The Humanitarian Futures Programme is one of the most interesting initiatives out there, taking a longer-term view of the sector than most other policy and research groups. Originally I thought that they were going to be developing the humanitarian equivalent of the Singularity, but it’s more about building dialogue with key partners and getting people [...]...
As some light relief from the news from Burma and China, it looks as if the One Laptop Per Child project is falling apart under the weight of - well, mainly under the weight of Nicholas Negroponte. Ivan Krstic explains in a fascinating essay on his reasons for leaving his position as security director of [...]...
The ConnectivIT lab at the University of Colorado has done some fascinating research in the last couple of years, which I’ve been meaning to blog about, but never quite got round to. Such are the workings of the web that these things always come around if you wait long enough. So I’ll preface this blog [...]...
In Science News, Julie Rehmeyer writes a short piece on Humanitarian Statistics, with a focus on the “controversial” Iraq war studies carried in the Lancet. I haven’t posted about the Lancet studies before; I recognise that the Lancet studies have an important role to play in tallying the cost of the Iraq war, but anything I could add to the debate would be largely redundant, since it’s been driven by political rather than humanitarian interests.
Although Deltoid characterises the article as being “about the Lancet studies” - and fair enough, that is his particular interest - it is thankfully wider than that, noting the increase in the use of statistics in the human rights (and to a lesser extent, humanitarian) sector while also being aware of the...
Today's increased focus on corporate governance means that boards of directors, managers, and others need advice in the development and evaluation of governance structures and processes. The demand for these services has been driven by corporate managers and boards interested in improving governance, satisfying shareholders and regulators, and preventing lawsuits. On the other side, judges, jurors, arbitrators, and mediators need governance experts to help them understand the nuances of governance practices and the way they relate to management.Arthur Levitt's landmark "Numbers Game" speech of September 1998 called for boards to engage independent professional and legal advisors. Levitt offered further insights on the governance challenges facing boards with "In Defense of Sarbanes...
The Economist article Of internet cafés and power cuts was passably interesting on the subject of technology in developing countries, although it takes the usual optimistic approach that the Economist favours. The Economist picked up on this issue was the publication of this year’s Global Economic Prospects by the World Bank, with a focus on technology adoption and a barrel full of blindingly obvious conclusions.
More interesting is the research that both of those draw on quite heavily, building a Historical Cross-Country Technology Adoption Database. You can download the database itself from that page, but the overview article Cross-Country Technology Adoption: Making the Theories Face the Facts by Diego Comin and Bart Hobijn is much more manageable. I haven’t dug into the...
Ed Granger-Happ is taking a sabbatical from his job as CIO of Save the Children US, and spending the next few months as an executive fellow and the CIO-in-Residence at the Center for Digital Strategies at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. This is great news for Ed, and for the Center as well, since Ed has a track record of innovation that will hopefully encourage some of the Tuck staff and students to get more engaged in our sector. Even better, he’s started blogging as he begins the residency (I have no idea who managed to persuade him to commit to that…) and I hope that he’ll keep posting on a regular basis at his Dartmouth Fellowship blog....
Outside of humanitarian work, I have a passing interest in complexity theory, particularly around ideas of emergence. As a result, I’m deeply envious of Ben Ramalingam at ODI, who shares this interest but has actually found the time to write something substantial about it. The Working Paper that he has written with Harry Jones, Toussaint Reba and John Young - Exploring the science of complexity: Ideas and implications for development and humanitarian efforts has just been published by the ODI RAPID programme.
This line of research is one of the most important developments in humanitarian and development studies in many years, a potentially critical addition to the ideological foundations of our work (such as the Humanitarian Accountability Partnership), the technocratic scaffolding...
Last year, the first Mobile Response International Symposium on Mobile Information
Technology for Emergency Response was held - they’ve published the proceedings in a proper book and everything (why aren’t we doing that at ISCRAM again?). Mobile Response is much more along the “emergency management” axis than the “humanitarian response” axis (you know, critical infrastructure, rescue operations and so on), but obviously there’s a lot of crossover (although at some point I’m going to have to write about the distinction and what it means for ICT issues in particular).
So the Call for Papers for Mobile Response 2008 has just been issued. To give you an idea of the topics that they’re interested in, take a look at this list:
Mobile and...
In concert with its mission of knowledge creation and dissemination, and in recognition of business ethics as an important intersection of business and society, New York University Stern School of Business is announcing the Daniel P. Paduano Faculty Symposium on Business Ethics, to commence in the 2007-08 academic year. The purpose of the Symposium is to build and sustain a vibrant community of faculty across disciplines who conduct research in business ethics and related fields. This investment in fostering a scholarly community dedicated to business ethics is made possible through the generous support of Daniel P. Paduano (MBA ’69).“Our aim with this Symposium is to create a vibrant, self-sustaining community of scholars who are dedicated to unearthing substantive issues in...
I thought it had gone defunct, but there’s a new issue of Information Technologies and International Development out at the MIT Press. And the better news is that they’ve made the journal Open Access, which means that you can download all the articles for free....