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Status of e-Inclusion measurement, analysis and approaches for improvement e-Inclusion
The e-inclusion study has reviewed and assessed e-inclusion policies and interventions at trans-national level and below within the context of proposals embodied in the Riga Declaration; the Action Plans and i2010. This Handbook is a supplementary Deliverable to the project’s Interim and Final Reports. It is intended to make a bridge between the results and conclusions of the study and how these results and conclusions might be put into practice. These reports provided an overview of the study results and recommendations, they concluded that e-inclusion policies and actions have made significant progress towards implementing the goals associated with creating an inclusive knowledgebased society. This has been driven forward through a focus on three particular strands of e-inclusion: promoting accessibility to infrastructure; equipping citizens with the skills necessary to engage with infrastructure, tools and services, and improving ‘quality of use’.
What is the scope for organisational change in the public sector in Europe?
This paper begins to unpick some of the characteristics of public sector organisations, the environment in which they operate (that is, what motivates and influences change processes in this sector) and begins to elucidate some of the implications for approaches to organisational change.
Formative Evaluation of the JISC VRE Programme
This report presents the achievements and lessons learnt from the 15 projects that participated in the VRE1 programme. Overall, the programme was judged as a success in meeting its original aims and objectives. In doing so the projects engaged (to a greater or lesser extent) their respective research communities in VRE development and implementation; conducted extensive user requirements analyses which provided the basis for the construction of various VRE configurations, including both large scale and lightweight, proof-of-concept demonstrators; identified functionality (in the form of tools and services) which met user requirements; and increased awareness of and stimulated discussion on VREs within the UK research community. Overall, the VRE1 Programme clearly demonstrated its potential to have a major impact on supporting and changing research practices in the academic community.
Evaluation of the Framework for the Future Action Plan 2003-06: Findings of the evaluation research on improvement and development in library services and the contribution of the Framework action plan activities
This final report of the evaluation of the Framework for the Future action plan 2003-06 presents the findings of the evaluation research on improvement and development in library services and the contribution of the Framework action plan activities. Evaluation activities included qualitative fieldwork, data feedback workshops, and a national survey of library services. Library services are managing to change, improve and innovate, despite limited freedom and resources. National and regional support – whether as overall policy development, challenge and review, or practical support for the development of staff and of service offers – has made a consistent contribution to the ability of individual library services to improve. Participation by individual library services in Framework action plan activities has led to improvements in services, partnership working, culture and efficiency. 97% of respondents to a national survey reported that involvement in Framework action plan activities had led to service improvements in their library service The greatest impact of Framework is through the existence of the Framework vision itself, it is this public vision which has given direction, made sense of circumstances, and created a new legitimacy for individual library service change and development.
Modelling Advice and Support Services to Integrate Virtual Component in Higher Education (MASSIVE) Link to Workpackages
The aim of MASSIVE was to design a model of necessary support services for European traditional Universities to successfully implement the virtual component of teaching. It focused on the following specific objectives: Defining the conceptual model of virtualisation Identifying and classifying good practices in the organisation of support services to the University community regarding University virtual components Exploring and comparing the elements for transferability Validating the approaches to develop the support services Guaranteeing the wide dissemination of the practices and use of the model The starting point of MASSIVE were the results coming from previous projects: not only to analyse them but to sustain the good practices generated so as to include them in the final model of support services that is to be designed in the 6 areas proposed by the project consortium. Thus, MASSIVE intended to promote, through a peer review evaluation approach, a mutual support model for service provision among specialised teams of University staff. Most of the outputs of the project MASSIVE are public documents accessible through the links below. They are stored on a particular platform (ILIAS).
Measuring public value 2: Practical approaches
Building on existing academic and policy work around public value, The Work Foundation’s project aims to help policymakers, public managers and institutions understand the concept of public value and see how it can be applied in practice. Public value addresses many of the contemporary concerns facing public managers. These include problems of securing legitimacy for decision making, resource allocation and measuring service outcomes. This research project draws together diff erent strands of the current debate around public value, clarifi es its elements and seeks to further understanding of this topical and important conceptual innovation in public service delivery. The project’s objectives are to: provide a clear defi nition of public value provide public managers with a set of guiding principles that orient institutions to the creation of public value use sector and case studies to illustrate how organisations might understand where gaps occur in achieving public value clarify the components and processes of public value in order to facilitate its future capture and measurement.
Evaluation of the community action programme to combat social exclusion and poverty 2002 to 2006
This report presents the findings of the evaluation of the Community Action Programme to encourage member states to combat social exclusion. The Programme was established as an element of the Open Method of Coordination for the Social Inclusion Process initiated by the European Council in Lisbon in 2000 and encompassing the Nice Common Objectives, the Laeken Common Indicators, the National Action Plans for Social Inclusion and the Joint Inclusion Report1. (Further details may be found in Appendix 2 to this report.) The overall aim of the evaluation was to assess the Programme’s achievement in terms of its objectives, with overarching evaluation questions including to what extent does the programme and its actions contribute to: • Improving the understanding of social exclusion and poverty with the help in particular of comparable indicators • The development of a mutual process of co-operation and learning among stakeholders • Developing the capacity of actors to address social exclusion and poverty effectively • The mobilisation of stakeholders, particularly in view of enlargement Against the criteria of relevance, utility, effectiveness, efficiency and EU value added.
All Our Futures: The challenges for local governance 2015
Effective community leadership; a step change in the degree of collaboration between all the key players in a locality; and a deeper engagement between local people and the state – these are the most important functions that must be delivered at a local level if government is to meet the challenges it is likely to face in 2015. This is the key conclusion of our review of what society is likely to be like in 2015 and its implications for local government and local governance. The review was commissioned by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister from the Tavistock Institute, Local Government Information Unit and Solon Consultants. We have not identified a single preferred model for how these functions should be delivered, either individually or collectively. But we have concluded that there are two sets of factors which must be central to any debate about what framework should be created at a local level to deliver them. They are: a spectrum from “decentralised” to “devolved” government; and a spectrum from “universal” to “variable” service delivery. As this report will show, the interaction between these two sets of factors is extremely important.