But the official sector could possibly mitigate their cost by establishing a coherent framework for crisis management, with payment suspensions as one of the tools. None of this is at all to suggest that the issue of standstills - in or outside the Bank of England - is fully articulated and concluded. It is a difficult area requiring contributions from all sides and the  BIS Review 70/2000  8  intellectual argument is ongoing. Finding the right balance between rules and discretion, in this area as in so many, remains a key issue for policymakers. There is work to be done on the modalities of how standstills might operate in different crisis cases. What is the role of the IMF in the standstill process? Does the process need to be underpinned by statute or would non-statutory principles suffice? And when might a standstill require capital controls to guard against leakage? The Bank is currently working on some of these issues, practical and conceptual. I would encourage those among you with an interest in international public policy to help us in addressing them, joining the growing number of, in particular, US academics who are exploring this topic. It is very much a live debate and I have no doubt these issue will be discussed at length, at and around the World Bank and IMF Annual Meetings in Prague later this month. Conclusion I have now talked myself - quite literally - to a standstill.
But we are under no illusion that, so far at least, we have only skimmed the surface. Skills and time matching There are several obvious frictions in the matching process between volunteers and sociallyworthwhile activities, which potentially reduce the effectiveness of volunteering or the likelihood of it happening in the first place. One is time. It is not surprising that time is the most cited barrier to volunteering (Figure 14). 32 But technology, as in every other aspect of life, can improve the efficiency of matching in ways which can stretch time. We have recently seen the emergence of a number of charities with support what the NCVO have called “micro-volunteering”. For example, “Help from Home” is an initiative to encourage micro-volunteering by allowing people to donate as little as 5 minutes to a worthy cause. For example, you can spend a few minutes describing photos to improve a blind person’s experience of a museum, play an online game in aid of scientific research, or write an email to a sick child. Tasks are given a “pyjama-rating” to drive home the message that it is easy to volunteer. A second friction is appropriately matching the skills of volunteers to those activities where they would be best put to use. PhD economists are no less capable of painting sheds or cleaning riverbeds than the next person. But this is unlikely in general to be the best use of their skills and time, nor the charities.