Policy & Governance

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 09 may 2015

Digital revolution is affecting and impacting every aspect of human lives. Education is one sphere where the transformation is beginning to happen and schools are applying technology-enabled learning methodologies. But to truly accomplish what technology promises in education, the strategies have to go beyond just providing technology devices and softwares to students. It must try to provide students with enhanced learning capabilities and equip them with skills for success. Arne Duncan, US Secretary of Education, provides his views and ideas on how educational technology and innovation will bring the changes in the learning environment of the future. According to him, 'Innovation in education isn't about the latest gadget or app, or about how adept a student is at using a smartphone to consume the latest Internet meme. It's about how technological tools can empower students to become who they want to be, and who we need them to be - the kind of children and young people who ask - What can I improve? How can I help? What can I build?' He provides following suggestions regarding what technology can do in education - (1) We must make education technology more equitable. (2) Teachers and students must be empowered as creators, not just consumers. (3) We must make teaching more sustainable. He further explains, 'Everyone has an essential role to play in elevating and supporting the teaching profession. Teachers must be willing to explore new ways of supporting and challenging themselves and their students. Students must assume more responsibility for their own learning. Principals must create school climates that honor innovation and experimentation. Elected officials and policymakers must be willing to incentivize policies and programs that lift up the profession - through more resources, support, and funding.' Read on...

Medium: What Can Technology Do for Tomorrow's Children?
Author: Arne Duncan

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 25 apr 2015

The survey of 924 nonprofit board directors conducted by team of researchers (David F. Larcker, William F. Meehan III, Nicholas Donatiello, Brian Tayan) from Stanford Graduate School of Business supports a long-held hypothesis that many nonprofit boards are ineffective. The study revealed that a significant minority are unsure of their organization's mission and strategy, dissatisfied with their ability to evaluate their organization's performance, and uncertain whether their fellow board members have the experience to do their jobs well. According to Prof. Larcker, the lead researcher, 'Our research finds that too often board members lack the skill set, depth of knowledge, and engagement required to help their organizations succeed.' Researchers offer following recommendations to improve nonprofit board governance - (1) Ensure the mission is focused, and its skills and resources are well-aligned. (2) Ensure the mission is understood by the board, management, and key stakeholders. (3) Establish explicit goals and strategies tied to achieving that mission. (4) Develop rigorous performance metrics that reflect those goals. (5) Hold the executive director accountable for meeting the performance metrics, and evaluate his or her performance with an objective process. (6) Compose your board with individuals with skills, resources, diversity, and dedication to address the needs of the nonprofit. (7) Define explicitly the roles and responsibility of board members. (8) Establish well-defined board, committee, and ad hoc processes that reflect the nonprofit's needs and ensure optimal handling of key decisions. (9) Regularly review and assess each board member and the board's overall performance. Read on...

Business Wire: Stanford Research Offers Nine Tips to Improve Nonprofit Governance
Author: Heather Hansen

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 16 apr 2015

Using technology to bring social change and improve people's lives is a challenging task. 'One-size-fits-all' approaches to implement technology strategies may not be effective and provide expected results. There is need to have proper context, clarity of purpose and supportive environment to fulfil the promises that technology intends to bring for the well-being and welfare of the society. Professor Kentaro Toyama of University of Michigan, in his latest book 'Geek Heresy: Rescuing Social Change from the Cult of Technology', argues that technologists undermine efforts at social progress by promoting 'packaged interventions' at the expense of more difficult reforms. Prof. Toyama has worked extensively in India and launched various projects that sought to use computers and Internet connectivity to improve education and reduce poverty. Following are selected excerpts from his Q&A session done by Brian Bergstein, deputy editor of MIT Technology Review - • 'There are already several randomized, controlled trials of schools with and without One Laptop per Child. Generally, what most of these studies show is that schools with laptops did not see their children gain anything in terms of academic achievement, in terms of grades, in terms of test scores, in terms of attendance, or in terms of supposed engagement with the classroom.' • 'I think it's perfectly sensible for parents to want a certain amount of exposure to technology for their children, both as a form of explorative play and as a way to get them used to technology that they'll undoubtedly encounter later in their life. I think the fundamental error people make is that, therefore, we should have the computer be the primary instrument of education for all children...I think one of the issues is we tend to think of education as being the content. We overemphasize the importance of content, as opposed to emphasizing the part that's really difficult in any good education, which is adult-supervised motivation - the motivation of the child to learn something.' • 'If you measure some positive benefit in the technology case, your conclusion is that technology helped. But it was always the people that we worked with, the partners that we chose and the people on the ground who interacted with the people that we wanted to support. All of those human factors were required for the technology itself to have an impact; whether the technology helped or not was really up to people.' Read on...

