1,108 research outputs found

    Institutional thickening and innovation: reflections on the remapping of the Great Bear Rainforest

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    The information, practices and views in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG). © 2016 Royal Geographical Society (with the Institute of British Geographers) As a response to forest conflict, contemporary remapping refers to re-evaluations of resource values, new and diverse forms of governance among stakeholders, and compromises within patterns of land use that give greater emphasis to environmental and cultural priorities. This paper elaborates the processes of remapping by examining the role of institutional innovation in conflict resolution, with particular reference to the iconic Great Bear Rainforest of British Columbia. After years of conflict and protest, peace in the Great Bear Rainforest was heralded by an interim agreement in 2006, with final ratification likely in 2016. Conceptually, a four-legged stakeholder model identifies the main institutional interests and their interactions through learning and bargaining. New forms of governance were created to bring the stakeholders together in constructive dialogue and then to reach and implement acceptable bargains. Analytically, the paper examines how this agreement has worked in practice by reflecting on the emergence of novel institutions that integrate the interests of key stakeholders. The discussion identifies six bilateral negotiations between: industrial and environmental interests; federal and provincial governments and aboriginal peoples; government and environmental interests; government and industry; industry and aboriginal peoples; and environmental groups and local communities. The remapping process has produced a thickening architecture of institutions that remain experimental even as they seek to promote sustainability, resilience and legitimacy

    Electronic information sharing in local government authorities: Factors influencing the decision-making process

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    This is the post-print version of the final paper published in International Journal of Information Management. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2013 Elsevier B.V.Local Government Authorities (LGAs) are mainly characterised as information-intensive organisations. To satisfy their information requirements, effective information sharing within and among LGAs is necessary. Nevertheless, the dilemma of Inter-Organisational Information Sharing (IOIS) has been regarded as an inevitable issue for the public sector. Despite a decade of active research and practice, the field lacks a comprehensive framework to examine the factors influencing Electronic Information Sharing (EIS) among LGAs. The research presented in this paper contributes towards resolving this problem by developing a conceptual framework of factors influencing EIS in Government-to-Government (G2G) collaboration. By presenting this model, we attempt to clarify that EIS in LGAs is affected by a combination of environmental, organisational, business process, and technological factors and that it should not be scrutinised merely from a technical perspective. To validate the conceptual rationale, multiple case study based research strategy was selected. From an analysis of the empirical data from two case organisations, this paper exemplifies the importance (i.e. prioritisation) of these factors in influencing EIS by utilising the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) technique. The intent herein is to offer LGA decision-makers with a systematic decision-making process in realising the importance (i.e. from most important to least important) of EIS influential factors. This systematic process will also assist LGA decision-makers in better interpreting EIS and its underlying problems. The research reported herein should be of interest to both academics and practitioners who are involved in IOIS, in general, and collaborative e-Government, in particular

    Interoperability, Trust Based Information Sharing Protocol and Security: Digital Government Key Issues

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    Improved interoperability between public and private organizations is of key significance to make digital government newest triumphant. Digital Government interoperability, information sharing protocol and security are measured the key issue for achieving a refined stage of digital government. Flawless interoperability is essential to share the information between diverse and merely dispersed organisations in several network environments by using computer based tools. Digital government must ensure security for its information systems, including computers and networks for providing better service to the citizens. Governments around the world are increasingly revolving to information sharing and integration for solving problems in programs and policy areas. Evils of global worry such as syndrome discovery and manage, terror campaign, immigration and border control, prohibited drug trafficking, and more demand information sharing, harmonization and cooperation amid government agencies within a country and across national borders. A number of daunting challenges survive to the progress of an efficient information sharing protocol. A secure and trusted information-sharing protocol is required to enable users to interact and share information easily and perfectly across many diverse networks and databases globally.Comment: 20 page

    G2G interaction model of information sharing among local agencies based on phenomenology approach: Dhi-qar province employees’ viewpoints

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    The exchange of information electronically has help local agencies to increase their productivity and performance. At the same time, it improves the process of policy-making by providing better public services to citizens. However, only a few studies that examine the factors influencing the electronic interaction among local agencies in developing countries, including in Iraq. In fact, government agencies usually rely on information provided by other government agencies, making the electronic interactions crucial for effective inter-organizational operations management in the government. This study aims to determine the factors affecting the interaction among local agencies in Dhi-Qar, Iraq. Thus, it proposes a government-to-government (G2G) interaction model among local agencies from the environmental, organizational, and technological contexts, using phenomenological approach based on the Diffusion of Innovation and Social Exchange theories. Data were collected in two phases. First, a series of interviews with local egovernment employees were carried out to discover the factors that influence the G2G interaction in Dhi-Qar, Iraq. Later, another series of semi-structured interviews focusing on extracting the main issues that influence G2G interaction was followed. The collected data were validated through triangulation and member checking. A case study was used to confirm the findings. The study has discovered the factors that influence the electronic interaction among local agencies in Dhi-Qar. The factors are benefits, compatibility, complexity, costs, information security, inter-agency trust, internal resistance to change, information technology (IT) capability, legislation, physical security, and top management support. Based on these factors, the government-to-government interaction model (G2GIM) is proposed. This model can be applied to different local agencies in implementing e-government projects

