Privatization of Government Information as Primitive Accumulation

This essay examines privatization of government publishing through the lens of capital accumulation by dispossession, an updated and expanded version of Marx’s account of primitive accumulation.  It argues that the program of privatizing the governments’ information dissemination activities which began as part of the Reagan administration’s pursuit of neoliberal policies continues today albeit in altered form due to the advent of electronic publishing

Developing Time And Attendance System (TAS)

Time Attendance System is software that helps organization for registering and tracking employee attendance, it can integrate with existing payroll and human resource systems, as well as various collection devices. This system consists of three major parts. The first is the employee, through which they can record their attendance either in manually through timekeeper or automatically through special hardware device such as card reader. The second is timekeeper who is responsible for recording employee's attendance manually. The last is the administrator, the administrator may add, remove, search, view employee information or designation information and more

A Framework For Users’ Satisfaction Of Information Systems In E-Government

Governments around the world are actively promotingelectronic government (e-Government) initiatives to provide fast, convenient and innovative services. Most previous studies focus mainly on discussing the affecting factors of public\u27s satisfaction toward information services provided by their government in the context of voluntary adoption. Inorder to effectively enable and provide e-Government service, most government agencies have been urged to use specific information systems (IS) to implement functions for information and records management. Under such mandated IS deployment, the interaction among regulatory body, government agency and end-users critically shapes the deployment of system. However, few researches examined the technology adoption in mandatory setting. The purpose of this study is to propose a model for user’s satisfaction in e-Government and clarify the relationship among strategy formulation, social influence, perceived performance, and end-users’ satisfaction of IS in government agency through empirical investigation. The empirical findings suggest that strategy formulation is the antecedent of users’ satisfaction in using IS through the effect of organizational resources and individual performance

Building Open Government: The Recordkeeping Practices of Federal Agencies

The recent Open Government Initiative represents an unprecedented commitment to make the U.S. government more transparent, collaborative, and participatory. As the President recently suggested, "Proper records management is the backbone of open government." This paper explores the interface of Open Government and records management, and examines some of the challenges and opportunities it engenders. Its central thesis proposes the Open Government movement may provide an opportunity for improved recordkeeping by shining a light on long-standing deficiencies. While federal agencies have been mandated to comply with specific policy provisions, there is a clear need to reform the recordkeeping practices of government agencies to preserve our nation's valuable documentary history, and ensure transparent and accountable governance.Master of Science in Library Scienc

Federal Rulemaking: The Role of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs

This report discusses the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1980, which created the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) within the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). This report addresses OIRA's responsibilities, controversies related to OIRA, and possible legislative issues involving OIRA, including increasing or decreasing the office's funding and staffing, and improvements in the transparency of OIRA's review process

Opportunities and Challenges in the Collection and Use of Socio-Spatial Data in National Forest Planning

Understanding human-environment connections to places is an important component of land-use management. Tools for collecting geographically referenced public values-based data (defined as socio-spatial data) for use in natural resource planning have been reported in academic journals for decades. The utility of socio-spatial data is in making public values tangible and potentially actionable in land-use analyses and decision processes. However, there is a lack of comprehensive documentation on the ways in which socio-spatial data is perceived, collected, interpreted and applied at a practical level. A better understanding of these factors allows planners to mitigate barriers and leverage opportunities to more effectively collect and incorporate public values into planning. Using the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) as a case study, this research explores the barriers and opportunities in incorporating socio-spatial data into land-use decisions, focusing on the forest plan revision process. Applied thematic analysis is used to identify themes derived from interviews with USFS personnel at research stations, regional offices and a sample of national forests. Findings indicate forest planners collect and apply this type of data using a diverse suite of tools, at numerous points in the process, and this data impacts decisions in direct and indirect ways. Socio-spatial data were used to identify special places, mediate conflicting use preferences, assess and revise proposed boundary areas, and inform standard analyses, such as the recreation opportunity spectrum. Budget issues that directly impact staff capacity are the most pressing barriers, creating a scarcity of social scientists within the agency that reverberates through the system and hinders the ability to collect and use socio-spatial data. However, opportunities exist in leveraging existing participatory processes to expand collection of socio-spatial data beyond the forest plan revision process, such as using the USFS\u27s Talking Points Collaborative Mapping application. More expansive use of the tool will make visible the utility of socio-spatial data. Recommendations include additional research, such as using contingency theory to delve deeper into the impacts of decisions, particularly focusing on the impacts of trade-offs on the integration of public values into planning documents. Educators also play a key role in advocating for professional development courses that focus on public values in natural resource planning and highlight the utility of socio-spatial data in this context. This would not only infuse skills needed in the workforce, but also establish use of socio-spatial data in decision-making as a best practice in natural resource management

Environmental Information: Issues of Access, Policy and Information Resources Management

This thesis investigates access to information and presents a summative evaluation of a government information access policy. The primary aim of this research is to build upon the theoretical approaches already employed within the field of information policy, to develop a new analytical model that can be used in the analysis of information access policies. This model will then be employed to examine the case study chosen for this research, which is the register for Integrated Pollution Control (IPC), which was set up by the UK government to give the public greater access to environmental information. This thesis is divided into three sections. The first examines both the background to access to environmental information and the particular case study employed in this research. It investigates the history of access to environmental information in the UK, charting the moves that have been made from secrecy towards greater openness. It then examines the Environmental Protection Act, 1990, which established the IPC registers, and investigates a number of issues which have effected the way in which environmental information is made available through the registers. In particular, it identifies policy implementation and information resources management (IRM) as having a dramatic effect on the success of this information access policy. Having identified an important link between information access, policy implementation and IRM in relation to the case study, the second section of this thesis then examines these relationships in greater detail. This second section is divided into two parts. The first examines the relationship between information access, policy implementation and IRM through a review of the literature, and goes onto develop an ‘information access model’, which can be used in the examination of information access policies. This model is then used to drive the case study analysis which is carried out in second part of this section. This case study analysis examines the implementation of the EPC registers firstly, by local authorities, where it identifies the existence of an underlying structure in the data set and secondly, by the Environment Agency, where the IPC registers can be seen to have been implemented in a far more uniform way. In part three of this thesis, the local authority and Environment Agency case study findings are then examined in light of the ‘information access model’. This analysis enables a number of different management styles to be identified and highlights four key areas, which could be seen to have resulted in the development of successful registers. These were the approach to the policy problem, the use of planning, the development of set procedures and control over the policy. Finally, the validity of the ‘information access model’, as a research framework, is examined. The ‘information access model’ is analysed in light of the empirical evidence gathered as part of this research and it is concluded, that this can be seen both as a useful investigative and evaluative tool for information policy research