Counting Is Not Enough: Investing in Qualitative Case Reviews for Practice Improvement in Child Welfare

Outlines the value of quality case service reviews in child welfare systems, requirements for building and sustaining a robust process and adapting it under limited state budgets, and recommendations for jurisdictions, initiators, and national leadership

Successfully Implementing Major Financial Stability Regulatory Reforms: The Risk Weighting Based Controversy (Basel v Dodd Frank) and the Role of National Supervisors.

As well as a consideration of the role contributed by national supervisors in the successful implementation and enforcement of standards, recommendations and regulations, the significance of clear and unambiguous mandates in enhancing communication between micro prudential supervisors (usually national financial supervisors and central banks) and macro prudential bodies which are responsible for writing the laws that are enforced by micro prudential supervisors, will be highlighted in this paper. This will incorporate a discussion on the advantages and disadvantages inherent in clear, explicit mandates – such a discussion necessitating a distinction between financial stability and monetary policy objectives. Furthermore, the role of credit ratings and their significance in influencing investor choices and judgments, will be considered as a means of highlighting how they contribute to the neglect of risks, exposures attributed to certain financial instruments, and ultimately, systemic risks which de stabilize the financial system

Preparation of the Tax Expenditures Statement

This audit assessed the extent to which the Department of the Treasury and the Australian Taxation Office have improved the management of tax expenditure estimates.Overall conclusionTax expenditures are revenues a government forgoes in pursuit of its policy objectives, including its medium-term fiscal strategy. Tax expenditures have been an important part of the Australian income tax system since the early 1900’s, when tax exempt invalid and old age pensions were introduced. In some areas, such as the retirement income system, they are heavily integrated into the Government’s policy framework. The number and aggregate value of tax expenditures have increased substantially over time and were estimated in 2011–12 to be around $111 billion. This represents a significant level when viewed in the context of the Australian Government Budget.The ANAO’s 2008 audit and subsequent JCPAA review encouraged improvements to the administration of tax expenditures through better integration of tax expenditures into the Budget process, systematic review to ensure that tax expenditure items continue to meet their intended objectives and improved reporting in the annual TES.20 Progress by the Treasury and the ATO in implementing the recommendations in the 2008 audit and JCPAA review has been slow. Treasury advised that, facing reduced resourcing, it has focussed on providing advice on the Government’s key revenue priorities, as well as servicing the review of Australia’s future tax system and other key reviews.Of the recommendations in the 2008 audit and JCPAA review, only two ANAO recommendations have been fully implemented. The remaining recommendations, which continue to be relevant, have only been partially addressed. The status of the recommendations that have not been fully implemented is as follows: processes have been put in place to better integrate tax expenditures into the Budget process, although there is the potential to increase the quantification of tax expenditures resulting from new policy proposals in the relevant Budget Papers (relating to ANAO Recommendation No. 2); the systematic review and evaluation of tax expenditures on an ongoing basis commenced in 2008 but ceased in 2011, without publicly reporting the results (relating to ANAO Recommendation No. 1); the Treasury has not advanced the development of standards or pursued international methods of reporting (relating to ANAO Recommendation No. 3 and JCPAA Recommendation No. 8); and there has been no measurable improvement to the reliability and quantification of the Treasury’s tax expenditure estimates over time (relating to ANAO Recommendation No. 6(a) and 6(c), and JCPAA Recommendation No. 9)

Leveraging aggregate ratings for improving predictive performance of recommender systems

This paper describes an approach for incorporating externally specified aggregate ratings information into certain types of recommender systems, including two types of collaborating filtering and a hierarchical linear regression model. First, we present a framework for incorporating aggregate rating information and apply this framework to the aforementioned individual rating models. Then we formally show that this additional aggregate rating information provides more accurate recommendations of individual items to individual users. Further, we experimentally confirm this theoretical finding by demonstrating on several datasets that the aggregate rating information indeed leads to better predictions of unknown ratings. We also propose scalable methods for incorporating this aggregate information and test our approaches on large datasets. Finally, we demonstrate that the aggregate rating information can also be used as a solution to the cold start problem of recommender systems.NYU, Stern School of Business, Center for Digital Economy Researc

