Open budget data: mapping the landscape

This report offers analysis of the emerging issue of open budget data, which has begun to gain traction amongst advocates and practitioners of financial transparency. Issues and initiatives associated with the emerging issue of open budget data are charted in different forms of digital media. The objective is to enable practitioners – in particular civil society organisations, intergovernmental organisations, governments, multilaterals and funders – to navigate this developing field and to identify trends, gaps and opportunities for supporting it. How public money is collected and distributed is one of the most pressing political questions of our time, influencing the health, well-being and prospects of billions of people. Decisions about fiscal policy affect everyone - determining everything from the resourcing of essential public services, to the capacity of public institutions to take action on global challenges such as poverty, inequality or climate change. Digital technologies have the potential to transform the way that information about public money is organised, circulated and utilised in society, which in turn could shape the character of public debate, democratic engagement, governmental accountability and public participation in decision-making about public funds. Data could play a vital role in tackling the democratic deficit in fiscal policy and in supporting better outcomes for citizens

Climate, Society and Elemental Insurance

In this book, world-leading social scientists come together to provide original insights on the capacities and limitations of insurance in a changing world. Climate change is fundamentally changing the ways we insure, and the ways we think about insurance. This book moves beyond traditional economics and financial understandings of insurance to address the social and geopolitical dimensions of this powerful and pervasive part of contemporary life. Insurance shapes material and social realities, and is shaped by them in turn. The contributing authors of this book show how insurance constitutes and is constituted through the traditional elements of earth, water, air, fire, and the novel element of big data. The applied and theoretical insights presented through this novel elemental approach reveal that insurance is more dynamic, multifaceted, and spatially variegated than commonly imagined. This book is an authoritative source on the capacities and limitations of insurance. It is a go-to reference for researchers and students in the social sciences – particularly those with an interest in economics and finance, and how these intersect with geography, politics, and society. It is also relevant for those in the disaster, environmental, health, natural, and social sciences who are interested in the role of insurance in addressing risk, resilience, and adaptation

Risk Management for the Future

A large part of academic literature, business literature as well as practices in real life are resting on the assumption that uncertainty and risk does not exist. We all know that this is not true, yet, a whole variety of methods, tools and practices are not attuned to the fact that the future is uncertain and that risks are all around us. However, despite risk management entering the agenda some decades ago, it has introduced risks on its own as illustrated by the financial crisis. Here is a book that goes beyond risk management as it is today and tries to discuss what needs to be improved further. The book also offers some cases

Web 3.0: The Future of Internet

With the rapid growth of the Internet, human daily life has become deeply bound to the Internet. To take advantage of massive amounts of data and information on the internet, the Web architecture is continuously being reinvented and upgraded. From the static informative characteristics of Web 1.0 to the dynamic interactive features of Web 2.0, scholars and engineers have worked hard to make the internet world more open, inclusive, and equal. Indeed, the next generation of Web evolution (i.e., Web 3.0) is already coming and shaping our lives. Web 3.0 is a decentralized Web architecture that is more intelligent and safer than before. The risks and ruin posed by monopolists or criminals will be greatly reduced by a complete reconstruction of the Internet and IT infrastructure. In a word, Web 3.0 is capable of addressing web data ownership according to distributed technology. It will optimize the internet world from the perspectives of economy, culture, and technology. Then it promotes novel content production methods, organizational structures, and economic forms. However, Web 3.0 is not mature and is now being disputed. Herein, this paper presents a comprehensive survey of Web 3.0, with a focus on current technologies, challenges, opportunities, and outlook. This article first introduces a brief overview of the history of World Wide Web as well as several differences among Web 1.0, Web 2.0, Web 3.0, and Web3. Then, some technical implementations of Web 3.0 are illustrated in detail. We discuss the revolution and benefits that Web 3.0 brings. Finally, we explore several challenges and issues in this promising area.Comment: ACM Web Conference 202

Business Ethics

Business Ethics is designed to meet the scope and sequence requirements of the single-semester business ethics course. This title includes innovative features designed to enhance student learning, including case studies, application scenarios, and links to video interviews with executives, all of which help instill in students a sense of ethical awareness and responsibility.https://commons.erau.edu/oer-textbook/1006/thumbnail.jp

Towards understanding and improving decision-making for the conservation and sustainable use of intertidal mudflats and saltmarshes

Evidence suggests that improvements in both knowledge and actions are required to realize the conservation and sustainable use of intertidal mudflats and saltmarshes, specifically in terms of decisionmaking. In the absence of known research in this field, this research aimed to understand and improve decision-making for the conservation and sustainable use of intertidal mudflats and saltmarshes, using a case study in the Solent, UK. The study constructed a timeline of relevant events. It found that the majority of the events indirectly influenced the conservation and sustainable use of intertidal mudflats and saltmarshes, and were primarily concerned with some other purpose, such as coastal flooding and erosion risk management. Furthermore, that research, legislation and policy, and practice are interconnected in a complex web, with changes in one domain being reflected in another. Yet despite the significant investment in research and consultation processes by many people over numerous years, no clear end point appears to have been reached in terms of realizing intertidal mudflat and saltmarsh conservation and sustainable use. Building on these findings, the study used multi-methodology systems intervention as a lens through which to view and make sense of what the existing decision-making process is, and how to intervene to change (improve) it. It found that the decision-making process fails to start out systemically, and that an emphasis on participation through consultation is perhaps not the best means of involving stakeholders. The gradual "closing down" of options as a result of the above means that there is often inaction or delays in taking actions due to multiple diverse perspectives regarding what action is required, how, why and by who. An "improved" decision-making process is suggested and trialled involving a social learning cycle based on systems thinking and practice, in which stakeholders engage in dialogue and work together to make decisions and take actions towards the conservation and sustainable use of intertidal mudflats and saltmarshes. The outcomes from a pilot study workshop demonstrate that the "improved" decision-making process generally proved very successful for this group of stakeholders. It engaged them in dialogue and in working together using skills and techniques in systems thinking, modelling, negotiating and evaluating, leading to new insights and shared understandings about the problem situation, and concerted actions to improve it. Notwithstanding that there are some refinements that can be made to further improve the decision-making process as a result of "lessons learned" from the workshop, the participants' feedback confirms that it was appropriate in this context, and may also be useful in other complex situations, particularly those involving multiple stakeholders from diverse backgrounds. However, it is recognized that whilst the study has made significant progress towards understanding and improving decision-making for the conservation and sustainable use of intertidal mudflats and saltmarshes, there is still further work required before the improvements can be implemented on a local, national or global scale