Contestability in public services - an alternative to outsourcing

The public don’t like monopolies. And they are suspicious of them in the public sector as well as the private sector. Sometimes there is no other way of organising the production and delivery of goods and services, but we all know from experience that monopolies are generally unresponsive to the needs of customers and service users, and they pay too much attention to the convenience of management and staff. On the other hand, we are also worried about the use of competition and outsourcing in the delivery of public services. The public want social services to be delivered by people who are motivated by a desire to serve. They worry about the profit motive. And they are concerned that public servants may be outwitted by commercially-savvy contractors. This paper argues that there is a middle way between monopoly and market-testing. It is possible to use performance benchmarking and the prospect of prompt intervention in case of underperformance to drive increased efficiency and effectiveness, while also recognising the importance of a public service ethos, and the value embedded in many of the systems, processes and relationships through which these services are currently delivered. That middle way is contestability

Aerothermal modeling

The objectives, approach, and status of a program to develop the computational fluid dynamics tools needed to improve combustor design and analysis are outlined. The calculation procedure selected consists of a finite difference solution of the time averaged, steady state, primitive variable, elliptic form of the Reynolds equations. Standard TEACH type numerics are used to solve the resulting equations. These include hybrid differencing, SIMPLE algorithm for the pressure field, line by line iterative solution using the ADI method and the tridiagonal matrix algorithm (TDMA). Convergence is facilitated by using under relaxation. The physical processes are modeled by a two equation eddy viscosity model for turbulence; combustion is represented by a simple, irreversible, one step chemical reaction whose rate is influenced only by the time scale of the turbulence. The model evaluation procedure is also described

THE EFFECTS OF RELATIONS IN FARMING TRADE WITH USA ON EEC AGRICULTURAL POLICIES

Agricultural and Food Policy,

Finite element electromagnetic analysis of generator transient performance

Imperial Users onl

At Odds

At Odds playfully combines biomorphic ceramic sculptures with pieces of domestic furniture to investigate the emotional impact of juxtaposing the everyday with the strange. To create this body of work, I relied upon theories of The Uncanny and The Aesthetic of The Strange to help conceive of ways to communicate a complex range of emotions. At Odds utilizes elements within The Aesthetic of The Strange such as The Uncanny, The Unsettling, and The Incomprehensible to provoke feelings of discomfort by creating unusual, awkward relationships between these visually distinct elements. The discomfort in these works echoes difficult moments in my family’s history and explores the lingering effects of those moments. By appearing vulnerable, weak, and weird – yet familiar – these works also reveal how I view myself and echo the discomfort which I feel when faced with emotional expression

Obituary: Alan Grahame Lloyd (1926-1999)

Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,

Barry Jones In Search of Lost Time - A Film Story

Barry Jones In Search of Lost Time - A Film Story (hereafter Barry Jones) examines the unique power of film as a medium for political biography using the extraordinary Australian polymath politician as the focus of the film and exegesis. As Australia's longest-serving Science Minister (1983-1990) and two-time National President of the Australian Labor Party (1991-2000, 2005-2006), Barry Jones's life has elements of an orthodox political career. Yet his ambition was thwarted and his political career stalled in the outer ministry. This reality, together with his multi-stranded journey and multi-talented nature, makes it difficult to evaluate him in traditional political or biographical terms. As the first cinema release documentary feature of an Australian politician, Barry Jones contributes insights to a career not easily confined. It uses film as a medium for doing and conveying political biography. Film suggests itself in Jones's case because of its acknowledged influence in his formative years. The medium serves to animate and bind the many representations of Jones already collected: photographs, paintings, drawings, cartoons, posters, archival footage, his many books, edited collections, articles, Press Club addresses, parliamentary speeches and book launches. It captures these elements of his life by projecting them through and with film, while adding moving footage, narration, sound, music and effects. What Barry Jones brings is a compression of Jones's story to its essential springs and thereby tells it in a way that gives clarity and emphasis to the elemental forces shaping him and pushing him to politics. The film illuminates these forces in Jones's younger life and sees them as a means of understanding his later political career. It seeks to highlight film as an ideal medium for rendering the essential underpinnings of a long and complex political career in a way that makes it comprehensible. The exegesis elaborates on the making of Barry Jones by highlighting film editing as a unique compression technique able to bend time and cut clutter, while layering detail with multiple elements of thick description and effect. Such compression capacity is but one component of film's ability to engender an emotional response evocative of what it might be like to think and feel like the political figure being examined and to gain an impression of what the world feels like through their skin. This in turn lends understanding and insight to political lives. Barry Jones and this exegesis argue that film is a means of bringing this attribute to the terrain of political study