequently three additional) SIF grantees. EMCF matched the $10 million in federal funds from the SIF 1:1 with its own funds and then, in collaboration with the TNF co-investors and grantees, helped raise the remaining 2:1 match to meet the SIF's 3:1 match requirement. EMCF also provided the grantees with additional supports, including assistance with business planning from the Bridgespan Group and with evaluation planning and implementation from MDRC, and access to executive and leadership coaching.Through the TNF, EMCF and its co-investors' goals are to: Significantly increase the numbers of youth served by effective programs;Support rigorous independent evaluations that help youth-serving organizations and the field advance evidence of programmatic effectiveness in ways that strengthen and improve programs as they grow; Demonstrate a more efficient and effective method of organizing private and public capital on behalf of low-income youth; and Encourage by example and advocacy fundamental change in how public and private capital is deployed to scale what works.This report reflects the experience of the nine initial TNF grantees. In 2013, EMCF selected three additional TNF grantees: PACE Center for Girls, WINGS for kids, and Youth Guidance.Two years after launching the initiative, EMCF commissioned this midpoint report on the TNF to answer the following questions:What progress did the TNF grantees make during the first two years?What has been the TNF co-investors' experience to date?What insights can the TNF grantees, EMCF and co-investors share with funders and policymakers at midpoint?This report summarizes high-level themes that emerged from a review of the TNF literature and telephone interviews with EMCF senior management, EMCF's strategic collaborators, nine TNF grantees, and 12 of the 15 co-investors. It is not meant to be a formal evaluation or exhaustive review with deep analyses of grantee outcomes and accomplishments. Rather, it takes the temperature of the TNF at midpoint in order to inform EMCF and its co-investors, and share with the public some early lessons learned. EMCF expects to publish more detailed, in-depth findings after the initiative concludes in 2015 -- 16

Supply Chains and Porous Boundaries: The Disaggregation of Legal Services

The economic downturn has had significant effects on law firms, and is causing many of them to rethink some basic assumptions about how they operate. In important respects, however, the downturn has simply intensified the effects of some deeper trends that preceded it, which are likely to continue after any recovery that may occur. This paper explores one of these trends, which is corporate client insistence that law firms “disaggregate” their services into discrete tasks that can be delegated to the least costly providers who can perform them. With advances in communications technology, there is increasing likelihood that some of these persons may be located outside the formal boundaries of the firm. This means that law firms may need increasingly to confront the make or buy decision that their corporate clients have regularly confronted for some time. The potential for vertical disintegration is a relatively recent development for legal services, but is well-established in other sectors of the global economy. Empirical work in several disciplines has identified a number of issues that arise for organizations as the make or buy decision becomes a potentially more salient feature of their operations. Much of this work has focused in particular on the implications of relying on outsourcing as an integral part of the production process. This paper discusses research on: (1) the challenges of ensuring that work performed outside the firm is fully integrated into the production process; (2) coordinating projects for which networks of organizations are responsible; (3) managing the transfer of knowledge inside and outside of firms that are participants in a supply chain; and (4) addressing the impact of using contingent workers on an organization’s workforce, structure, and culture. A review of this research suggests considerations that law firms will need to assess if they begin significantly to extend the process of providing services beyond their formal boundaries. Discussing the research also is intended to introduce concepts that may become increasingly relevant to law firms, but which currently are not commonly used to analyze their operations. Considering how these concepts are applicable to law firms may prompt us to rethink how to conceptualize these firms and what they do. This paper therefore is a preliminary attempt to explore: (1) the extent to which law firms may come to resemble the vertically disintegrated organizations that populate many other economic sectors and (2) the potential implications of this trend for the provision of legal services,the trajectory of legal careers, and lawyers’ sense of themselves as members of a distinct profession

The Diffusion of Microfinance

We examine how participation in a microfinance program diffuses through social networks. We collected detailed demographic and social network data in 43 villages in South India before microfinance was introduced in those villages and then tracked eventual participation. We exploit exogenous variation in the importance (in a network sense) of the people who were first informed about the program, "the injection points". Microfinance participation is higher when the injection points have higher eigenvector centrality. We estimate structural models of diffusion that allow us to (i) determine the relative roles of basic information transmission versus other forms of peer influence, and (ii) distinguish information passing by participants and non-participants. We find that participants are significantly more likely to pass information on to friends and acquaintances than informed non-participants, but that information passing by non-participants is still substantial and significant, accounting for roughly a third of informedness and participation. We also find that, conditioned on being informed, an individual's decision is not significantly affected by the participation of her acquaintances.

