Learning lessons? The registration of lobbyists at the Scottish parliament: a reply to Coldwell

The Scottish Parliament was founded on principles of openness and accessibility and signalled the potential for a new style of politics post devolution. In the aftermath of allegations of political sleaze early in the life of the new institution, the Standards Committee of the Scottish Parliament conducted an inquiry into the registration of lobbyists. This process attracted much comment and criticism from public affairs practitioners and the Scottish media. Based on original empirical research, numerous interviews and first hand observation, this paper offers a response to some of these criticisms and suggests the efforts by parliamentarians to regulate their relations with lobbyists need to be grounded in principles which apply to all outside interests seeking to influence the democratic process

An Analysis of the Obstacles of Culture, Government, and Lack of Support for International Accounting Standards

With the prevalence of international markets comes the need for universal accounting standards. The International Accounting Standards Board has created a set of these standards, but unfortunately some skeptics have found that the obstacles of culture, government, and lack of support would make these standards impossible to implement. Since the globalization of international standards is inevitable, there must be a way to get past the present obstacles. Through an analysis of the countries of China, India, and Australia, it has been found that it is possible to have the same accounting standards among diverse countries. International accounting standards will become successfully integrated among more and more countries in the coming years if there is an awareness of the differences in cultures and a willingness for the change of standards among governments. There also needs to be an education of the benefits and an openness to the change of standards that are not working efficiently

Institutional reforms versus selective targeting? Comments on the draft law `On state support of investment and encouraging investment activity' drafted by the Ministry of Economy

Elements of the institutional framework, i.e., the rules and regulations of the economy and the institutions that enforce them, are the main long-run criteria for private investment decisions. In particular, it is openness to trade and transparency that increase the chances of enhancing domestic investment and increasing FDI. Against the background of Ukraine’s still rather poor institutional framework, specifically targeted investment incentives for pre-defined sectors, regions, and/or types of investment, can be both costly and ineffective. Leaning towards selective targeting, the draft law does not sufficiently serve to sustainably enhance private investment in the long run. We recommend to consistently re-draft the law to represent Ukraine’s Guidelines for Public Support of Private Investment, in line with private investor preferences and international experience. Compared to the first draft, we specifically suggest: to focus on improvements of the institutional framework and eliminate all specific targeting elements from the law; to eliminate all references to public investment from this draft law, which should concentrate on public support for private domestic and foreign investment; not to revert to state aid in order to support private investment activity; to expand the final provisions of the draft law and explicitly mention supplementary legislation necessary to improve the institutional framework for investment in Ukraine. In particular, we recommend to focus on the adjustment of the tax legislation according to international standards, employment standards, and provisions that define property rights, to improve law enforcement, the transparency of the public sector, and the efficiency of public spending by cutting state aid. This would serve to demonstrate that institutional framework reforms need a broad and concerted effort from all sources of legislative action.

Preparing School Counselors to Address Concerns Related to Giftedness: A Study of Accredited Counselor Preparation Programs

Professional school counselors are responsible for serving students across a wide range of cognitive ability, yet counselor educators may not attend to issues related to giftedness, such as how and when developmental phenomena may be experienced by highly able students, and the need to differentiate counseling approaches for this population. This study examined the extent to which CACREP-accredited school counseling programs addressed giftedness, as well as perceived barriers and supports that influenced whether programs included topics related to extreme ability in their preparatory curricula. Findings included that minimal attention was given to the implications of high ability for counseling practice, and that a lack of room in the curriculum, lack of funding, and absence of pertinent, mandated standards were some of the largest barriers to inclusion. Supports in the form of openness to including information, faculty expertise and experience, and perceived need were generally perceived to be low to moderate

Political regimes, trade, and labor policies in developing countries

What, if any, is the link between labor market policies that benefit insiders - for example, regulations guaranteeing high minimum wages and strict job security - and political regimes. Is it true that in a democracy outsiders vote and impose limits on what insiders can achieve, whereas in a dictatorship the government need worry only about insiders who have real power? Or are democratic governments more likely to succumb to trade union pressure and use labor policies to give them special privileges? To test these competing hypotheses, the authors designed a two-sector political economy model that demonstrates that labor market distortions depend directly on the trade regime: the more open the trade regime, the fewer distortions in the labor market. They use cross-country regressions to test the relationship between political and civil liberties and trade and labor policies. Using data for 90 developing countries, they apply existing indices of openness and political freedom and two different constructed measures of labor market distortion. Their conclusions, based on the regression results: authoritarian systems that repress labor are more likely than democratic systems to adopt inefficient labor policies inimical to development.Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Labor Policies,Health Economics&Finance,Banks&Banking Reform,Environmental Economics&Policies,Health Economics&Finance,Banks&Banking Reform,Labor Standards,Economic Theory&Research

