The use of performance information case studies in local social services departments

New Public Management (NPM) is the commonly used label for the growing popularity of businesslike control tools in governmental organisations. NPM includes several dimensions of change, such as divisionalisation, visible and active control and a prominent role for performance measurement. Developments in Dutch local government demonstrate several of these elements of NPM. Pollitt and Bouckaert (2000) and Pollitt (2002) defined four levels of NPM change: (1) discourse; (2) decisions; (3) practices and (4) results. This paper focuses on performance measurement. The politicians and managers at the top of the investigated municipalities took the decision to adopt instruments that generate performance information. This paper seeks to explain the extent to which the information resulting from these instruments is actually being used in the management practices at work floor level. It investigates two categories of explanations for information use: characteristics of the available information (such as its contents, amount and quality) and characteristics of the organization and its routines. The paper thus analyses how decisions taken by politicians and top managers to adopt NPM relate practices at work floor level.

A probabilistic extension of UML statecharts: specification and verification

This paper is the extended technical report that corresponds to a published paper [14]. This paper introduces means to specify system randomness within UML statecharts, and to verify probabilistic temporal properties over such enhanced statecharts which we call probabilistic UML statecharts. To achieve this, we develop a general recipe to extend a statechart semantics with discrete probability distributions, resulting in Markov decision processes as semantic models. We apply this recipe to the requirements-level UML semantics of [8]. Properties of interest for probabilistic statecharts are expressed in PCTL, a probabilistic variant of CTL for processes that exhibit both non-determinism and probabilities. Verification is performed using the model checker Prism. A model checking example shows the feasibility of the suggested approach

Did capital market convergence lower the effectiveness of the interest rate as a monetary policy tool?

International capital market convergence reduces the ability for monetary authorities to set domestic monetary conditions. Traditionally, monetary policy transmission is channelled through the short-term interest rate. Savings and investment decisions are effected through the response of the bond yield to changes in the short-term interest rate. We find that capital market integration increased correlation between long-term interest rates across countries. Short-term interest rates also show more integration across countries and the correlation with the international business cycle has increased. A stronger linkage between international economic conditions and bond yields has important implications for the effectiveness of monetary policy. Monetary policy makers, especially in small countries, will face more difficulties in influencing domestic conditions in the bond market when they apply the traditional monetary policy framework in case of a country specific shock

Service discovery at home

Service discovery is a fairly new field that kicked off since the advent of ubiquitous computing and has been found essential in the making of intelligent networks by implementing automated discovery and remote control between devices. This paper provides an overview and comparison of several prominent service discovery mechanisms currently available. It also introduces the at home anywhere service discovery protocol (SDP@HA) design which improves on the current state of the art by accommodating resource lean devices, implementing a dynamic leader election for a central cataloguing device and embedding robustness to the service discovery architecture as an important criterion

Low inflation, a high net savings surplus and institutional restrictions keep the Japanese long-term interest rate low

This paper explains that the interest rate on long-term Japanese government bonds is low in comparison with other industrialised countries for four main reasons: lower inflation, net savings surplus, institutional restrictions and home bias. Monetary policy and institutionalised purchases of government bonds by semi-government agencies keep the market demand for bonds high. We find that since the 1970s Japanese interest rate movements are better explained by the current account balance than in other industrialised countries. This is caused by sizeable net oversavings and institutional reasons increased the impact of oversavings as such on the long-term interest rate for Japan. Hence, the institutional reasons increase the coefficient value of the savings-investment balance. A reason for the existence of the high national net savings surplus could be that unsustainable budgetary deficits in Japan called for a Ricardian response. We doubt whether Ricardian equivalence is here the driving factor: household savings have actually fallen over the nineties. Corporate savings, in response to overcapacity and poor investment outlook, have risen more strongly. This has kept the private and national savings balance positive. There is also some indication that ageing has contributed to the structural current account surplus for Japan

The role of aldosterone and aldosterone blockade in hypertension

Hypertension is the most prevalent and significant modifiable risk factor for cardiovascular disease.1 It has been estimated that 7.6 million premature deaths and 54% of stroke and 47% of ischemic heart disease worldwide are attributable to elevated blood pressure levels.2 Blood pressure regulation is a complex process involving several organs, including the heart, brain, kidneys and vasculature. The renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system (RAAS) has a central role in blood pressure regulation. A decrease in renal perfusion leads to the synthesis and release of renin by the juxtaglomerular cells in the afferent arterioles of the kidney. Renin converts angiotensinogen, which is produced in the liver, to angiotensin I (Ang I). This is subsequently converted to angiotensin II (Ang II) by angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE) in vascular tissues. Ang II increases blood pressure via Ang II type 1 receptor (AT1R)-mediated vasoconstriction, by increasing sympathetic tone and by stimulation of arginine vasopressin release.3 Ang II also stimulates sodium and water reabsorption by a direct action in the kidney, and indirectly by stimulating aldosterone synthesis and release in the adrenal gland.3 When blood pressure goes up, the increase in renal perfusion will slow down renin release, thereby providing a negative feedback mechanism regulating RAAS activity to its required level. Figure 1 shows a schematic overview of the RAAS

High-level Counterexamples for Probabilistic Automata

Providing compact and understandable counterexamples for violated system properties is an essential task in model checking. Existing works on counterexamples for probabilistic systems so far computed either a large set of system runs or a subset of the system's states, both of which are of limited use in manual debugging. Many probabilistic systems are described in a guarded command language like the one used by the popular model checker PRISM. In this paper we describe how a smallest possible subset of the commands can be identified which together make the system erroneous. We additionally show how the selected commands can be further simplified to obtain a well-understandable counterexample

Het belang van intrinsieke motivatie en vasthoudendheid:op zoek naar praktische aanknopingspunten voor de studiekeuzecheck

The check on study choice ('studiekeuzecheck', introduced in 2014) provides enrolling students the possibility to receive extra advice and reconsidering their choice between 1st of May and 1st of September. The studiekeuzecheck is supposed to improve students' information and motivation levels at the start of their study in higher vocational education, implying a better match with secondary education. A a result, student should drop out and switch less. In this article, the factors playing a role in the study choice