MIT Technology Review: Putting Technology in Its Place
Author: Brian Bergstein

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 31 mar 2015

Non-profit organizations need to focus on their mission and objectives, and design and implement effective governance practices and align them with the interests of their main stakeholders. They should keep in mind the laws of the land and regulatory processes while pursuing their charitable goals. Non-profit organizations in the state of Pennsylania in US have the following main stakeholders - (1) Attorney General: Has responsibility for ensuring that nonprofit charitable corporations and their boards of directors operate in accordance with their nonprofit mandates. (2) Internal Revenue Service (IRS): Has the authority to grant tax-exempt status to charitable nonprofit corporations, has an interest in ensuring that charitable corporations are governed appropriately. (3) General Public: That contributes to and supports a nonprofit corporation's goals and objectives has economic and mission-related interests in the organization's affairs to ensure that their donations, contributions and support are used to further the organization's charitable purposes. Board of directors of non-profit organizations plays an important role in corporate governance and oversees its effective working. The directors have to carry out their duties in a responsible and conscientious manner. Two principal fiduciary duties of the director are - Duty of Care (Calls upon a director to actively participate in the decisions of the board and to appropriately review data relevant to such decisions); Duty of Loyalty (Requires that each director of a nonprofit corporation make decisions based on the best interests of the corporation and not based on any personal interests). To design an appropriate corporate structure, two tools can be of importance to guide and direct the board in the right direction - (1) Carefully Drafted Bylaws: They identify, shape and inform the corporation's governance structure. They provide a clear roadmap of the corporation's internal management structure while retaining flexibility to respond to operational and governance changes that may occur over time. (2) Judicious Adoption and Use of Corporate Policies and Procedures: Conflict of interest policy; Whistleblower policy; Document reduction and destruction policy. Read on...

The Legal Intelligencer: Effective Corporate Governance in the Nonprofit Sector
Author: Noel A. Fleming

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 27 mar 2015

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 'With reduced demand for production workers, total US manufacturing employment dropped from approximately 19 million in 1980 to 11.5 million in 2010. Most of manufacturing job losses were in the section of the workforce without a high school diploma.' The recent report 'Making Value for America' by National Academy of Engineering (NAE), points out the changing face of US manufacturing and the challenges faced by the human resources employed in manufacturing. The report suggests need of collaborative approach between government, companies and educators to strengthen workforce training programs and enhance innovation and productivity. Manufacturing is to be considered an important component of the value chain and businesses that focus on the entire system of product and service delivery help make value for their customers and are less likely to be disrupted by new technologies or increased competition from emerging economies around the world. According to the report, 'While technological advances offer companies new ways to understand customers' needs and in turn increase demand for their products, automation and streamlined operations are likely to supplant an increasing number of workers in a variety of occupations.' Nicholas Donofrio, chair of the committee that conducted the study, says 'Advancing skills and creating skilled jobs are the best bet to aid the workforce that has been left behind by changes in manufacturing and the broader economy.' Read on...

Engineering.com: National Academy of Engineering - U.S. Must Take Action to Strengthen Manufacturing Innovation, Productivity, and Workforce Training
Author: James Anderton

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 04 dec 2014

'Meaningful use' section of the American Investment & Recovery Act of 2009 and provisions in the Affordable Care Act of 2010, required health providers to invest in patients' electronic health records and allow for electronic data reporting to the government. This prompted healthcare organizations in US to invest heavily on IT and created large amount of data that can be used to improve the quality of care, increase patient satisfaction, and reduce costs. But only few are doing it efficiently and effectively with the help of clinical business intelligence (CBI). CBI is an IT system that collects and analyzes data and delivers the results to frontline clinicians in real time, helping them to make better decisions. It can be used to keep clinicians informed about everything from infections and iatrogenic injuries (those caused unintentionally by physicians) to whether units are over- or understaffed. ThedaCare Center for Healthcare Value, an independent non-profit educational institute, has identified three key building blocks that are required to create and implement a CBI strategy - (1) Change leaders' mind-set: A sustainable, transparent, empowered, evidence-based culture supported by CBI is the end state. Getting there requires leaders to understand the need for information at the front line of care and to support efforts to provide it. (2) Standardize data: Organizations must create a centrally located area for storing data and develop standard definitions for variables and exclusions. (3) Build a culture of transparency: Create an environment where workers are empowered to identify and solve problems each day without manager intervention. Workers need leadership support, transparent work environments, and the essential data on defects, wait times, inventory etc. Read on...

