Business , Innovation And Skills Research Articles

Smart cities: terrain for ‘epic struggle’ or new urban utopias?

The idea of 'smart cities' increasingly dominates much of the discourse about future urban development although there is little agreement on definitions or derivations for the term. In the UK there is an abundance of encouragement for cities to strive to become 'smart', with Government (e.g. Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS)), state agencies (e.g. Future Cities Catapult (FCC) and Innovate UK) and foundations such as Nesta all urging cities to embrace the growing market opportunities for collaboration with corporate technology providers. At the same time the term remains highly contested with a number of critiques warning of the dangers of civic leaders accepting the promises of global tech corporations, e.g. offering 'smart city in a box' solutions (IFTF, 2011; Townsend, 2013).Others, such as the American science fiction writer, Bruce Sterling, no stranger to depicting future dystopias, even suggest that much of what is being offered by these corporations is a conscious conspiracy to undermine democracy and human rights:Mutated forms of electronic sociality are arising. Some resemble the trade guilds once common in the days of feudal aristocracy. Others are 'smart city' machines that resemble the urban political party machinery that distributed protection and favouritism. At the flip of a switch, any 'smart city' can become a smart gated-community, fortress-like, secured and 'resilient'. (Sterling, 2014, 19)In spite of these critical voices the public profile of 'smart cities' and the tech corporations supporting them has never been higher, backed up by massive marketing campaigns and public events which offer cities an ever-growing array of tech driven solutions to economic, environmental and social challenges. Little of this is particularly new, however, as there has been a critical appreciation of the impact of technological change on economic and social life, particularly in cities, around the concept of the 'information society' for more than 30 years (Qvortrup, 1986). Urban policy makers have been considering ideas such as information cities, digital cities and intelligent cities since the early development of more open and commercial versions of the internet in the 1990s, including many urban initiatives, such as the Manchester Host network (1991), Digital City Amsterdam (1994) and Virtual Helsinki (1996). Alongside these developments a number of cities came together to form their own trans-European networks, including Telecities, set up as part of Eurocities in 1993, and the Inter-Regional Information Society Initiative (IRISI) in 1994 (ENoLL, 2015).Even the more proactive policy initiatives around ideas of local digital agendas, digital strategies and digital challenges have been embedded in many aspects of public policy for more than 10 years, from the 2005 strategy Connecting the UK: The Digital Strategy (Cabinet Office and DTI, 2005) to the 2010 Digital Agenda for Europe (European Commission, 2010a). What does seem to be different in what has emerged in the last five years is the scope and scale of the hype around the idea of 'smart cities'. In an increasingly globalised digital world it is perhaps not surprising that most, if not all, of the legacy of these earlier, often very disparate, initiatives have coalesced into one convenient, more generic label, of cities being, or wanting to be, 'smart'. Certainly the marketing and deployment budgets of the many corporates focusing on the smart cities market appear to have grown as exponentially as the number of smart products and services they aim to offer, now supported by global industrial networks, representing most of the largest corporate players, such as the Smart Cities Council (http://smartcitiescouncil.com/).In 1992 the adoption of the Agenda 21 programme by the UN included the idea of 'smart growth' and five years later in 1997 the American Planning Association included this concept within a regulatory framework (Ryser, 2014). …

Student choice in operating department practice

Operating department practitioner (ODP) education and training in the UK is located at the intersection of the field of health, as well as that of higher education (HE). In the past, both have been subject to growth to meet workforce delivery targets and, secondly, to address widening participation (WP) and access to HE ( Department of Health, 2000a ; 2000b ). Currently, however, the focus of discussion has shifted from expansion towards the discourse of student choice ( Department of Business Innovation and Skills (BIS), 2011 ). This paper describes the findings from a wider doctoral study, which adopted a mixed methodology to address some of the contested policy features of participation, and to construct from a health-education perspective a ‘sociology of student choice’ in the allied health professions (AHP). This has the potential to highlight the personal qualities of choice-making, which, post-Francis report, could inform the debate around valuesbased recruitment. This paper, however, specifically addresses the need to identify the characteristics of those choosing to join the ODP profession, as well as ‘surface’—in other words draw attention to—their experiences and barriers to study. Finally, this paper is intended to stimulate a greater understanding of the factors that motivate students to choose the ODP role, in order to inform the recruitment process and ultimately better support students throughout their learning journey to become clinically more effective and caring practitioners.

The Transposition of the Consumer Rights Directive into UK Law: Implementing a Maximum Harmonisation Directive.

