Strength through openness - Osborne speech roundup

It’s not every day you hear George Osborne talking about his visit to a civil society open data hack day and riffing on about the “internet of things”, but what does this public policy statement mean for leaders of public bodies, civil society and enterprise? Austerity casts the backdrop to him taking centre stage at Google Zeitgeist 2011 this week to assert the continued support of the UK Government Coalition’s technology policy on open data. In spite the historic budget deficit and a track record UK government IT project failures the Chancellor was confident in government plans for institutional reform and efficiency through technology.

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Linking development data workshop

More transparency of aid flows and results will lead to better insights and collaboration. But how can we make this work? I’ve teamed up with key practitioners in development aid and set up a Linking Development Data Working Group to facilitate the process of collaborating to deliver better aid.

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Simplifying welfare provision: a universal minimum income

I am honored to offer my blog on open civil society as a platform for this stunning article from Warwick Collins proposing a Universal minimum income which offers a radically simplified new model of welfare provision with revolutionary potential to stimulate the economy. The article, below, clearly describes how a universal minimum income could liberate enterprise and voluntary social activity as a means to bring the Big Society to fruition. It provides a means for testing the consequences of universal minimum income, setting up a Treasury model and shows how its might assist in de-stigmatising welfare provision and can be an alternative to quantitative easing.

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The goodness of openness: six principles of open social enterprise

Updated on Sunday, April 24, 2011 at 8:07PM by David Pidsley

The central activity of social enterprise is doing business to do good. If you like doing good you will probably love ‘openness’. Open source values can inspire and advance your social enterprise. By increasing levels of transparency and involvement of your community in your business decision-making really you will find support to tackle social issues and promote your organisation’s growth.

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The value of open source software for social enterprise

The open source model of software development has a lot of value to offer a social enterprise, including: software products built on open standards; service innovation around an open source products; growth through collaboration between social enterprises, groups and individuals; user focused leadership in terms of schedules for new features of the software; community based support, promotion and innovation; and cost effectiveness by way of integration of existing Open source components. Open source has a unique value for information technology focused social enterprises in particular and social entrepreneurs in general.

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Publicise me in the public interest

“Publicise me in the public interest”, that is what dozens of social entrepreneurs have been busy trying to communicate today. Nick Petrie at The Guardian kindly asked me to join the panel of experts for their Live Q&A on how to raise the profile of social enterprises, as part of a series of sessions from their Social Enterprise Network. Readers of this Live Q&A may be interested in the previous Live Q&A on Social enterprise - a guide to legal structures and my advice on Starting a social enterprise: the conventional alternative.

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Starting a social enterprise: the conventional alternative

Updated on Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 6:07AM by David Pidsley

The traditional dichotomy of the social enterprise is the discrepancy between the social - societal consequences, and the enterprise, or business upshots, of the organisation. But in a deflationary economy and a frugal public expenditure regime I suggest that the most important distinction for a social enterprise is not, however, the dichotomy between private and voluntary organisations but between governmental vs non-governmental.

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