Information and communications technology in government, an historical perspective

The purpose of this paper is to address a paradox in e-Government, namely a reputation for failure existing alongside an apparent reality of successful implementation. There are frequent and much publicised stories and statistics about the high rate of failure in e-government projects. Yet at the same time as there seems to be an almost universal adoption of Information and Communications Technologies by governments at all levels, local and national. Our approach is to explore e-Government's origins for an explanation, examining the issue from a historical perspective to see if there are lessons to be learned about the future development and implementation of e-Government. This study and analysis addresses the similarities and differences between the present situation and what has happened in the past. The aim is to use the perspective of history to comment upon the longer term issues and questions which have an impact upon the success and failure of e-Government projects. The study is focused on developments in the UK, but with some reference to experiences in the US, Canada and Australia. The bulk of the research comes from a library search of government studies and reports, supplemented by informal conversations with participants conducted over the last few years. We looked at the history of government Information Technology in the UK from its early role automating data processing to the point now where it is arguably an indispensable mechanism at the heart of both the operation of public administration and the relationship between citizens and government. The analysis suggests that the impact and implications of e-Government have evolved beyond improvements to operational efficiency and better service delivery. The outcomes are a number of observations about the way in which e-Government projects have come to be managed and assessed, together with some core questions to be answered by further research and discussion. Specifically questions are raised about the strategic nature of e-Government and how their value has come to be assessed. We ask whether it is helpful for e-Government to be regarded as a strategic aim as opposed to a strategic enabler, and whether the answer the answer contributes to a mistaken view of e-Government's success

ISAC6+ Delivering Smarter Administration through innovation - a Benefits Realisation approach to ensuring success.

The paper describes how the Project Management discipline of benefits realisation has been applied to an EU funded E-government initiative. It explores the benefits of using this approach, the challenges to be addressed, and suggest a framework for applying the approach to other local and national e-government initiatives. One of the key project objectives is to demonstrate through the pilot that implementation of the iSAC6+ system will provide value for money by delivering the desired benefits both to government office users and citizens. The approach described here focuses on costs and benefits generated by use of the system. There are staff costs for training, support and operation, technical costs for integrating iSAC6+ in to existing systems and websites, and more significantly organisational costs for designing and implementing new procedures and working practices. Citizens too will incur costs to access and use the service. In iSAC6+ we have created a model of costs and benefits which can be applied in the short term to the pilot, and in the longer term to a much larger number of public organisations. The aim of the Benefits Realisation model is to demonstrate that iSAC6+ is capable of delivering value for money, and thus to justify the investment needed for expanding its use. Information Technology project success or failure is traditionally judged against objectives set during initial project planning. Enterprises, both public and private sector, have found this approach inadequate because long term costs and benefits do not occur until after the project has completed. Benefits Realisation emerged in the 1990s and developed two roles: a discipline for anticipating and quantifying the expected value of a project in terms of the costs and benefits which will accrue after the project itself is complete; and an over-arching project management philosophy. The paper uses the case study experience to comment upon these two different perspectives. The model developed within the project is based upon the recognised public sector costing formula, the Standard Cost model (SCM) but goes much further by integrating it into a Benefits Realisation tool which creates an audit trail from organisational strategic aims through to detailed cost measures for both quantitative and qualitative incidences

Differential Effects of Emotional Information on Interference Task Performance Across the Life Span

While functioning in multiple domains declines with age, emotional regulation appears to remain preserved in older adults. The Emotion Inhibition (Emotional Stroop) Test requires participants to name the ink color in which neutrally and emotionally valenced words are printed. It was employed in the current investigation as a measure of affective regulation in the context of an interference task in relation to age. Results demonstrated that while participants ranging from 20 to 50 years of age performed significantly worse on the emotion Stroop Inhibition relative to the neutral Stroop Inhibition condition, subjects over 60 years of age displayed the converse of this pattern, performing better on the emotion than the neutral condition, suggesting that they are less affected by the emotional impact of the positive and negative words used in the former condition. This pattern of age-related change in the ability to manage emotion may be related to blunting of affective signaling in limbic structures or, at the psychological level, focusing on emotional regulation

Comparison of Endocrine Response to Stress Between Captive-Raised and Wild-Caught Bighorn Sheep

