Knowledge Representation Concepts for Automated SLA Management

Outsourcing of complex IT infrastructure to IT service providers has increased substantially during the past years. IT service providers must be able to fulfil their service-quality commitments based upon predefined Service Level Agreements (SLAs) with the service customer. They need to manage, execute and maintain thousands of SLAs for different customers and different types of services, which needs new levels of flexibility and automation not available with the current technology. The complexity of contractual logic in SLAs requires new forms of knowledge representation to automatically draw inferences and execute contractual agreements. A logic-based approach provides several advantages including automated rule chaining allowing for compact knowledge representation as well as flexibility to adapt to rapidly changing business requirements. We suggest adequate logical formalisms for representation and enforcement of SLA rules and describe a proof-of-concept implementation. The article describes selected formalisms of the ContractLog KR and their adequacy for automated SLA management and presents results of experiments to demonstrate flexibility and scalability of the approach.Comment: Paschke, A. and Bichler, M.: Knowledge Representation Concepts for Automated SLA Management, Int. Journal of Decision Support Systems (DSS), submitted 19th March 200

Efficient Dynamic Access Analysis Using JavaScript Proxies

JSConTest introduced the notions of effect monitoring and dynamic effect inference for JavaScript. It enables the description of effects with path specifications resembling regular expressions. It is implemented by an offline source code transformation. To overcome the limitations of the JSConTest implementation, we redesigned and reimplemented effect monitoring by taking advantange of JavaScript proxies. Our new design avoids all drawbacks of the prior implementation. It guarantees full interposition; it is not restricted to a subset of JavaScript; it is self-maintaining; and its scalability to large programs is significantly better than with JSConTest. The improved scalability has two sources. First, the reimplementation is significantly faster than the original, transformation-based implementation. Second, the reimplementation relies on the fly-weight pattern and on trace reduction to conserve memory. Only the combination of these techniques enables monitoring and inference for large programs.Comment: Technical Repor

Integrating Energy Markets: Does Sequencing Matter?

This paper addresses three questions that are relevant to integrating different regional transmission areas. Market integrating normally increases the number of competitors and should therefore reduce prices but the first section shows that prices could rise when the number of generators initially increases. Regulatory effort will also be affected by market integration. If the number of generators in either market is low, then our analysis suggests that the outcome depends on whether the regulators act independently or co-ordinate. Finally, if markets are gradually combined into larger units, the choice of transmission allocation (auctions or market coupling) will affect the prospects of making further gains and hence could lead to incomplete reform.Cambridge-MIT Institut

Detained and at Risk: Sexual Abuse and Harassment in United States Immigration Detention

In May 2010, reports surfaced that the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) was investigating allegations that a guard at a Texas immigration detention center had sexually assaulted several female detainees. The guard, who was arrested on August 19, 2010, on suspicion of official oppression and unlawful restraint, allegedly groped women while transporting them to an airport and a bus station where they were being released.While largely covered in the media as an isolated incident, this was only the latest in a series of assaults, abuses, and episodes of harassment that have quietly emerged as a pattern across the rapidly expanding immigration detention system. Due to a shortage of publicly available data and the closed nature of the detention system, the extent to which ICE detainees are subject to sexual abuse nationwide is unclear, but the known incidents are too serious and numerous to ignore.ICE has recently proposed policy changes to address sexual abuse, and these show promise. They include prohibitions on guards searching detainees of a different gender and restrictions on when guards may transport detainees of a different gender. ICE plans to publish a revised detention standard that includes new requirements for facilities to develop medical and investigation procedures and to collect data on incidents of abuse. However, more changes are needed, as well as greater oversight and accountability."Detained and at Risk" is based on the examination of allegations of sexual assault, abuse, and harassment in ICE detention from a range of sources, including press reports, governmental and nongovernmental studies, a public hearing, court documents, and Human Rights Watch interviews. The report shows evidence of a disturbing pattern of abuse, and points to an urgent need for investigation and action to correct glaring gaps in detention policy and practice

THE SEMANTICS OF GOVERNANCE. (The common thread running through corporate, public, and global governance.)

This paper argues that the semantics of governance illustrates connections and provides a unifying view from which to understand much better its natural branches: corporate, public and global governance. In this regard, governance is presented from the point of view of a distinctive field of learning and practice. Further, three levels of analysis are carried out to drive the subject home. Firstly, it highlights the extent of corporate governance within an institutional framework, and also gives heed to some performance measurement devices: the governance index, the comparativeeconomics approach, and the governance slack model. Secondly, it frames the notion of public governance while due regard is given to the World Bank’s methodology and the public governance wave of reforms in the 80s and 90s. Afterwards, the development goes further to handle the linkage among constituents, charters and representation, so as to later cope with the problems raised by accountability and reputational intermediaries. Thirdly, it addresses the semantics of global governance, country assessments and corporate governance in global settings.Corporate Governance, Public Governance, Global Governance

When do interest groups contact bureaucrats rather than politicians? Evidence on fire alarms and smoke detectors from Japan

What determines whether interest groups choose to contact politicians or bureaucrats? Despite the importance of this question for policymaking, democracy, and some prominent principal-agent understandings of politics, it is relatively unexplored in the literature. We argue that government stability plays a major part in interest groups' decisions. That is, central to interest groups' decisions is their assessment of the likelihood that politicians currently in power will continue to be in the future. We deduce logical, but totally contrasting hypotheses, about how interest groups lobby under such conditions of uncertainty and then test these using a heteroskedastic probit model that we apply to a unique longitudinal survey of interest groups in Japan. We find that when it is unclear if the party controlling the government will maintain power in the future, interest groups are more likely to contact the bureaucracy. When it is believed that the party in power will retain control for a considerable period, interest groups are more inclined to contact politicians. In addition, during times of government uncertainty, interest groups that are supportive of the governing party (or parties) are more likely to contact politicians and those that are less supportive will be more likely to contact bureaucrats. © 2013 Cambridge University Press

EU fiscal rules: issues and lessons from political economy

The paper analyses the EU fiscal rules from a political economy perspective and derives some policy lessons. Following a literature survey, the paper stresses the importance of appropriate incentives for rule compliance in an environment where national fiscal sovereignty precludes the option of centralised enforcement. In addition, the paper stresses the importance of clear and simple rules and in particular the 3% deficit limit in anchoring expectations of fiscal discipline and facilitating public and market monitoring of public finances. This, in turn, strengthens incentive for rule compliance. Moreover, the paper discusses the interests of the most important players in European fiscal rule formation and the importance of choosing the appropriate time for initiating a reform debate. JEL Classification: D7, H3, H6deficits, fiscal rules, institutional reform, political economy, Stability and Growth Pact

Negotiating Contract Language on Health & Safety: A Union Guide to Planning, with Sample Clauses

[Excerpt] Rather than representing the final word on the subject, we hope this manual will represent the first step in an evolutionary process of increasingly effective and comprehensive health and safety contract language guidance. This can only succeed if labor leaders communicate with us concerning critical failures and successes in utilizing or obtaining contract language related to the work environment. We look forward to hearing about your experiences