Incompletely Specified Probabilistic Networks

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Mediating the Tension Between Information Privacy and Information Access: The Role of Digital Government

Government agencies collect and disseminate data that bear on the most important issues of public interest. Advances in information technology, particularly the Internet, have multiplied the tension between demands for evermore comprehensive databases and demands for the shelter of privacy. In mediating between these two conflicting demands, agencies must address a host of difficult problems. These include providing access to information while protecting confidentiality, coping with health information databases, and ensuring consistency with international standards. The policies of agencies are determined by what is right for them to do, what works for them, and what they are required to do by law. They must interpret and respect the ethical imperatives of democratic accountability, constitutional empowerment, and individual autonomy. They must keep pace with technological developments by developing effective measures for making information available to a broad range of users. They must both abide by the mandates of legislation and participate in the process of developing new legislation that is responsive to changes that affect their domain. In managing confidentiality and data access functions, agencies have two basic tools: techniques for disclosure limitation through restricted data and administrative procedures through restricted access. The technical procedures for disclosure limitation involve a range of mathematical and statistical tools. The administrative procedures can be implemented through a variety of institutional mechanisms, ranging from privacy advocates, through internal privacy review boards, to a data and access protection commission

Point Demand Forecasting

This paper provides geographic information system (GIS) methods and empirical models to forecast point demand for home-delivered goods. A point forecast consists of stops on a street network, including demand at each stop. The purpose of the forecast is to support a network optimization model, based on the traveling salesman problem, to locate one or more new facilities in a region. We illustrate our approach with a case study of home-delivered meals (meals on wheels) in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania

Facility Location Model for Home-Delivered Services: Application to the Meals-on-Wheels Program

We present a GIS-based decision support system for the non-profit sector, designed to assist strategic and tactical decision making in the area of home-delivered services such as meals on wheels. Using data collected from existing programs, current and forecasted demographic data, and a series of algorithmic tools, we provide a system for evaluating current meals on wheels facilities, and for making facility location decisions that satisfy coverage and equity requirements

Policy Systems: The Integration of Information Technology into Policy Analysis, Planning, and Program

We define a policy system to be a collection of hardware, software, communication technologies, persons, procedures, protocols, and standards driven by and for the purpose of advancing a public organization’s mission in regard to policy analysis, planning, and program evaluation decisions. While policy systems already exist in practice, we believe that they have not been identified and studied as a separate, distinguishable area of information systems. They have components and patterns of use that could benefit governments of all levels in carrying out policy making. We propose principles for building policy systems, identify their components, discuss how they address the complexities of policy making, illustrate them with several examples including our own policy system built for a local government agency, and distinguish them from related systems such as management information systems, decision support systems, and collaboratories