Stress hormones in Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis canadensis), produced in response to environmental changes, road development, or high population density, may impact their immune systems to a threshold level that predisposes them to periodic, large-scale mortality. We compared the stress response to a novel environmental situation and repeated handling between bighorn sheep born and raised in captivity (CR) and bighorn sheep born in the wild (WC) and brought into captivity. We measured plasma epinephrine, norepinephrine, cortisol, and fecal glucocorticoid metabolites (FGM). Three weeks after each group’s arrival we used a one-time drop-net event to elicit an acute stress response, and we collected blood samples from each sheep over 35 minutes, as well as one fecal sample. We collected blood and fecal samples from both groups on 7 other occasions over the subsequent 6 months. We also collected fecal samples from the pen at approximately 24-hour intervals for 3 days following every handling event to monitor the stress response to handling. We found that CR sheep had a stronger autonomic nervous system response than WC sheep, as measured by epinephrine and norepinephrine levels, but we found a very similar hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis (HPA) response, measured by cortisol levels, to the acute stress event of a drop-net restraint. We also found that once the WC sheep had acclimated, as indicated by the return to the initial baseline FGM levels within 12 weeks, the CR and WC groups’ HPA responses to sampling events were not significantly different from one another. Fecal samples can provide a noninvasive mechanism for managers to monitor baseline FGM for a given herd. Using long-term monitoring of FGM rather than values from a single point in time may allow managers to correlate these levels to outside influences on the herd and better understand the impacts of management changes, population density, or increased human developments on the health of the sheep population

Amphetamine-evoked c- fos mRNA expression in the caudate-putamen: the effects of DA and NMDA receptor antagonists vary as a function of neuronal phenotype and environmental context

Dopamine (DA) and glutamate neurotransmission is thought to be critical for psychostimulant drugs to induce immediate early genes (IEGs) in the caudate-putamen (CPu). We report here, however, that the ability of DA and glutamate NMDA receptor antagonists to attenuate amphetamine-evoked c- fos mRNA expression in the CPu depends on environmental context. When given in the home cage, amphetamine induced c- fos mRNA expression predominately in preprodynorphin and preprotachykinin mRNA-containing neurons (Dyn-SP+ cells) in the CPu. In this condition, all of the D1R, D2R and NMDAR antagonists tested dose-dependently decreased c- fos expression in Dyn-SP+ cells. When given in a novel environment, amphetamine induced c- fos mRNA in both Dyn-SP+ and preproenkephalin mRNA-containing neurons (Enk+ cells). In this condition, D1R and non-selective NMDAR antagonists dose-dependently decreased c- fos expression in Dyn-SP+ cells, but neither D2R nor NR2B-selective NMDAR antagonists had no effect. Furthermore, amphetamine-evoked c- fos expression in Enk+ cells was most sensitive to DAR and NMDAR antagonism; the lowest dose of every antagonist tested significantly decreased c- fos expression only in these cells. Finally, novelty-stress also induced c- fos expression in both Dyn-SP+ and Enk+ cells, and this was relatively resistant to all but D1R antagonists. We suggest that the mechanism(s) by which amphetamine evokes c- fos expression in the CPu varies depending on the stimulus (amphetamine vs. stress), the striatal cell population engaged (Dyn-SP+ vs. Enk+ cells), and environmental context (home vs. novel cage).Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/66272/1/j.1471-4159.2003.01815.x.pd

Retinal regeneration

The goal of research on neural regeneration is to restore brain function following injury. To many, this suggests regrowing damaged axons and re-establishing the interrupted pathways. A second, but little studied aspect of brain regeneration, is the replacement of lost neurons. For example, in some animals the neural retina is reconstituted by regenerative neurogenesis following its partial or total destruction. Two separate processes underlying retinal regeneration have been described: transdifferentiation of retinal pigmented epithelial cells into retinal neural progenitors (in adult urodeles, tadpoles, and embryonic chickens), and alteration in the fate of photoreceptor progenitors intrinsic to the retina (in adult fish).Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/30297/1/0000699.pd

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Autobiography and the existential self: studies in modern French writing

In recent years, critical attention has become increasingly focused on autobiography. The impact of this enquiry is not exclusively confined to comparative literature studies and literary theory and criticism, but has also been extended to philosophy, sociology, feminist studies, psychoanalysis, social history, and cultural studies generally. This volume examines specifically the autobiographical writings of the various French ‘existentialist’ (and related) authors and includes discussions of already well-known existentialist autobiographical productions (such as Les Mots and de Beauvoir’s memoirs), as well as examining a number of recent posthumous publications, such as Sartre’s Carnets de la drôle de guerre and Simone de Beauvoir’s Journal de guerre, and the correspondence between Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir (Lettres au Castor). Much of this new material has so far received very little critical attention. The relationship between the ‘self’ and ‘writing’ also emerges in the autobiographical work of a number of other writers, many of whom were either close to the existentialists (in philosophical, aesthetic, or political terms) or have continued as part of this ‘tradition’. Thus, other chapters include analyses of such writers as Albert Camus, Paul Nizan, Jean Genet, Violette Leduc, and Hervé Guibert, whose autobiographical account of his experience of AIDS can be examined in existential term