96,146 research outputs found
Get yourself connected: conceptualising the role of digital technologies in Norwegian career guidance
This report outlines the role of digital technologies in the provision of career guidance. It was commissioned by the c ommittee on career guidance which is advising the Norwegian Government following a review of the countries skills system by the OECD. In this report we argue that career guidance and online career guidance in particular can support the development of Norwa y’s skills system to help meet the economic challenges that it faces.The expert committee advising Norway’s Career Guidance Initiativ
The internet and public bureaucracies: towards balancing competing values
Innovation in public administration is one of the central aspects of public sector reforms. Given the procedural nature of government tasks, the adoption of the Internet and related information and communication technologies (ICT) has become critical for government organisations. The aim of this paper is to discuss the implications of the diffusion Internet led innovations in the public sector on balancing public values. Rather than diminishing their benefits, we aim at highlighting challenges and dilemmas that can emerge from ICT implementation in the public sector. The paper starts by reviewing the main trends of e-government research and show a dominant view towards managerial and private sector values embedded in the literature. To propose an alternative approach, we then draw on an empirical example from Mexico, that of the Federal Transparency and Access to Government Information Law. Using Mexico’s available statistics and secondary data, the case explores how a quicker ICT-mediated interaction between citizens and government can result in social and political dilemmas. We propose to bring into play the public value paradigm to highlight these issues. Conclusions follow
Governance in the age of social machines: the web observatory
The World Wide Web has provided unprecedented access to information; as humans and machines increasingly interact with it they provide more and more data. The challenge is how to analyse and interpret this data within the context that it was created, and to present it in a way that both researchers and practitioners can more easily make sense of.
The first step is to have access to open and interoperable data sets, which Governments around the world are increasingly subscribing to. But having ‘open’ data is just the beginning and does not necessarily lead to better decision making or policy development. This is because data do not provide the answers – they need to be analysed, interpreted and understood within the context of their creation, and the business imperative of the organisation using them. The major corporate entities, such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple and Facebook, have the capabilities to do this, but are driven by their own commercial imperatives, and their data are largely siloed and held within ‘walled gardens’ of information. All too often governments and non-profit groups lack these capabilities, and are driven by very different mandates. In addition they have far more complex community relationships, and must abide by regulatory constraints which dictate how they can use the data they hold. As such they struggle to maximise the value of this emerging ‘digital currency’ and are therefore largely beholden to commercial vendors. What has emerged is a public-private data ecosystem that has huge policy implications (including the twin challenges of privacy and security). Many within the public sector lack the skills to address these challenges because they lack the literacy required within the digital context.
This project seeks to address some of these problems by bringing together a safe and secure Australian-based data platform (facilitating the sharing of data, analytics and visualisation) with policy analysis and governance expertise in order to create a collaborative working model of a ‘Government Web Observatory’. This neutral space, hosted by an Australian university, can serve as a powerful complement to existing Open Data initiatives in Australia, and enable research and education to combine to support the development of a more digitally literate public service.
The project aims to explore where, and in which contexts, people, things, data and the Internet meet and result in evolving observable phenomena which can inform better government policy development and service delivery. 
Subsidiarity and Proportionality in the Single Market: An EU fit for inclusive growth
This report offers a fresh perspective on the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality in the European Union based on a thorough-going economic analysis. Specifically, the report uses the EU Single Market as a case to discuss shortcomings and potential improvements in five key policy areas. It reviews how the principles of subsid- iarity and proportionality can help boost growth in the EU at the aggregate country level – while at the same time allowing EU regions to benefit from growth. The report focuses on the regional level as economic growth has been uneven across the EU’s regions over the last decade and, consequently, growing disparities between re- gions have emerged. This alone merits a review on how we can reconcile the twin objectives in the future
Mapping and Developing Service Design Research in the UK.
This report is the outcome of the Service Design Research UK (SDR UK) Network with Lancaster University as primary investigator and London College of Communication, UAL as co-investigator. This project was funded as part of an Arts and Humanities Research Council Network grant.
Service Design Research UK (SDR UK), funded by an AHRC Network Grant, aims to create a UK research network in an emerging field in Design that is Service Design. This field has a recent history and a growing, but still small and dispersed, research community that strongly needs support and visibility to consolidate its knowledge base and enhance its potential impact. Services represent a significant part of the UK economy and can have a transformational role in our society as they affect the way we organize, move, work, study or take care of our health and family. Design introduces a more human centred and creative approach to service innovation; this is critical to delivering more effective and novel solutions that have the potential to tackle contemporary challenges.
Service Design Research UK reviewed and consolidated the emergence of Service Design within the estalished field of Design
Lifelong guidance policy and practice in the EU
A study on lifelong guidance (LLG) policy and practice in the EU focusing on trends, challenges and opportunities. Lifelong guidance aims to provide career development support for individuals of all ages, at all career stages. It includes careers information, advice, counselling, assessment of skills and mentoring
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The elicitation of key performance indicators of e-government providers: A bottom-up approach
Copyright @ 2013 EMCIS.Delivering an adequate e-Government service (e-service) is becoming more of a necessity in today's digital world. In order to improve e-services and increase the engagement of both users' and providers' side, studies on the performance evaluation of such provided e-services are taking places. However a clear identification of the key performance indicators from the e-Government providers’ side is not well explored. This shortcoming hampers the conduct of a holistic evaluation of an e-service provision from the perspective of its stakeholders in order to improve e-services as well as to increase e-services take-ups. In this paper, a systematic process to identify indicators is implemented based on a bottom-up approach. The process used three focus-group meetings with providers, users, and academics in Qatar, Lebanon and UK to collect, identify and validate key indicators from the perspective of e-services’ providers. The approach resulted in the identification of five factors levels (service, technology, employees, policy and management and social responsibilities) with fifteen sub-categories of SMART variables. Hence, leading to the development of a new model, STEPS, that can fully explain and predict e-government success from the providers’ point of view. It will work as a strategic management tool to align various stakeholders on common goal and values based on evidence based evaluation of e-services using smart measurable indicators for the improvement of an e-service at the engagement level in the field of e-government. In addition, other fields can benefit from the outcome of this work, such as logistics service providers, who make their services available across new and existing relationships between the Internet commerce firms, their customers, and their vendors
Enabling states, capitalising enterprise and confronting the social: issues and implications in researching contemporary social capital and enterprise
A key feature of late capitalism continues to be a complex reworking of previous approaches to the relationship between the state and business. This significant shift in the interplay between the public and private sectors has generated such developments as the privatisation of many services formerly provided by government and the growth of not-for-profit organisations seeking to fill gaps in service provision. These changes are highly significant for every citizen and community member and for all stakeholders. This first chapter in this book encapsulates these complex developments in terms of debates about the enabling imperatives of the contemporary state, the character of the intersection between capital and enterprise, and a timely confrontation of what is understood by “the social” in current discourses, policies and strategies. In presenting this distillation, the authors introduce the subsequent chapters in the book in terms of how each chapter, including this one, contributes new insights to the broader project of eliciting the issues and implications attendant on researching contemporary social capital and social enterprise. This project is crucial if we are to understand the ways in which social capital and social enterprise can work sustainably and transformatively with variously marginalised and vulnerable groups in our societies. It is vital also for understanding the ways that such work is constrained and limited in its effectiveness
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