Aspen Institute Publications
Aspen Institute publications are listed below. Many are available for purchase through Google Checkout, a secure system for handling credit card transaction online. For assistance with ordering publications, please contact our Publications office by email or by phone at (410) 820.5433. Please note: Orders are shipped two times a week from our warehouse in Queenstown, MD, on the Eastern Shore.
Road to Government 2.0: Technological Problems and Solutions for Transparency, Efficiency and Participation
The 2012 FOCAS convened 38 leaders and developers from government, media and communications enterprises, localities, consumer/user groups and academia to define the problems of open and innovative governance and develop solutions. Road to Government 2.0: Technological Problems and Solutions for Transparency, Efficiency and Participation, summarizes the insights, initiatives and recommendations emanating from the Forum. The report, written by Forum rapporteur Greg Ferenstein, describes the origins of the open government movement, provides a discussion of the meaningful open governance efforts around the world and then addresses a number of serious shortcomings and subsequent solutions in open government. The recommendations include measures to enhance public awareness and media engagement, modifications to the government procurement process and an emphasis on useful participatory government to help improve information flow, communication and citizen interactions.
Spectrum as a Resource for Enabling Innovation Policy
The 2012 Aspen Institute Roundtable on Spectrum Policy (AIRS) convened shortly after the presidential election to consider ways that spectrum policy could improve the economy through innovation. The 32 leading communications policy experts in attendance focused on how spectrum policies could help create an environment that makes it easier to use spectrum as a resource for innovative new goods and services. The participants first identified problems facing new entry and innovation today, and then recommended solutions, looking specifically at the interstices between licensed and unlicensed approaches, spectrum sharing and flexibility, and new institutional arrangements to manage these solutions. The report, written by British spectrum expert William Webb, sets forth eleven recommendations that he gleaned from the conference dialogue to guide future spectrum policy development with regard to facilitating innovation.
Finding a New Way: Leveraging Teacher Leadership to Meet Unprecedented Demands
School systems that provide their highest-performing teachers with leadership roles can elevate the profession and increase the impact of top talent. Pursuing teacher leadership allows schools systems to increase support for teachers and students, advance systemic improvement efforts, and improve the recruitment and retention of top performers. Developing teacher leadership systems requires us to rethink evaluation, compensation, distributed leadership, and even what we see as the role of teachers and the way we organize instruction.
This paper outlines a clear process for establishing shared purpose for teacher leadership and career pathways, for designing and implementing systems and structures that support this work, and for learning from teacher leadership efforts. The paper also includes profiles of school systems leading the effort to create teacher leadership and career pathways.
Helping Adult Learners Navigate Community College and the Labor Market
This issue of Update looks at the challenges adult learners face as they attempt to enter community college, persist to completing a certificate or degree, and successfully transition to employment. The reports shares detailed examples of these challenges including how some adult learners struggle with financial aid and registration processes, inadequate career counseling, insufficient support services and a lack of professional networks they need to get a job after college among others. The report also offers numerous examples of strategies nonprofit-community college partnerships use to help adult learners overcome hurdles such as these. The publication draws on findings from Courses to Employment, a three year demonstration project funded by the Charles Steward Mott Foundation that AspenWSI conducted to investigate how six community college-nonprofit partnerships work together to support the success of low-income adults.
Rethinking Communications Regulation
As the Internet and other information and communications technologies grow exponentially, and as a new ecosystem is emerging that could conflate previously distinct methods of communication into a single digital medium, questions arise as to whether the traditional silos of regulation are still appropriate. The report resulting from the 27th Annual Aspen Institute Communications Policy Conference addresses the overarching concern as to whether the Communications Act needs a radical revision. Written by rapporteur Richard Adler, the report considers the key goals of a new communications regime and offers regulatory and non-regulatory approaches for achieving these goals in a digitally connected world.
Power-Curve Society: The Future of Innovation, Opportunity and Social Equity in the Emerging Networked Economy
This report examines how technological innovation is restructuring productivity and the social and economic impact resulting from these changes. It addresses the growing concern about the technological displacement of jobs, stagnant middle class income, and wealth disparities in an emerging "winner-take-all" economy. It also examines cutting-edge innovations in personal data ecosystems that could potentially unlock a revolutionary wave of individual economic empowerment. "Power-Curve Society" is the Report of the Twenty-First Annual Roundtable on Information Technology, a dialogue convened by the Communications and Society Program.
Creating A Faculty Culture of Student Success
This guide describes how leading community colleges have created cultures in which faculty members consistently work to reform and improve their teaching in ways that measurably improve student learning. It provides a look at some innovative approaches, including the unusual tenure process at Valencia College - winner of the 2011 Aspen Prize for Community College Excellence – which is built around a system that requires faculty members to use data and experiment with their own teaching in ways that will improve student learning, and supports them along the way.
Microenterprise Development as Job Creation
This report, funded by the Annie E. Casey Foundation as part of the “Big Ideas for Jobs” project, details the role that microbusinesses – firms that employ five of fewer workers – play in supporting jobs. Based on interviews with nearly 2000 microbusinesses that received assistance from community-based microenterprise development organizations, the report describes key findings including the numbers of jobs supported, wages paid to workers, and the income drawn by owners.
Summary Report from the Aspen Consultation on Health, Food Security and Population in the Post-2015 Development Agenda
In January 2013, the Summary Report from the Aspen Consultation on Health, Food Security and Population in the Post-2015 Development Agenda was submitted to each of the UN task teams charged with advising the Secretary General's High Level Panel on the issues of health, food security, population dynamics, inequalities, education and environmental sustainability.
The Report was a synthesis of a consulation that took place in December 2012, when Aspen Global Health and Development convened a distinguished group of public- and private-sector experts to provide input on the post-2015 development agenda. Participants focused on the interrelated issues of health, food security and population dynamics, but the wide-ranging conversation encompassed many of this century's most pressing challenges.
The recommendations of the Aspen Consultation Summary Report were particularly visible in the draft report by the Task Team of the Global Thematic Consultation on Health, including in the Task Team's illumination of the linkages between reproductive health and other development sectors:
"The following example illustrates the multiple benefits that universal access to reproductive health services and protection of reproductive rights would bring. People's, and especially women’s, right to decide the number of children they wish to have (and are able to afford) is a basic human right. Countries that have fully supported this right tend to have a lower total fertility rate. Smaller families benefit women's and children's health and make it easier for health systems in low resource contexts to serve their populations. Among other things, having fewer children empowers women to participate in society, complete their education, and access formal employment, giving them an independent income. It also contributes to human development by reducing household poverty. Smaller families slow population growth, which in turn reduces demand for water, food, and energy; alleviate pressures on education and the environment; diminish social conflict and state fragility; and reduce climate change and mitigate its impact."
(Draft Report of the Task Team of the Global Consultation on Health in the Post-2015 Agenda, p. 15)
