An output approach to property portfolio performance measurement

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the analysis of portfolios of office properties using measures of business outputs, namely occupation efficiency and staff satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach – Satisfaction is measured using a proprietary online survey instrument that has proved highly reliable and repeatable in three separate trials. The data on 192 buildings are analysed using data envelopment analysis. Findings – Instant and significant differences are revealed between clusters of buildings and individual properties. The approach reveals inefficiencies that are concealed by more conventional cost-based metrics. Practical implications – The study has proven to be of use in gaining organisational commitment to strategic property improvements. Originality/value – The authors are not aware of this approach having been applied elsewhere in either research or application.</p

A five-year profile of employee satisfaction for UK local government buildings

A substantial five-year database, totalling over 20,000 responses across more than four hundred UK local government office buildings, is used to analyse employee satisfaction towards their work environment. Within this database, twenty-seven employee satisfaction attributes have been collected, for different sets of individuals and buildings, by an annual online survey for five years. The collective views of these responses in each of those years have been compared. The results have been strikingly consistent. The problematic areas are persistently the same. They appear to be the control of heating and ventilation and the need for, and ability to use, quiet areas for concentration, followed by document storage facilities, provision of meeting rooms, car parking facilities, and other personal needs related facilities, such as toilets and kitchen facilities. These areas are important concerns which need to be brought to the attention of local authorities and should not be neglected by decision makers. The findings by the comparison should also stimulate the proposals of improvement initiatives. This five-year profile provides a baseline against which the future investigations can be compared in the same sector. This study also provides an analytic method for performing other satisfaction related investigations. Keywords: employee satisfaction, work environment, local governmen

Fighting Cybercrime After \u3cem\u3eUnited States v. Jones\u3c/em\u3e

In a landmark non-decision last term, five Justices of the United States Supreme Court would have held that citizens possess a Fourth Amendment right to expect that certain quantities of information about them will remain private, even if they have no such expectations with respect to any of the information or data constituting that whole. This quantitative approach to evaluating and protecting Fourth Amendment rights is certainly novel and raises serious conceptual, doctrinal, and practical challenges. In other works, we have met these challenges by engaging in a careful analysis of this “mosaic theory” and by proposing that courts focus on the technologies that make collecting and aggregating large quantities of information possible. In those efforts, we focused on reasonable expectations held by “the people” that they will not be subjected to broad and indiscriminate surveillance. These expectations are anchored in Founding-era concerns about the capacity for unfettered search powers to promote an authoritarian surveillance state. Although we also readily acknowledged that there are legitimate and competing governmental and law enforcement interests at stake in the deployment and use of surveillance technologies that implicate reasonable interests in quantitative privacy, we did little more. In this Article, we begin to address that omission by focusing on the legitimate governmental and law enforcement interests at stake in preventing, detecting, and prosecuting cyber-harassment and healthcare fraud

Cochrane acute respiratory infections group's stakeholder engagement project identified systematic review priority areas

Objective: Cochrane acute respiratory infections (ARIs) group conducts systematic reviews of the evidence for treatment and prevention of ARIs. We report the results of a prioritization project, aiming to identify highest priority systematic review topics. Study Design/Setting: The project consisted of two phases. Phase 1 analyzed the gap between existing randomized controlled trials and Cochrane systematic reviews (reported previously). Phase 2 (reported here) consisted of a two-round survey. In round 1, respondents prioritized 68 topics and suggested up to 10 additional topics; in round 2, respondents prioritized top 25 topics from round 1. Results: Respondents included clinicians, researchers, systematic reviewers, allied health, patients, and carers, from 33 different countries. In round 1, 154 respondents identified 20 priority topics, most commonly selecting topics in nonspecific ARIs, influenza, and common cold. Fifty respondents also collectively suggested 134 additional topics. In round 2, 78 respondents prioritized top 25 topics, most commonly in the areas of nonspecific ARIs, pneumonia, and influenza. Conclusion: We generated a list of priority systematic review topics to guide the Cochrane ARI group's systematic review work for the next 24 months. Stakeholder involvement enhanced the transparency of the process and will increase the usability and relevance of the group's work to stakeholders

Biochar alteration of the sorption of substrates and products in Soil Enzyme Assays

Pine wood and barley straw biochar amendments to Kettering and Cameroon sandy silt loam soils (15, 30, or 150 mg biochar g−1 soil) caused significant reductions (up to 80%

A point of connection?:Wellbeing, the veteran identity and older adults

Maintaining good wellbeing in older age is seen to have a positive effect on health, including cognitive and physiological functioning. This paper explores experiences of wellbeing in a particular older adult community: those who have served in the military. It aims to identify the specific challenges that ex-service personnel may have, reporting findings from a qualitative study focused on how older veterans told stories of military service and what these stories revealed about wellbeing. We used a qualitative approach; data are drawn from 30 individual interviews, and from engagement with veterans in workshops. Analysis was conducted using a data-driven constant comparison approach. Three themes are presented: how loneliness affects older adult veterans; how they draw on fictive kinship; and the role of military visual culture. Although participants had diverse experiences of military service, they felt that being a veteran connected them to a community that went beyond association with specific experiences. Using narratives of military experience to connect, both in telling stories and by stories being listened to, was vital. As veterans, older adults were able to access each other as a resource for listening and sharing. However, it was also exclusionary: civilians, because they lacked military service experience, could not empathise and be used as a resource