Conceptualizing Public Service Value in E-government Services

Given the substantive investments that governments are making in information technology and the development of e-government channels to improve interactions with citizens, there is increasing interest in determining whether these investments are paying off, and encouraging citizen use of and migration to less costly e-channels. For research on e-government to advance, it is imperative that we gain a good understanding of what citizens and other public sector \u27customers\u27 mean by value. This research-in-progress paper therefore reports on a study aimed at defining the value e-government from the perspective of the citizen in relation to e-government services

Business Models for Sustainable Finance: The Case Study of Social Impact Bonds

Business models for sustainability (BMfS) are relevant topics on research agendas, given their orientation toward sustainability issues. However, traditional versions of these models are often ill-equipped at solving complex social problems. Cross-sector partnerships for sustainability (CSPfS) have been recognized as a new paradigm that mitigates the failure of traditional models. Impact investing, and social impact bonds (SIBs) in particular, represent an interesting field of research in innovative business models for sustainable finance, even though the literature does not consider SIBs within this broader field. We propose an exploratory study based on qualitative methods aimed at conceptualizing SIBs within the framework of BMfS and understanding how SIB collaboration varies across social sectors and geographical areas. Our study identifies three different models of SIBs characterized by the different degrees of collaboration between actors: (i) SIB as a fully collaborative partnership; (ii) SIB as a low-collaborative partnership; and (iii) SIB as a partially collaborative partnership. Our findings are useful to policy makers and practitioners involved in the SIB design, suggesting that a fully collaborative SIB model may stand a better chance of achieving the expected social impacts

Conceptualizing Democracy as Preparation for Teaching for Democracy

In this essay, a broad spectrum of the work of influential educational scholars was examined in order to identify crucial components of teaching for democracy. Synthesizing the literature with their experiences as middle level teachers and teacher educators, the authors determined those conceptions that would be most fruitful for moving in-service teachers to enact the more “muscular” concepts that foster civic participation and social justice. This collaboration resulted in the identification of four democratic practices as a foundation for designing a course on teaching for democracy. These included amplification of the voices of historically marginalized people, recognition that those in power must work to meet the needs of those without power, recognition of the advantages of diversity even at the potential expense of efficiency, and collaboration in order to teach for democracy

Sex Trafficking of Children in the United States: Overview and Issues for Congress

[Excerpt] This report provides an overview of sex trafficking of children in the United States. It first conceptualizes the issue, discussing the victims and perpetrators involved. It then outlines the federal response to investigating and prosecuting perpetrators as well as providing services to victims. The report concludes with a discussion of select issues concerning the federal response to sex trafficking of minors in the United States

Role of Universal Service Obligation Fund in Rural Telecom Services: Lessons from the Indian Experience

Despite the tremendous growth of mobile services in most developing countries, these have largely remained limited to urban areas. This has further aggravated the existing urban and rural divide. Policy makers and regulators perceive the need for an effective regulatory and policy environment to reduce the gap, as there are several market challenges in this endeavor, including low commercial viability. However, most such interventions have had little success. This paper outlines India.s experience of increasing rural teledensity, including its recent policy initiative to increase penetration through creation of a Universal Service Obligation Fund (USOF) that supported a variety of innovative initiatives. USOF.s most ambitious program to date had been the design and deployment of mobile services in rural areas. This paper analyses the outcomes of various programs, especially those of the mobile service provision component of USOF. Despite the innovative design of the USOF program, it had little impact on increasing rural teledensity. On the other hand, positive policy steps that reduced the costs for service provision (revenue shares, duties, ADC) and competition facilitated greater rural penetration. This raises the issue of role of government vis-�-vis private sector in increasing rural teledensities. The lack of accountability arising from the relationship between the government owned incumbent and the USOF administrator and proper evaluation of USOF, the non-ring fencing of the fund and poor quality project management contributed to the low impact. Non-involvement of private operators at an early stage, inability to suitably enforce any penalties for violation of contracts, and non-existent review and feedback mechanism have not allowed USOF to leverage the benefits of an early start. In Peru, strict penalties in non implementation of contracts led to more timely schedules (Cannock, 2001). Since USOF is a highly visible program, it is important to generate high impact outcomes. On the strategic front, USOF needs to be managed by an independent body that is made responsible for outcomes. Third party assessments and greater enforceability of contracts are necessary operational elements of thisdesign. Without this operational framework, the strategic elements of design will not provide the value that was envisaged. This paper also provides a framework for assessment of USOF and relates it to the experience in other countries. USOF must be treated as one among many instruments for increasing rural teledensities and efforts should be made to facilitate policy outcomes on a variety of dimensions.