Harvard Business Review: Hospitals Are Finally Starting to Put Real-Time Data to Use
Authors: Melissa Mannon, John S. Toussaint

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 01 dec 2014

Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA), Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA), National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) and Internet Security Alliance (ISA), are organizations that have been working on issues of corporate governance related to cyber security. NACD and ISA recently published a report 'Cyber-Risk Oversight' in which they propose five key principles for boards in approaching cyber-risk - (1) Cyber-risk is more than just an IT issue: It is a key component of enterprise risk management, requiring board-level oversight. (2) Cyber risks have important legal ramifications, which directors need to understand. (3) Cyber-risk should be a topic of regular board discussion, and boards need access to the expertise to engage with cyber-risk issues. (4) Directors should ensure management implements an effective cyber-risk framework for the company. (5) The board and management should assess cyber-risk just like other enterprise-level risks: Ensuring a specific determination is made of which aspects of cyber-risk to accept, avoid, mitigate or insure against. The IIA and ISACA have built upon these five principles to provide well thought out implementation guidance in a publication titled 'Cybersecurity: What the Board of Directors Needs to Ask'. Moreover IIA and ISACA also suggest six questions boards should consider to prepare for discussions with management and audit. Read on...

CTOvision.com: Cyber Security and Corporate Governance: The five principles every corporate director should embody
Author: Bob Gourley

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 08 nov 2014

Management and leadership expert, Ken Blanchard, while speaking to students at Armstrong State University on the concept of 'servant leadership' said, 'The big thing that's changed is that I think we've really moved from a philosophy of command and control as leadership - you know, my way or the highway - to much more of a partnership relationship. I think the young people have really pushed that.' As a consultant to Southwest Airline & its former CEO, Colleen Barrett, Mr. Blanchard observed servant leadership and corroborate a portion of their success to the way they value their customers and employees, key ingredients to servant leadership. While describing servant leadership he states, 'There are two parts of servant leadership, which I talk a lot about. One is the vision and direction and goals parts. You have to know where you're going ... that's the leadership part. The other part is if you don't have anything to serve - a vision, direction, goals - then the only thing to serve is yourself.' As an example of this he cited the widening gap between executive compensation and workers' salaries. Read on...

BusinessInSavannah.com: Management expert Ken Blanchard talks 'servant leadership' at Armstrong State University
Author: Julia Ritchey

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 29 oct 2014

The evolution of global society and growth of interdependent world has facilitated 'networked' approaches to public value and new models of global problem solving. Moreover digitization of society has transformed its capability to organize for innovation, creation of wealth and public value. In an interview, Don Tapscott, an innovation and technology thought leader, suggests four pillars of the society that rely on each other for success and survival - (1) Critical role of 'governments' in achieving security and prosperity, and achieving harmonization, fairness and justice (2) Most countries in the world have chosen the 'private sector and corporations' as the dominant institution for the creation of wealth (3) The 'civil society' has emerged as a new and critical pillar with not-for-profit sector becoming a massive part of the economy and providing employment to substantial population (4) Internet has empowered 'individual citizens' from every walk of life to have an extraordinary effect on achieving social change. Read on...

DonTapscott.com: The New Interdependence: Four Pillars of Society
Author: Don Tapscott

Mohammad Anas Wahaj | 19 oct 2014

Market availability of tangibles follows the basic economic principle of supply and demand, but when it comes to intangibles like leadership, it seems that the world continues to remain in short supply. Leaders are hard to find and can't be developed and traded as commodity when required. Traditionally two sources are considered for leadership supply - military and those who rose up from nothing, overcame hardships and built leadership skills through the school of life. But still the supply doesn't actually meet the demand. Professor James Bailey of George Washington University suggests a third source, professional athletes, that fits the framework of leadership qualities. He provides five reasons for their leadership credibility - (1) Professional athletes are determined (2) They just don't preach teamwork but actually practice it (3) They appreciate followership (4) They are cognitively complex. They grasp the dynamic flow of many inter-related variables, simultaneously played (5) They know what it's like to work under pressure and perform well. Read on...

Lessons on Leadership: Finding the Next Generation of Leaders
Author: James Bailey

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