Implementing centralised IT service management: drawing lessons from the public sector

[Abstract]: The IT service management model represents a paradigm shift for IT organisations as it deemphasizes the management of IT assets and focuses on the provision of quality end-to-end IT services. This paper presents part of an in-depth study that examines the experience of a government agency, Queensland Health, in the implementation of a centralised IT service management model based on the ITIL framework. The paper sheds light on the challenges and breakthroughs, distils a set of critical success factors and offers a learning opportunity for other organisations. Outsourcing some activities and tool requirements to vendors was seen as one contributor to success although ensuring effective technology transfer to in-house staff was also necessary. Another success factor was centralisation of IT services. Commitment of senior management was also crucial as was a recognition of the need for effective change management to transform the organisational culture to a service-oriented focus

Public value summary background paper

The Australian Centre of Excellence for Local Government (ACELG) at UTS has published a background paper about understanding and promoting public value creation within Australian local government. The paper provides a definition of public value and public value creation from key literature, and links this with current practice within the sector. The Public Value project is a partnership between the Local Government Business Excellence Network (LGBEN) and ACELG and explores how councils create public value in a broad sense – or ‘the common good’ – and deliver this value specifically through planning and managing and delivering a wide range of services, programs and projects. A final phase of the project will provide examples of public value so frameworks and tools can be developed for councils looking at undertaking continual improvement initiatives

Disability and Educators in Mathematics Schooling Research: A Critical Exploratory Review

In this exploratory review, we use a disability studies lens to analyze the focus and outcomes of 15 recently published research articles that spotlight the role of educators in the mathematics schooling of students with disabilities. The results of our review not only point to continuation of problematic positioning and paradigms in research, but also underscore the value in supporting special educators’ mathematics understandings. Moreover, we note advancements in socio-contextual and socio-political research approaches that afford better understanding of the re/construction of disabled students, spaces, and pedagogy phenomena. We assert that outcomes of this review can inform more just research and practices for students with disabilities in mathematics education

Conceptualizations of Students With and Without Disabilities as Mathematical Problem Solvers in Educational Research; A Critical Review

Students with disabilities are often framed as “the problem” and have limited opportunities to engage in standards based mathematics leading to persistent underachievement. In this paper, we investigate a research divide between mathematics educational research for students with and without disabilities, a divide with significant differences in the theoretical orientations and research methodologies used to understand learners. Based on an analysis of 149 mathematics educational research articles published between 2013 and 2015, we found significant differences between articles focused on learners with and without disabilities. For those with disabilities, mathematical problem solving was understood primarily from behavioral and information processing theoretical perspectives, while for those without disabilities, problem solving was understood primarily through constructivist and sociocultural perspectives. While 86% of research on problem-solving including students with disabilities was quantitative, only 35% of research on students without disabilities was quantitative. 50% of problem-solving research on students without disabilities was qualitative, compared to only 6% of research on students with disabilities. Problem solving, then, is studied in very different ways for learners with and without disabilities. Students without disabilities are studied through close analysis of learning, often individual. Students with disabilities are most often studied quantitatively, in groups, with no analysis of individual thinking. By offering only a limited range of methods and theoretical orientations, this research divide reifies deficit constructions of students with disabilities

Towards a unified method for the knowledge based urban development framework

Purpose–The growing debate in the literature indicates that the initiative to implement Knowledge Based Urban Development (KBUD) approaches in urban development process is neither simple nor quick. Many research efforts has therefore, been put forward to the development of appropriate KBUD framework and KBUD practical approaches. But this has lead to a fragmented and incoherent methodological approach. This paper outlines and compares a few most popular KBUD frameworks selected from the literature. It aims to identify some key and common features in the effort to achieve a unified method of KBUD framework. Design/methodology/approach–This paper reviews, examines and identifies various popular KBUD frameworks discussed in the literature from urban planners’ viewpoint. It employs a content analysis technique i.e. a research tool used to determine the presence of certain words or concepts within texts or sets of texts. Originality/value–The paper reports on the key and common features of a few selected most popular KBUD frameworks. The synthesis of the results is based from a perspective of urban planners. The findings which encompass a new KBUD framework incorporating the key and common features will be valuable in setting a platform to achieve a unified method of KBUD. Practical implications –The discussion and results presented in this paper should be significant to researchers and practitioners and to any cities and countries that are aiming for KBUD. Keywords – Knowledge based urban development, Knowledge based urban development framework, Urban development and knowledge econom