    Zero-shot keyword spotting for visual speech recognition in-the-wild

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    Visual keyword spotting (KWS) is the problem of estimating whether a text query occurs in a given recording using only video information. This paper focuses on visual KWS for words unseen during training, a real-world, practical setting which so far has received no attention by the community. To this end, we devise an end-to-end architecture comprising (a) a state-of-the-art visual feature extractor based on spatiotemporal Residual Networks, (b) a grapheme-to-phoneme model based on sequence-to-sequence neural networks, and (c) a stack of recurrent neural networks which learn how to correlate visual features with the keyword representation. Different to prior works on KWS, which try to learn word representations merely from sequences of graphemes (i.e. letters), we propose the use of a grapheme-to-phoneme encoder-decoder model which learns how to map words to their pronunciation. We demonstrate that our system obtains very promising visual-only KWS results on the challenging LRS2 database, for keywords unseen during training. We also show that our system outperforms a baseline which addresses KWS via automatic speech recognition (ASR), while it drastically improves over other recently proposed ASR-free KWS methods.Comment: Accepted at ECCV-201

    Results-Based Monitoring and Evaluation and Knowledge Management Approaches in Government to Government Partnerships: The Case of the Shandong and WCG Partnership

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    Government to Government (G2G) partnerships between countries in the BRICS partnerships have significantly increased and with it, the need for more effective evidence-based decision-making. In this process, improved M&E and KM has become prominent. In this context, the study investigated the need for Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E), as well as knowledge management (KM) systems in partnerships. This study focused on the development management aspects of such partnerships and the article is based on research information obtained through the PhD study by Dr Ivy Chen as well as updated research perspectives.The article concluded that a need existed to establish more advanced M&E and KM systems in G2G partnerships. The Readiness Assessment conducted regarding M&E showed that a need existed for Results-Based M&E that can be used to ensure evidence-based decision-making in the G2G partnerships. The Readiness Assessment showed that a definite need existed for Communities of Practice (COPs) beyond the formal meetings and that professionals and practitioners on both sides needed to exchange explicit and implicit knowledge. A need also existed for improved ICTs based-systems including dedicated portals where policy documentation, programme information and data, as well as M&E results, can be loaded and shared by Governments

    Inter-Organisational Electronic Information Sharing in Local G2G Settings: A Socio-Technical Issue

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    Local Government Authorities (LGAs) are information-intensive organisations. To satisfy their information requirements effective information sharing within and among LGAs is necessary (internally among departments and externally with other authorities). The problem of Inter-Organisational Information Sharing (IOIS) has been regarded as inevitable for the public sector. Despite a decade of active research and practice in this complex problem area, the field lacks a comprehensive framework to examine the factors affecting Electronic Information Sharing (EIS) among government bodies at the local level. The research presented in this paper contributes toward resolving this problem by developing a conceptual framework of factors affecting EIS in Government-to-Government (G2G) collaboration. By presenting this framework, we attempt to clarify that information sharing in LGAs is a combination of environmental, organisational, business process and technological factors and should not be scrutinised from merely a technical perspective. To validate our conceptual findings, a multiple case study based research strategy was adopted. From an analysis of the empirical data collected from two case organisations, this paper exemplifies the importance of these factors in influencing EIS and offering LGA officials with specific advice on how to better interpret EIS and its underlying problems. The paper should be of interest to both academics and practitioners who are interested in IOIS, in general, and collaborative e-Government, in particular

    Supporting public decision making in policy deliberations: An ontological approach

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    This is the post-print version of the Paper. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2011 SpringerSupporting public decision making in policy deliberations has been a key objective of eParticipation which is an emerging area of eGovernment. EParticipation aims to enhance citizen involvement in public governance activities through the use of information and communication technologies. An innovative approach towards this objective is exploiting the potentials of semantic web technologies centred on conceptual knowledge models in the form of ontologies. Ontologies are generally defined as explicit human and computer shared views on the world of particular domains. In this paper, the potentials and benefits of using ontologies for policy deliberation processes are discussed. Previous work is then extended and synthesised to develop a deliberation ontology. The ontology aims to define the necessary semantics in order to structure and interrelate the stages and various activities of deliberation processes with legal information, participant stakeholders and their associated arguments. The practical implications of the proposed framework are illustrated.This work is funded by the European Commission under the 2006/1 eParticipation call

    Government-to-Government E-Government: A Case Study of a Federal Financial Program

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    The problem with the study of the concept of electronic government (e-Gov) is that scholars in the field have not adequately explored various dimensions ofthe concept. Literature on e-Gov is replete with works on the form of government to consumer e-Gov. Much less work had been done on the government to government (G2G) e-Gov. This qualitative case study was predicated on the concepts of intergovernmental relations and intergovernmental management, and it sought to fill the gap in the literature by providing a clear understanding of G2G e-Gov by exploring a federal program in the United States. The central research question determined how G2G e-Gov enhanced accountability, efficiency, and public service value. Data were collected using face to face and email interviews, documents, and archival data. Data were analyzed with a modified content analysis technique. Findings from the study indicated that improvements in communication, process, technology, and legislative proposals are linked to programmatic success in G2G e-Gov. The study has implications for social change as the knowledge of G2G e-Gov is useful to governments because of its emphasis on accountability, efficiency, collaboration, and information sharing. It also has the potential to assist public policy officials and academics to better understand the importance of G2G e-Gov for public service delivery, and help developing countries in their e-Gov implementations
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