Remote Forensics May Bring the Next Sea Change in E-discovery: Are All Networked Computers Now Readily Accessible Under the Revised Federal Rules of Civil Procedure?

The recent amendments to Rule 26 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure created a two-tiered approach to discovery of electronically stored information (“ESI”). Responding parties must produce ESI that is relevant, not subject to privilege, and reasonably accessible. However, because some methods of storing ESI, such as on magnetic backup tapes and within enormous databases, require substantial cost to access and search their contents, the rules permit parties to designate those repositories as “not reasonably accessible” because of undue burden or cost. But even despite the difficulty in searching for ESI, the party’s duty to preserve potentially responsive evidence remains; it simply gains the option to forgo poring over the material. Further, the court might nevertheless compel production if the requesting party demonstrates good cause. Regardless of whether the responding party believes certain documents to be reasonably accessible or not, courts may still require their production. In such cases, the court may then choose to order production, but shift the costs of doing so to the requesting party. Throughout this process, the burden and cost of production are central themes. Their determination is fluid, varying from case to case and even over time in the same situation. Nowhere is this more evident than where a responding party has numerous, geographically dispersed computers under its control that may contain responsive ESI to a request for production of documents. Traditionally, a responding party would be forced to make a decision of whether or not to send out computer forensic experts to all of these locations to make forensically sound copies of all of those computers and then analyze each. This process is time consuming and costly. Recently, several companies have put forth substantial solutions that facially allow a responding party to capture and analyze data on geographically dispersed computers remotely. That process, in general, is often defined as remote forensics. The question is now whether newly available remote forensic solution indicate that all networked computers are readily accessible under the current state of the law. This article attempts to define remote forensics, examines a selection of applicable court decisions, and then analyzes the currently available commercial software packages that allow remote forensics

Exploring planning as a technology of hope

Following Baum’s (1997) proposition that planning be understood as “the organization of hope” there has been limited scholarly engagement with what might be involved in fostering hope through planning practices. Reflecting on three years of participatory action learning and research on a deprived housing estate in Sheffield in northern England, we explore core challenges raised by appealing to hope as an objective of community-led planning. Overall, we argue for further work to explore how the organizational technologies of planning relate to core dimensions of hope, including the ways in which unevenly developed capacities to aspire shape diverse modes of hoping

Anticipations: on the state of the planning imagination

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Working in the Public Interest? What must planners do differently? Critical thoughts on the state of planning

The current moment is generating huge challenges and raising significant questions about how our societies operate and the future of our cities and countryside. Economic shutdowns are bringing structural inequalities into sharp relief even as they illustrate the daunting scale of the transformations required to reduce our environmental impacts. Many pieces have already been written about how we might not just adapt to a post-Covid world but take the opportunity to build better, healthier, fairer, greener cities. Any hopes for significant change would entail fundamental shifts in the role of planning. At the same time, however, powerful property lobbies threaten a return to a business-as-usual model of development that is led not by care for people and place but the greedy hand of an ever less fettered free market. In England, this is symbolised by a new Conservative government promising to yet again radically streamline a planning system it sees as an impediment to economic recovery. Current circumstances also therefore challenge us to think more broadly about what planning and being a planner really mean in 2020. What is the purpose of planning? Do planners have the tools, resources, and capabilities to address significant societal challenges, and are they trusted to do so? What role should public authorities have and how might this interface with the logics of the market and private-sector driven development? And finally, what is the ‘public interest’ that planners often invoke as the foundation for their work, and how might it be compromised by the nature of the systems we operate in and where we work? The ESRC-funded Working in the Public Interest project has been seeking answers to these questions over the past three years. The project team from the University of Sheffield, Newcastle University and University College London has been engaging closely with contemporary planning practice in both the public and private sectors, focusing attention on what planners do all day. In depth interviews, focus groups to discuss contemporary challenges in planning, and extensive and engaged ethnography have yielded a rich set of insights into the state of planning and the nature of contemporary planning work across the UK. In this booklet we offer a series of brief overviews of key themes that this research has highlighted. Our aim here is not to offer a definition or detailed theoretical discussion of the public interest. Instead we hope to explore how various different facets of planning work are changing. At a broad level our argument is that a much wider range of issues and practices, including for example work-life balance and organisational change, need to be considered alongside issues such as professionalism and ethics when thinking about what it means to work in the public interest. In doing so we hope to stimulate broader debate within and beyond the planning profession about the nature and value of planning. We also aim to highlight a series of key questions and challenges that are shaping planners’ work and that will have significant implications for the future

'We need to put what we do in my dad’s language, in pounds, shillings and pence': commercialisation and the reshaping of public-sector planning in England