The Federal Common Law Crime of Corruption

This contribution to the North Carolina Law Review’s 2010 symposium, Adaptation and Resiliency in Legal Systems, considers the compatibility between the common law nature of honest services fraud and the dynamic quality of public integrity offenses. Corruption enforcement became a focal point of recent debates about over- criminalization because it typifies expansive legislative mandates for prosecutors and implicit delegations to courts. Federal prosecutions of political corruption have relied primarily on an open-textured provision: 18 U.S.C. § 1346, the honest services extension of the mail fraud statute. Section 1346 raises notice concerns because it contains few self-limiting terms, but it has also acquired some principled contours through common law rulemaking. Those boundaries are consistent with an animating principle of public corruption prosecutions: ensuring detached decisionmaking in the public interest. The distortive potential of significant personal financial gain may best distinguish actionable corruption from ordinary political dealings. Although the Supreme Court granted certiorari in the Skilling, Black, and Weyhrauch trio of cases in part to consider the link between harm and liability for honest services fraud, the Court did not address the issue, instead simply limiting the statute to bribes and kickbacks. Recent public corruption prosecutions illustrate some shortcomings of that decision and indicate that the courts could better confine honest services fraud by building on the harm constraint that had begun to emerge through the common law. The concluding sections here explore both the way in which a purposive interpretation might limit honest services prosecutions and the extent to which unanswered questions in the Skilling decision still allow for development of the harm concept

The Federal Common Law Crime of Corruption

This contribution to the North Carolina Law Review’s 2010 symposium, Adaptation and Resiliency in Legal Systems, considers the compatibility between the common law nature of honest services fraud and the dynamic quality of public integrity offenses. Corruption enforcement became a focal point of recent debates about over- criminalization because it typifies expansive legislative mandates for prosecutors and implicit delegations to courts. Federal prosecutions of political corruption have relied primarily on an open-textured provision: 18 U.S.C. § 1346, the honest services extension of the mail fraud statute. Section 1346 raises notice concerns because it contains few self-limiting terms, but it has also acquired some principled contours through common law rulemaking. Those boundaries are consistent with an animating principle of public corruption prosecutions: ensuring detached decisionmaking in the public interest. The distortive potential of significant personal financial gain may best distinguish actionable corruption from ordinary political dealings. Although the Supreme Court granted certiorari in the Skilling, Black, and Weyhrauch trio of cases in part to consider the link between harm and liability for honest services fraud, the Court did not address the issue, instead simply limiting the statute to bribes and kickbacks. Recent public corruption prosecutions illustrate some shortcomings of that decision and indicate that the courts could better confine honest services fraud by building on the harm constraint that had begun to emerge through the common law. The concluding sections here explore both the way in which a purposive interpretation might limit honest services prosecutions and the extent to which unanswered questions in the Skilling decision still allow for development of the harm concept

State of the world’s cities 2012/2013

This report by the UN looks into the prosperity and the changing urban landscape of major cities all around the globe. As the world moves into the urban age, the dynamism and intense vitality of cities become even more prominent. A fresh future is taking shape, with urban areas around the world becoming not just the dominant form of habitat for humankind, but also the engine-rooms of human development as a whole. This ongoing evolution can be seen as yet another assertion, albeit on a larger scale, of the time-honoured role of cities as centres of prosperity. In the 21st as in much earlier centuries, people congregate in cities to realize aspirations and dreams, fulfil needs and turn ideas into realities. Prosperity in this broader, organic sense transcends narrow economic success to encompass a socially broadbased, balanced and resilient type of development that combines tangible and more intangible aspects. Taken in this multi-dimensional sense, urban prosperity tightens the links between individuals and society with their everyday environment, i.e., the city itself. Amidst multiple challenges facing cities today, a focus on poverty reduction and/or responses to the economic crisis is gradually shifting to a broader and more general understanding of the need to harness the transformative dynamics and potentials which, to varying degrees, characterize any city anywhere in the world

Letting Go: Conceptualizing intervention de-implementation in public health and social service settings

The discontinuation of interventions that should be stopped, or de-implementation, has emerged as a novel line of inquiry within dissemination and implementation science. As this area grows in human services research, like public health and social work, theory is needed to help guide scientific endeavors. Given the infancy of de-implementation, this conceptual narrative provides a definition and criteria for determining if an intervention should be de-implemented. We identify three criteria for identifying interventions appropriate for de-implementation: (a) interventions that are not effective or harmful, (b) interventions that are not the most effective or efficient to provide, and (c) interventions that are no longer necessary. Detailed, well-documented examples illustrate each of the criteria. We describe de-implementation frameworks, but also demonstrate how other existing implementation frameworks might be applied to de-implementation research as a supplement. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of de-implementation in the context of other stages of implementation, like sustainability and adoption; next steps for de-implementation research, especially identifying interventions appropriate for de-implementation in a systematic manner; and highlight special ethical considerations to advance the field of de-implementation research

Conceptualizing Multifunctional Agriculture from a Global Perspective

The notion of multifunctional agriculture has been actively researched from diverse disciplines including economics, ecology, sociology, and geography since emerged out of the Uruguay Round in the 1990s. In particular, the economics approach represents an attempt to tailor the concept of multifunctional agriculture to market-oriented WTO trade regime. The economics approach has been fundamentally troubled by the lack of concord among WTO member countries on the question of what constitutes multifunctional agriculture. Upon examining how differently the notion of multifunctional agriculture is perceived across the US, the EU, the Cairns group, the LDCs, and the developed food-importing countries (the G10), this article theorizes that multifunctional agriculture connotes different contents in different countries/regions that are determined by their particular agricultural problems, which are in turn shaped by the cultural, ecological and economic characteristics unique to each country. The theorizing undertakes to overcome the Euro-centrism that has dictated the discourse of multifunctional agriculture since the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture (URAA). This article fills an important gap in the literature of social sciences concerning the concept of multifunctional agriculture by explicitly recognizing the wide diversity of contemporary agricultural problems across countries.multifunctional agriculture, global governance of agriculture, WTO, agricultural trade, International Development, International Relations/Trade,