This article examines the transposition of the Consumer Rights Directive 2011/83/EU into UK law. At face value, the UK has complied with the Directive, adopting and publishing it by 13 December 2013 and providing that its provisions shall apply to contracts concluded after 13 June 2014, as required by Article 28. Indeed, Article 19 of the CRD (extra fees charged to consumers on payment) was introduced a year before the date anticipated in the Directive. It will be argued, however, that despite such positive indicia and the fact that the CRD is primarily a maximum harmonisation directive, a number of strategic decisions have been made, notably by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) charged with responsibility for transposing the CRD into UK law, which reveal an underlying and ongoing suspicion of EU intervention into domestic contract law. The article thus argues that directives, whether maximum or minimum harmonisation in nature, will always be vulnerable to policy choices at national level due to the discretion awarded to Member States in the transposition process.

Assessing Employment Tribunal Awards

Employment Tribunals have been under scrutiny for many years and the focus during that time has been on cost. IFF Research1 conducted a study on this topic, entitled Payment of Tribunal Awards, for the Department of Business Innovation and Skills (BIS).2 Released in late 2013, this report provided data reflecting on the employment law reforms passed by the Coalition Government, particularly the procedure for dispute resolution. Payment of Tribunal Awards both corroborated and brought into question portions of recent legislative changes.

A sustainable rural?

Rural communities and economies face unprecedented social and economic challenges and opportunities. Given the scale and nature of these changes and the inherent difficulties and capacity constraints confronting rural communities in addressing them, sustainable development at the local level seems to be a policy priority. This then is the focus of this Special Issue. It has been argued that sustainable development: ‘meets the needs of current generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), 1987: 2). Understanding which factors contribute to the valorization of rural sustainability is often rooted in ‘hard’ and ostensibly quantitative performance indicators. National, regional or sub-regional measures of performance are used to indicate the socio-economic health and prosperity of a region or sub-region. However, sustainability is also concerned with realistic and sensible social and economic activity and the ways in which the role of legal, financial, social and behavioural aspects of businesses and communities impacts on making rural economies enterprising. Sustainability is a recurrent policy theme. For example, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) launched a Strategy for Sustainable Growth in July 2010. Three strategy areas were identified as priorities for government support:

Students at the heart of the system

The white paper on higher education was published by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) in June 2011. Separate publications have now appeared for all parts of the UK. They sha...

Orders and output in UK construction statistics: new methodology and old problems

The Office for National Statistics in the UK has developed and adopted a new method for collecting and publishing construction statistics. The analysis of the revised construction new orders series and the associated new UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) output price index for all new construction leads to three conclusions: (1) the new indices have corrected two significant methodological errors, namely the underestimation of the number of main contractors and the underestimation of inflation by BIS output price indices for new construction; (2) the new indices addressed a concern, the orders–output ‘credibility gap’, in the construction output forecasting literature; and (3) care should be taken when using the revised orders series and new output price index for historic research because a ‘credibility gap’ exists between the two back series prior to 1990.

Science and the Budget

The 2011 Budget brought good news for UK science with the Chancellor announcing £100 million of capital investment in science1. While widely welcomed by the scientific community, this news is set against a backdrop of the 43% reduction in capital spending at Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) over 4 years as set out under the terms of the Comprehensive Spending Review2, and arrives amid what has been a challenging start to 2011 for the life sciences sector.

UK Resource Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology loses funding

Just before Christmas, the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) published The allocation of Science and Research Funding 2011/12 to 2014/15: Investing in world-Class Science and Research1. In the document was the sentence “From April 2011, funding for the UK Resource Centre for Women in Science, Engineering and Technology (UKRC) will not be renewed.”

Estimating regional exports of services trade for the UK

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) undertakes an annual analysis of regional exports of services. Coverage is limited to about 30 per cent of the value of the UK's exports of services and includes Communication, Computer and information and parts of Royalties and license fees and Other business services. This paper describes the methodology used, the available results and the limitations of the analysis.

Informal Learning at Work

The U.K. Skills Minister John Hayes has called on all U.K. businesses to promote informal learning at work, following pledges from 64 companies to increase informal workplace training for their staff. These companies, including 11 from the FTSE 350, represent nearly 2 million employees. They formed part of a recent campaign run by Business in the Community on behalf of the U.K.'s Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) to improve workers' skills.

Debate: Co-production can contribute to research impact in the social sciences

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Additional informationNotes on contributorsFiona ArmstrongFiona Armstrong is Head of Knowledge Transfer and Adrian Alsop is Director for Research, Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC), Swindon, UK.

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National Science and Engineering Week (NSEW) is coordinated by the British Science Association and funded by BIS (Department for Business Innovation and Skills).