When situativity meets objectivity in peer-production of knowledge:the case of the WikiRate platform

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to further the debate on Knowledge Artefacts (KAs), by presenting the design of WikiRate, a Collective Awareness platform whose goal is to support a wider public contributing to the generation of knowledge on environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance of companies.Design/methodology/approachThe material presented in the paper comes from the first-hand experience of the authors as part of the WikiRate design team. This material is reflexively discussed using concepts from the field of science and technology studies.FindingsUsing the concept of the “funnel of interest”, the authors discuss how the design of a KA like WikiRate relies on the designers’ capacity to translate general statements into particular design solutions. The authors also show how this funnelling helps understanding the interplay between situativity and objectivity in a KA. The authors show how WikiRate is a peer-production platform based on situativity, which requires a robust level of objectivity for producing reliable knowledge about the ESG performance of companies.Originality/valueThis paper furthers the debate on KAs. It presents a relevant design example and offers in the discussion a set of design and community building recommendations to practitioners

A Worker Dialogue: Improving Health Safety and Security at DOE

During the summer of 2010, the Department of Energy Office of Health, Safety and Security (HSS) partnered with the National Academy of Public Administration to host an online dialogue to solicit ideas from front line union workers at DOE sites on how to improve worker safety across the DOE complex. Based on the results of the Dialogue, an expert Panel of the National Academy identified several themes that emerged from workers' suggestions and offered recommendations for HSS in following up on the issues raised as well as continuing to build its capacity for employee engagement.Key FindingsBased specifically on the Dialogue results, the Panel recommended HSS further investigate several issues and claims discussed by workers as well as assess the current state of reporting processes in DOE to determine if changes are necessary. In addition, the Dialogue revealed many knowledge gaps among workers regarding the substance of worker health and safety regulations in DOE, which should prompt HSS to consider expanding efforts to educate workers about these regulations.The Panel also issued several recommendations for HSS to build its capacity to engage union workers. These recommendations included considering alternate channels of reaching front-line workers and continuing engagement with workers by articulating and undertaking concrete next steps with the input received

New financial order : recommendations by the Issing Committee ; preparing G-20 – London, April 2, 2009

Content A. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY, INCLUDING MAJOR RECOMMENDATIONS B. COMPLETE REPORT 1. INTRODUCTION 2. RISK MAP 2.1 Why a Risk Map is needed, and for what purpose 2.1.1 Creating a unified data base 2.1.2 Assessing systemic risk 2.1.3 Allowing for coordinated policy action 2.2 Recommendations 3. GLOBAL REGISTER FOR LOANS (CREDIT REGISTER) AND BONDS (SECURITIES REGISTER) 3.1 Objectives of a credit register 3.2 Credit registers in Europe (and beyond) 3.3 Suggestions for a supra-national Credit Register 3.4 Integrating a supra-national Securities Register 3.5 Recommendations 4. HEDGE FUNDS: REGULATION AND SUPERVISION 4.1 What are hedge funds (activities, location, size, regulation)? 4.2 What are the risks posed by hedge funds (systematic risks, interaction with prime brokers)? 4.3 Routes to better regulation (direct, indirect) 4.4 Recommendations 5. RATING AGENCIES: REGULATION AND SUPERVISION 5.1 The role of ratings in bond and structured finance markets, past and present 5.2 Elements of rating integrity (independence, compensation and incentives, transparency) 5.3 Recommendations (registration, transparency, annual report on rating performance) 6. PROCYCLICALITY: PROBLEMS AND POTENTIAL SOLUTIONS 6.1 What is meant by “procyclicality” and why is it a problem? 6.2 The roots of procyclicality and the lessons it suggests for policymakers 6.2.1 Underpinnings of the phenomenon 6.2.2 Lessons to be learned 6.3 Characteristics of a macrofinancial stability framework 6.4 Recommendations 7. THE ROLE OF INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTIONS AND FORA, IN PARTICULAR THE IMF, BIS AND FSF 7.1 Legitimacy 7.2 Re-focusing the work 7.3 Recommendation