Participatory Workshops as a Tool for Building Inclusivity in New Towns in Africa

Africa is currently the fastest-urbanizing continent in the world. As part of this rapid growth, New Towns are increasingly employed by private developers as a means of providing well-serviced urban environments to middle- and upper-income groups. These comprehensively-planned New Towns are often seen in contrast to the perceived ‘chaos’ and ‘congestion’ of large African cities. As a result, two urban forms, the highly controlled New Towns and the unregulated settlements at their edges, engage in complex social and economic exchanges, but remain spatially segregated and socially exclusive. Current research points to the need for an alternative approach to top-down New Town planning in Africa. Participatory workshops are one alternative that can offer planners access to local knowledge that is otherwise difficult to access. This paper explores the potential of short-term reflective, design, and serious gaming workshops by reflecting on the experiences of the authors in four recent workshops. The paper evaluates the effectiveness of these workshops as useful tools to increase inclusivity in African New Towns by bringing together stakeholders with competing agendas and supporting open discussion, negotiation, and informed decision-making. The paper concludes that participation from stakeholder groups that would normally be marginalized from the planning process (such as current residents, temporary users, and residents of adjacent unregulated communities), can offer new insights to planning bodies and inform more inclusive New Towns across the continent

Terra incognita—cerebellar contributions to neuropsychiatric and cognitive dysfunction in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia

Although converging evidence has positioned the human cerebellum as an important relay for intact cognitive and neuropsychiatric processing, changes in this large structure remain mostly overlooked in behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD), a disease which is characterized by cognitive and neuropsychiatric deficits. The present study assessed whether degeneration in specific cerebellar subregions associate with indices of cognition and neuropsychiatric performance in bvFTD. Our results demonstrate a relationship between cognitive and neuropsychiatric decline across various domains of memory, language, emotion, executive, visuospatial function, and motivation and the degree of gray matter degeneration in cerebellar lobules V–VII. Most notably, bilateral cerebellar lobule VII and the posterior vermis emerged as distinct for memory processes, the right cerebellar hemisphere underpinned emotion, and the posterior vermis was highlighted in language dysfunction in bvFTD. Based on cortico-cerebellar connectivity maps, these findings in the cerebellum are consistent with the neural connections with the cortices involved in these domains in patients with bvFTD. Overall, the present study underscores the significance of cortical-cerebellar networks associated with cognition and neuropsychiatric dysfunction in bvFTD

Multi-beam miniaturized volumetric scanning microscopy with a single 1-dimensional actuation

Miniaturized optical imaging systems often use a 2-dimensional (2-D) actuator such as a piezoelectric tube or microelectromechanical system actuator for the acquisition of 2-D and higher dimensional images over an areal field of view (FOV). Piezoelectric tubes are the most compact, but usually produce impractical sub-millimetre FOVs and are difficult to fabricate at scale, leading to high costs. Planar piezoelectric bending actuators ('benders') are substantially lower cost and capable of much larger actuations, albeit 1-dimensional (1-D) and traditionally inadequate for 2-D steering tasks. We present a piezoelectric bender imaging system that exploits mechanical motion coupling to produce multi-millimetre scale 2-D scan coverage. Leveraging optical coherence tomography with a long coherence length laser, we further extend the FOV using three depth-multiplexed imaging beams from optical fibres resonating in synchronicity across the width of the bender. Each fibre had a FOV of ~2.1 x 1.5 mm, contributing to a stitched field of ~2.1 x 2.9 mm with a beam resolution of 12.6 um full-width at half-maximum. Imaging of biological samples including stomach tissue, an ant and cell spheroids was performed. This multi-fold improvement in imaging coverage and cost-effectiveness promises to accelerate the advent of piezoelectric scanning in compact devices such as endoscopes for biomedicine, and headsets for augmented/virtual reality and neuroscience