Achieving Algorithmic Transparency and Managing Risks of Data Security when Making Decisions without Human Interference: Legal Approaches

Objective: to compare modern approaches in law to the use of program codes and algorithms in decision-making that meet the principles of transparency and openness, as well as the increasingly stringent requirements for ensuring the security of personal and other big data obtained and processed algorithmically.Methods: the main methods for researching the principle of transparency in algorithmic decision-making were formal-legal and comparative analysis of legal acts and international standards of information security, as well as the principles and legal constructions contained in them.Results: it was determined that the development of information security standardization, inclusion in legal acts of requirements for the development of information technologies that comply with the principles of transparency and openness of applied algorithms will minimize the risks associated with the unlawful processing of users' big data and obtaining information about their privacy. Proposals were identified, related to the implementation of algorithmic transparency in the field of data processing legal regulation. Recommendations were formulated, based on which the legislator can solve the problem of ensuring the openness of the logic of information technology algorithms with regard to modern standards of information security.Scientific novelty: it consists in the substantiation of new trends and relevant legal approaches, which allow revealing the logic of data processing by digital and information technologies, based on the characterization of European standards of the “privacy by design” concept in new digital and information technologies of decision-making and data protection, as well as on the new legal requirements for artificial intelligence systems, including the requirement to ensure algorithmic transparency, and criteria for personal data and users' big data processing. This said, data protection is understood as a system of legal, technical and organizational principles aimed at ensuring personal data confidentiality.Practical significance: it is due to the need to study the best Russian and international practices in protecting the privacy of users of digital and information technologies, as well as the need for legislative provision of requirements for the use of algorithms that meet the principles of transparency and openness of personal data processing, taking into account the need to ensure confidentiality at all stages of the life cycle of their processing, which will ensure the continuity of security management

The Measurement of Quality of Semantic Standards: the Application of a Quality Model on the SETU standard for eGovernment

eGovernment interoperability should be dealt with using high-quality standards. A quality model for standards is presented based on knowledge from the software engineering domain. In the tradition of action research the model is used on the SETU standard, a standard that is mandatory in the public sector of the Netherlands in order to achieve eGovernment interoperability. This results in improvement suggestions for the SETU standards, just as improvement suggestions for the quality model have been identified. Most importantly it shows that a quality model can be used for several purposes, including selecting standards for eGovernment interoperability

Harnessing Openness to Transform American Health Care

The Digital Connections Council (DCC) of the Committee for Economic Development (CED) has been developing the concept of openness in a series of reports. It has analyzed information and processes to determine their openness based on qualities of "accessibility" and "responsiveness." If information is not available or available only under restrictive conditions it is less accessible and therefore less "open." If information can be modified, repurposed, and redistributed freely it is more responsive, and therefore more "open." This report looks at how "openness" is being or might usefully be employed in the healthcare arena. This area, which now constitutes approximately 16-17 percent of GDP, has long frustrated policymakers, practitioners, and patients. Bringing greater openness to different parts of the healthcare production chain can lead to substantial benefits by stimulating innovation, lowering costs, reducing errors, and closing the gap between discovery and treatment delivery. The report is not exhaustive; it focuses on biomedical research and the disclosure of research findings, processes of evaluating drugs and devices, the emergence of electronic health records, the development and implementation of treatment regimes by caregivers and patients, and the interdependence of the global public health system and data sharing and worldwide collaboration

Harnessing Openness to Improve Research, Teaching and Learning in Higher Education

Colleges and universities should embrace the concept of increased openness in the use and sharing of information to improve higher education. That is the core recommendation of this report. The report was produced by CED's Digital Connections Council (DCC), a group of information technology experts that advises CED's business leaders on cutting-edge technologies

Conceptualizing throughput legitimacy: procedural mechanisms of accountability, transparency, inclusiveness and openness in EU governance

This symposium demonstrates the potential for throughput legitimacy as a concept for shedding empirical light on the strengths and weaknesses of multi-level governance, as well as challenging the concept theoretically. This article introduces the symposium by conceptualizing throughput legitimacy as an ‘umbrella concept’, encompassing a constellation of normative criteria not necessarily empirically interrelated. It argues that in order to interrogate multi-level governance processes in all their complexity, it makes sense for us to develop normative standards that are not naïve about the empirical realities of how power is exercised within multilevel governance, or how it may interact with legitimacy. We argue that while throughput legitimacy has its normative limits, it can be substantively useful for these purposes. While being no replacement for input and output legitimacy, throughput legitimacy offers distinctive normative criteria— accountability, transparency, inclusiveness and openness— and points towards substantive institutional reforms.Published versio