SHI(EL)DS: A Novel Hardware-based Security Backplane to Enhance Security with Minimal Impact to System Operation

Computer security continues to increase in importance both in the commercial world and within the Air Force. Dedicated hardware for security purposes presents and enhances a number of security capabilities. Hardware enhances both the security of the security system and the quality and trustworthiness of the information being gathered by the security monitors. Hardware reduces avenues of attack on the security system and ensures the trustworthiness of information only through proper design and placement. Without careful system design, security hardware leaves itself vulnerable to many attacks that it is capable of defending against. Our SHI(EL)DS architecture combines these insights into a comprehensive, modular hardware security backplane architecture. This architecture provides many of the capabilities required by the Cybercraft deployment platform. Most importantly, it makes significant progress towards establishing a root of trust for this platform. Progressing the development of the Cybercraft initiative advances the capabilities of the Air Force’s ability to operate in and defend cyberspace

A county-level perspective on housing affordability in Ireland. ESRI Research Notes 2019/4/2

The issue of housing affordability in Ireland has come to the fore in recent years as house prices have increased significantly following the recovery. In a recent survey, Corrigan et al. (2019a) find that 86.5 per cent of renters expressed a preference for homeownership. However, rising house prices have led to serious concerns about the ability of first time buyers (FTB) to enter the housing market. This group has been cited as one particular pressure point in recent assessments of market affordability (Housing Agency, 2017). Analysis published in the ESRI Quarterly Economic Commentary (McQuinn et al., 2018) finds that house price growth has been uneven across the distribution, with cheaper properties growing at faster rates than more expensive properties. This is likely to further exacerbate the affordability concerns of first time buyers, who typically enter the housing market at lower house price levels than second and subsequent borrowers

Institutions ignored: a history of Select Committee scrutiny in the House of Lords, 1968-2021

Within the vast seam of scholarship on parliamentary history the evolution and role of select committees in the House of Lords, particularly in relation to investigatory or policy-focused committees, has been almost completely overlooked. They have been ‘institutions ignored’. This gap in the existing research base is particularly stark when compared with the very large literature on the history of select committees in the House of Commons. This article fills this gap by providing the first detailed historical account of the evolution of investigatory or policy-focused committees in the House of Lords. This account reveals the evolution of a distinctive ‘scrutiny style’ moulded around the notion of complementarity, a highly specialised approach and an understanding of the merits of self-restraint. However, during 2018-2021 a fundamental review of the investigatory committee system was undertaken within the House of Lords which led to significant change in relation to both the structure and ambition of committees. The impact of this reform agenda is likely to ensure that select committees in the Lords are far more visible in the future, within and beyond the Palace of Westminster, than they were in the past

Fifty Years of Representative and Responsible Government: Contemporary Relevance, Theoretical Revisions and Conceptual Reflection

Over half a century has passed since the publication of A. H. Birch’s Representative and Responsible Government (1964), yet it still continues as a seminal source for leading contemporary political scientists (see for example Rhodes 2011:280-1). Along the way it has been identified as one of the classic analyses of UK constitutional politics (Flinders 2010:73) and more broadly as one of the ‘best analytical surveys of representation’ (Wahlke 1971) as well as offering exceptional insights into notions of responsibility (Mair 2009:11). Birch’s (1964:21) initial linkage of representation and responsibility - ‘a representative system enables a government to be responsible’ in a number of different ways - has come under sustained and critical reflection by subsequent scholars of both government and governance. This critical political analysis complements Birch’s own recognition of the complexities and ambiguities in his conceptualisation of both representation and responsibility (plus the practical vagaries, tensions and contradictions inherent in their systemic interconnectedness as ‘representative and responsible government’). In the intervening five decades these complexities and ambiguities have multiplied and this is reflected through increased conceptual sophistication, in a ‘rethinking’ of notions of representation and responsibility, and through increased complexity and indeterminacy of government itself, to the extent that the term ‘governance’, with all of its associated adjectives – decentred, multi-level, global, meta – is now seen as a more accurate descriptor of governing practice. In turn, these ideational and empirical challenges have resulted in claims that representative and responsible government has now been displaced by representative versus responsible government (Mair 2009, 2011); or, more dramatically still, that there has been an ‘end to representative politics’ (Tormey 2015) and, simultaneously, the displacement of ‘standard model’ linear forms of responsibility in more complex models reflecting the expansion of lateral or horizontal modes of accountability, captured most vividly in Keane’s (2009, 2011) notion of ‘monitory democracy’. From this perspective electoral processes and institutions in themselves provide for neither representative nor responsible government

The Importance of Institutional Capacity and Negotiation Capacity in Affordable Housing Agreements:The Potential for Collective Action in Melbourne, Australia

New legislation was introduced in 2018 in Victoria, Australia to encourage the negotiation of affordable housing agreements. This change resulted in the expansion of formal and informal mechanisms for cross-sectoral affordable housing delivery. In this paper we draw on 20 interviews with housing stakeholders, focusing on the process of negotiation. We propose a novel theoretical framework to interpret capacity for collective action in a loosely regulated policy area, combining insights from negotiation theory and Institutional Capacity Development (ICD) literature. We find widespread concerns about the opaque, inefficient and potentially exploitative nature of outcomes. We also find that agreements varied across projects based on levels of trust; access to information; political capital; capacity for mutual gain; and the presence of shared rules for interacting. We conclude that competition-based negotiations may lead to increased institutional capacity while also highlighting the challenges of housing delivery in the context of institutional uncertainty.</p

Surgical site infection after hip fracture surgery:A systematic review and meta analysis of studies published in the United Kingdom

Aims This study explores the reported rate of surgical site infection (SSI) after hip fracture surgery in published studies concerning patients treated in the UK. Methods Studies were included if they reported on SSI after any type of surgical treatment for hip fracture. Each study required a minimum of 30 days follow-up and 100 patients. Meta-analysis was undertaken using a random effects model. Heterogeneity was expressed using the I2 statistic. Risk of bias was assessed using a modified Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (NOS) system. Results There were 20 studies reporting data from 88,615 patients. Most were retrospective cohort studies from single centres. The pooled incidence was 2.1% (95% confidence interval (CI) 1.54% to 2.62%) across ‘all types’ of hip fracture surgery. When analyzed by operation type, the SSI incidences were: hemiarthroplasty 2.87% (95% CI 1.99% to 3.75%) and sliding hip screw 1.35% (95% CI 0.78% to 1.93%). There was considerable variation in definition of infection used, as well as considerable risk of bias, particularly as few studies actively screened participants for SSI. Conclusion Synthesis of published estimates of infection yield a rate higher than that seen in national surveillance procedures. Biases noted in all studies would trend towards an underestimate, largely due to inadequate follow-up

Reviewing the review : a three-dimensional approach to analysing the 2017-2020 review of the House of Lords investigative and scrutiny committees

Between 2017 and 2020 a comprehensive review of the framework of investigatory scrutiny committees in the House of Lords was undertaken. This process led to a far-reaching set of recommendations and reforms. Although carefully couched in the language of evolutionary change, this article argues that these reforms possess a transformational dynamic that is difficult to deny. The challenge, however, is likely to emerge from the existence of a largely hidden disjuncture between the accountability ambitions embedded within this reform agenda and the institutional, constitutional and political matrixes within which the ‘new’ committee system in the Lords is expected to operate. A three-dimensional lens emphasising inter-, intra-, and extra-institutional dimensions is utilised to expose and dissect the existence of potential disjuncture and, through this, offers a ‘review of the review’ informed by broader literatures on legislative organisation and policy analysis that will be of interest to both practitioners and scholar