In this episode, we discuss the topic of measuring impact with Dr Linda Corrin from Swinburne University in Australia and Prof Bart Rienties from Open University in the UK
Social Impact Bonds (SIBs) represent a new and particularly disruptive form of social service privatization that bears resemblance to the introduction of public private partnerships for the development of hard infrastructure. Social impact bonds pose a major risk to the preservation of valuable public services. Based on this detailed critique, unions and non-profit organizations involved in the delivery of services to people must oppose them.
Recently the Government announced that it was pulling the plug on the Peterborough Prison Social Impact Bond (SIB) pilot, despite an interim evaluation showing “promising results”.
Results from the first generation of social impact bonds (also known as pay for success deals) are starting to come in. Today, the field has learned the results of the evaluation of the first social impact bond transaction in the United States.
Social impact bonds funnel private capital into philanthropic projects. Investors receive a return based on whether the project saves public money by addressing the social issue it targets.
First there was the “impact factor.” Then came the “h-index.” Now, for those who believe that scientific prowess can be measured by statistical metrics, comes the Acuna-Allesina-Kording formula.
SEI has now launched the first Swedish version of the REAP Programme, a scenario planning tool targeting stakeholders with particular interest in assessing footprints and environmental impact at the local level, primarily Swedish local and regional authorities.
The Cabinet Office’s Centre for Social Impact Bonds has developed two new tools to assist the development of the bonds: the 'Knowledge Box' online portal and a template service agreement contract.
J. Abbate. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, (1999)Provides a good overview over the history of the Internet.
Use of the Internet has grown tremendously in a very short time and we take much of it for granted. We shop online, bank online, purchase airline tickets and make hotel reservations online, all at the click of a mouse through the World Wide Web, a graphical application for using the Internet. But how did the Internet get its start?
In Inventing the Internet, Janet Abbate tells the tale of the creation and evolution of the Internet beginning in the late 1960s with the development of a revolutionary concept for transferring data called packet switching developed simultaneously by Paul Baran of the Rand Corporation in the U.S. and Donald Davies of the National Physics Laboratory in Great Britain.
Abbate discusses the challenges faced by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in creating ARPANET, the first wide-scale computer network. ARPA's challenges ranged from utilizing the new and unproven technique of packet switching to connecting a wide variety of incompatible computers to the fledgling network. Packet switching proved to be a success but as Abbate points out, it is hard to say if packet switching made ARPANET a success or if ARPANET made packet switching a success. Abbate explains the efforts of several organizations that went into developing international standards that were necessary for the Internet to become as successful as it has become.
Abbate also explores the social issues surrounding the creation and development of the Internet; issues such as the cooperation necessary between the builders and the users of ARPANET in the 1970s and 80s that made ARPANET more user friendly to how the users themselves saved the ARPANET and ultimately the Internet through the popularization of an unlikely application. Abbate states 'had the ARPANET's only value been as a tool for resource sharing, the network might be remembered today as a minor failure rather than a spectacular success. But the network users unexpectedly came up with a new focus for network activity: electronic mail.'
Abbate delves into the popularization of the Internet through such applications such as the World Wide Web and how private enterprises including Internet service providers such as America Online, CompuServe and Prodigy quickly transformed the Internet from a dull, text-only entity to a glitzy, graphically oriented medium. The World Wide Web exponentially added to this popularization by providing an application that was not only easy to use but also wildly entertaining to both expert and novice users alike.
Abbate presents this history of the Internet in an easy-to-read style that is both entertaining and informative. Inventing the Internet is well documented with extensive chapter notes and an excellent bibliography..