This article furthers understanding of how commercial imperatives are reshaping dominant conceptions of planning practice in England, and by extension the production of the built environment more widely. We make an original contribution by tracing the emergence of the logic of commercialisation in England, demonstrating how the impacts of austerity and ‘market-led viability planning’ have entrenched the ‘delivery state’, a powerful disciplinary matrix representing late-neoliberal governance. Through in-depth, ethnographic study of a local planning authority, we argue that commercialisation within the delivery state creates a distinct ‘economy of attention’, reshaping planners’ agency and professional identities, and the substance and scope of their work. The conclusion draws out wider implications of commercialisation for planning in and beyond the delivery state

Ideology, statecraft and the ‘double shuffle’ of Conservative planning reform in England.

This paper explores the political implications of conflicts over new housebuilding for Conservative-led governments in England since 2010. Revisiting debates about the tensions between neoliberal and more collectivist traditions within the political ideology of the Conservative Party, we argue that rather than blocking change this internal conflict should be seen as a dynamic part of the politics of planning. This leads us to propose that Conservative planning reforms have been characterised by a distinctive ‘double shuffle’ through which the party has sought to progress neoliberalising reforms whilst managing these tensions and seeking to maintain their hold on power through statecraft

Interpreting planners' talk about change: An exploratory study.

Talk by planners about major changes (‘reform’) in a particular planning regime is the focus of this article. Change in planning in the United Kingdom has been a recurrent theme in planning practice and research. However, there is little looking at practitioners both in the public and the private sectors in relation to change. Also, theory development has been limited and the interpretive link between institutional change, organisational change and planners’ situated agency could be strengthened. This article aims to add new dimensions to the current debate by looking at planners in both the public and the private sectors in Wales; by adopting a more open-ended approach requiring planners to generate ideas and display a perspective on planning; and by linking theories of institutional and organisational change with the model of actors’ agency developed by Bevir and Rhodes to form an interpretive frame. With reflections stemming from an exploratory case in Wales, the article seeks also to contribute to debates on planning in the United Kingdom and beyond, reaching to new-institutionalist theory and interpretive ontologie

Effective suckling in relation to naked maternal-infant body contact in the first hour of life: an observation study

Background Best practice guidelines to promote breastfeeding suggest that (i) mothers hold their babies in naked body contact immediately after birth, (ii) babies remain undisturbed for at least one hour and (iii) breastfeeding assistance be offered during this period. Few studies have closely observed the implementation of these guidelines in practice. We sought to evaluate these practices on suckling achievement within the first hour after birth. Methods Observations of seventy-eight mother-baby dyads recorded newborn feeding behaviours, the help received by mothers and birthing room practices each minute, for sixty minutes. Results Duration of naked body contact between mothers and their newborn babies varied widely from 1 to 60 minutes, as did commencement of suckling (range = 10 to 60 minutes). Naked maternal-infant body contact immediately after birth, uninterrupted for at least thirty minutes did not predict effective suckling within the first hour of birth. Newborns were four times more likely to sustain deep rhythmical suckling when their chin made contact with their mother’s breast as they approached the nipple (OR 3.8; CI 1.03 - 14) and if their mothers had given birth previously (OR 6.7; CI 1.35 - 33). Infants who had any naso-oropharyngeal suctioning administered at birth were six times less likely to suckle effectively (OR .176; CI .04 - .9). Conclusion Effective suckling within the first hour of life was associated with a collection of practices including infants positioned so their chin can instinctively nudge the underside of their mother’s breast as they approach to grasp the nipple and attach to suckle. The best type of assistance provided in the birthing room that enables newborns to sustain an effective latch was paying attention to newborn feeding behaviours and not administering naso-oropharyngeal suction routinely

Unsettling planning theory

Recent political developments in many parts of the world seem likely to exacerbate rather than ameliorate the planetary-scale challenges of social polarization, inequality and environmental change societies face. In this unconventional multi-authored essay, we therefore seek to explore some of the ways in which planning theory might respond to the deeply unsettling times we live in. Taking the multiple, suggestive possibilities of the theme of unsettlement as a starting point, we aim to create space for reflection and debate about the state of the discipline and practice of planning theory, questioning what it means to produce knowledge capable of acting on the world today. Drawing on exchanges at a workshop attended by a group of emerging scholars in Portland, Oregon in late 2016, the essay begins with an introduction section exploring the contemporary resonances of ‘unsettling’ in, of and for planning theory. This is followed by four, individually authored responses which each connect the idea of unsettlement to key challenges and possible future directions. We end by calling for a reflective practice of theorizing that accepts unsettlement but seeks to act knowingly and compassionately on the uneven terrain that it creates