Attentive Troppodillians will be aware of the Australian Centre for Social Innovation which I chair. After looking awfully like our ‘runway’ was coming to an end (as we stay in startup land) our first and still flagship program is growing strongly. Here’s a news story from South Australia.
If you’re interested, relax back on an armchair and watch this 27 minute doco as if it were Australian Story. It’s entertaining and inspiring.
Though if you want just the highlights in the condensed version – they’re here – in a 6 minute video
This video is a bit more focused on the building of the program – ie it’s co-design with its intended beneficiaries
Public private partnerships (PPPs) haven’t been such a happy experiment. Using private money to build arterial roads just increases their cost because private capital requires much higher returns than government borrowing.
But I’ve long wondered about a different kind of PPP that plays to the respective strengths of public and private sectors, rather than their weaknesses.
The economic textbook says governments must build public goods because private endeavour can capture only a tiny fraction of their total value to society. But Google, Facebook, Twitter and Wikipedia are all privately provided public goods. What’s going on?
Osper is a cash card for young people with a mobile banking app with login for mum and dad (with parental controls) and login for young people (which teaches responsible money management).
The cash card can be used anywhere, is setup within minutes and doesn’t require bank visits or complex paperwork.
The parent app can instantly lock the card, track transactions in real time, and manage loans from the bank of mum and dad! The young person’s app allows them to manage their own savings goals.
That’s all well and good. I’m surprised that the only mainstream parental ‘app’ that’s at all common in my experience is ‘net nanny’ type apps which filter out porn from websites. One of the things I’ve always wanted was software that would enable me to give my kids time limits for recreational use of a computer or a TV. Oh and software on the house wifi to enable you to check out what people were using it for, or, if you don’t like that, to impose download limits on different users. Alas, I think with enough savvy some of these things are possible, but they weren’t easy. And there are only 24 hours in the day.
This is an email I received earlier today from Karen Mahlab – and I offered to reproduce it here for the delectation and contribution of Troppodillians everywhere. The winner of the competition will be flown steerage to London for a weekend at Buckingham Palace with the royal carriages at their command.
In partnership with Philanthropy Australia, The Myer Family Office, The Myer Foundation and the Sidney Myer Fund, Pro Bono Australia is seeking nominations for the most significant 50 philanthropic grants in Australia.
Our aim is to increase the profile of Philanthropy in the public eye nationally. We are well below international standards in this area. We already have a couple of hundred nominations registered which is wonderful at this stage.
I’d be most appreciative if you could have a think about whether or not you have a personal favorite for nomination. It can about the impact a grant has had not necessarily its size.
I am sending this to you because of your extensive professional networks and your interest and/or deep involvement in your own areas of specialisation and philanthropy.
See below for more details and please excuse the non personalised email. Also, feel free to pass this on to anyone else in your networks who may have a potential nomination.
Get a load of the UK Cabinet Office Minister’s delivery.
It’s fabulously low key, informal, indeed intimate compared with the formal bullshitting mode of almost all political utterance, and straightforward. It is of course ‘spin’, as it couldn’t be anything else. The Gettysburg Address was spin. But what I find thoroughly delightful about it is the way in which it simply dispenses with the entire genre of the public statement.
Of course there’s a reason for the genre of the public statement, because a public statement is not an intimate statement to a single person. However it is now so thoroughly debased by Orwellian corporatespeak “The Government is committed to a fairer Britain for all Britons”, that it’s a breath of fresh air to start again.
Reminds me of this issue I drew attention to in a previous post:
One of the things that intrigues me about the world is that acting is never ‘realistic’. For instance whenever you listen to a documentary and some scene is ‘reconstructed by actors’, you can always tell that they’re actors. They say their lines like they’re in a play or a movie, yet they’re acting real life. Strange isn’t it? They’re professionals at feigning life, and yet, when their only job is to feign life, not to ‘put on a play’ which is understandably a kind of hyper-real-life, they can’t do it. I’d like to understand why this is so. I’m sure it’s not a reflection on actors that their acting is not fully ‘realistic’, just as a TV presenters speech to camera is not like they speak normally, and just as when we give a speech to a group it’s not the same voice we use to speak to each other. Still I think it is a very telling reflection on actors that they show little sign of doing something completely realistic on the rare occasions when it’s called for.