How to avoid cooling out? Experiences of young people in their transitions to work across Europe

In this working paper the authors investigate the active engagement of young women and men in shaping their transitions from school to work. How do they navigate through increasingly flexible and risk-laden transition systems? What strategies do they apply to develop and maintain learning motivation or to cope with de-motivation? The research was conducted with funding from the EUs Fifth Framework Programme and involves research teams from Denmark, East and West Germany, Great Britain (Northern Ireland), Ireland (Republic), Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Romania and Spain. Under the title "Youth Policy and Participation. Potentials of Participation and Informal Learning for Young People\u27s Transitions to the Labour Market" it investigates how young people use programmes and training measures which define active participation and the involvement of participants as essential for their approach towards young people. (Author)In diesem Arbeitspapier untersuchen die AutorInnen das aktive Engagement junger Frauen und Männer in der Gestaltung ihrer Übergänge von der Schule in den Beruf. Wie navigieren sie durch zunehmen flexibilisierte und risikobehaftete Übergangssysteme? Welche Strategien wenden sie an, um Lernmotivation zu entwickeln und aufrechtzuerhalten? Und wie gehen sie mit demotivierenden Erfahrungen um? Das zugrundeliegende Forschungsprojekt wurde finanziert mit Mitteln aus dem 5. Rahmenforschungsprogramm der EU. Beteiligt waren Forschungsteams aus Dänemark, Deutschland (Ost und West), Großbritannien (Nordirland), Irland, Italien, den Niederlanden, Portugal, Rumänien und Spanien. Unter dem Titel "Jugendpolitik und Partizipation. Potenziale von Partizipation und informellem Lernen für die Übergänge junger Menschen in den Arbeitsmarkt" untersucht das Projekt, wie Jugendliche und junge Erwachsene Unterstützungs- und Trainingsmaßnahmen nutzen, die aktive Beteiligung und Mitbestimmung der TeilnehmerInnen zum zentralen Bestandteil ihres Arbeitskonzeptes machen. (Autor

International Labor Migration: A Responsible Role for Business

Outlines trends in labor migration in international supply chains and proposes an action plan for businesses to raise awareness and engage with suppliers to protect foreign workers' rights. Includes a case study of the Philippine government's policies

Developing a model of mental health self-care support for children and young people through an integrated evaluation of available types of provision involving systematic review, meta-analysis and case study

Background The mental health of children and young people (CYP) is a major UK public health concern. Recent policy reviews have identified that service provision for CYP with mental health needs is not as effective, responsive, accessible or child-centred as it could be. Following on from a previous National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) study into self-care support for CYP with long-term physical health needs, this study explored self-care support’s potential in CYP’s mental health. Objectives To identify and evaluate the types of mental health self-care support used by, and available to, CYP and their parents, and to establish how such support interfaces with statutory and non-statutory service provision. Design Two inter-related systematic literature reviews (an effectiveness review with meta-analysis and a perceptions review), together with a service mapping exercise and case study. Setting Global (systematic reviews); England and Wales (mapping exercise and case study). Participants (case study) Fifty-two individuals (17 CYP, 16 family members and 19 staff) were interviewed across six sites. Main outcome measures (meta-analysis) A measure of CYP’s mental health symptomatology. Data sources (literature reviews) MEDLINE, Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL), PsycINFO, All Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) Reviews, Applied Social Sciences Index and Abstracts (ASSIA) and Education Resources Information Center (ERIC). Review methods Titles and abstracts of papers were screened for relevance then grouped into studies. Two independent reviewers extracted data from studies meeting the inclusion criteria. A descriptive analysis and meta-analysis were conducted for the effectiveness review; descriptive analyses were conducted for the perceptions review. These analyses were integrated to elicit a mixed-methods review. Results Sixty-five of 71 included studies were meta-analysable. These 65 studies elicited 71 comparisons which, when meta-analysed, suggested that self-care support interventions were effective at 6-month [standardised mean difference (SMD) = −0.20; 95% confidence interval (CI) −0.28 to −0.11] and 12-month (SMD = −0.12; 95% CI −0.17 to −0.06) follow-ups. However, judged against Cochrane criteria, the studies were mostly low quality. Key elements of self-care support identified in the perceptions review were the acquisition of knowledge and skills, peer support and the relationship with the self-care support agent; CYP also had different perceptions from adults about what is important in self-care support. The mapping exercise identified 27 providers of 33 self-care support services. According to the case study data, effective self-care support services are predicated on flexibility; straightforward access; non-judgemental, welcoming organisations and staff; the provision of time and attention; opportunities to learn and practise skills relevant to self-care; and systems of peer support. Conclusions Mental health self-care support interventions for CYP are modestly effective in the short to medium term. Self-care support can be conceptualised as a process which has overlap with ‘recovery’. CYP and their families want choice and flexibility in the provision of such interventions and a continued relationship with services after the nominal therapy period. Those delivering self-care support need to have specific child-centred attributes. Future work Future work should focus on under-represented conditions (e.g. psychosis, eating disorders, self-harm); the role of technology, leadership and readiness in self-care support; satisfaction in self-care support; the conceptualisation of self-care support in CYP’s mental health; and efficacy and cost-effectiveness