Heart Of Government Research Articles

Rethinking AI for Good Governance

Abstract This essay examines what AI can dofor government, specifically through three generic tools at the heart of governance: detection, prediction, and data-driven decision-making. Public sector functions, such as resource allocation and the protection of rights, are more normatively loaded than those of firms, and AI poses greater ethical challenges than earlier generations of digital technology, threatening transparency, fairness, and accountability. The essay discusses how AI might be developed specifically for government, with a public digital ethos to protect these values. Three moves that could maximize the transformative possibilities for a distinctively public sector AI are the development of government capacity to foster innovation through AI; the building of integrated and generalized models for policy-making; and the detection and tackling of structural inequalities. Combined, these developments could offer a model of data-intensive government that is more efficient, ethical, fair, prescient, and resilient than ever before in administrative history.

Embedding Science in the Heart of Government

The Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Patrick Vallance argues that science needs to be embedded in government.

The ‘Populist’ Right Challenge to Neoliberalism: Social Policy between a Rock and a Hard Place

ABSTRACTThis article looks at the rise of right populist politics in both developed and developing countries, and its implications for social policy. The author locates the cause for the right populist surge in the legacies of neoliberalism, paying particular attention to the way neoliberal reforms have affected popular attitudes towards politics. The commodification of politics and social services has stoked mass cynicism towards reigning neoliberal elites, creating receptive audiences for populist slogans to ‘drain the swamp’ at the heart of governments. More controversially, the author argues that popular resentments toward neoliberal social policies based on the recognition of the rights of women, minorities, migrants and the poor have made communities susceptible to the racist and misogynist messages of the right populists. Through case studies looking at the United States, Brazil and the Philippines the author argues that the biggest impact of right populists on social policies can be found in their discourses and authoritarian practices of social exclusion.

What is Civil Justice, How Does it Change, and How Might it be Improved?

The two main functions of the civil process are protection of rights and adjudication of disputes. Changes within the procedural system are attributable to: technological adaptation; economic factors; and the system filtering external ideas by requiring official ‘think-tanks’ to process them. The main challenges are: (i) to increase academic interest and thus promote objective assessment; (ii) to adjust procedure to suit the particularities of cases; (iii) to ensure that justice is available to all, regardless of wealth or position; (iv) to take advantage of technological opportunities for improving efficiency; (v) to improve the attractiveness of the Bench to talented lawyers; (vi) to improve the legal system’s political representation at the heart of government; and (vii) to render the procedural system more efficient, less complicated, and better focused on the essential matters in dispute.

Framework for Analysing Educational Equity in the English Education System

Equity has become a pressing issue in debates about education reform in England, as new policy approaches have been sought to break the link between social advantage and educational achievement. Conflicting notions of what an equitable education system would look like and how it can be achieved, have led to discord at the heart of government, yet what is meant by equity is often unclear, and there are underlying tensions within the government’s dual excellence-and-equity agenda. The argument put forward here is that for reforms to have wide-reaching and equitable impacts, they must be based on broader notions of equity and education than those currently prevalent at policy level. To this end, a framework for thinking about educational equity is developed, exploring notions of equity per se, and the range of educational arenas in which equity might be pursued. This framework is intended to guide the creation of a systematic evidence-base about equity in education which can, in turn, inform policy.

Infrastructure for e-Government Development Issues and Challenges in India

The governments around the globe are rapidly transforming. The use of information and communication technology in governmental functionalities-combined with organisational change and new skills-seem to be transforming the government machineries, to improve delivery of public services1. Modern governments have become one of the stake holders in the process of governance. The concept that “Governance is what the Government does”, seems to have rapidly transformed. But in developing countries like India the essence of government still lies in its functionality that is governance, where Government is the heart of Governance. The global rapid transformation has also affected, how government functions in India, and government in India is moving towards the transformation to establish itself as an e-government. e-government is different from traditional form of government as its establishment and effective functionality depends upon the infrastructure. In simple terms infrastructure is required for e-government development. The current study is based on secondary data. Desk research was adopted for this study. It focuses on the infrastructure that is required for the development of e-government in any country. The author aims to address the infrastructural issues and challenges by identifying factors that might affect the success of e-government implementation in India.

Examining Public Policy in Romania: Is It Transparent and Legitimated?

In the last decades, in the context of many economic and financial crisis, the policy-making became the heart of government. In Romania, they represents the main instruments for solving the citizens’ problem: health care, education, the environment, and the mechanisms by which public money is budgeted.Therefore, this paper analyses the transparency and consultation in policy-making process from the view of different policy-making stages. The paper discusses the different mechanism and procedure designed and applied by Romanian government in policy-making process. Finally, it describes possible links between policy-making capacity and indicators for transparency, starting from Joseph Stiglitz assertion on the adverse effects of secrecy in government policy-making, “with more mistakes, public officials become more defensive; to protect themselves, they seek even more secrecy, narrowing in the circle still further, eroding still further the quality of decision-making”.

Employee Wellness Management Programme as a Strategy for Transforming the Public Service – A Case of the Department of Agriculture in Limpopo Province of South Africa

Public service transformation has been at the heart of government since 1994. Therefore, to ensure that transformation takes place at different government departments, a number of programmes were introduced. One of such programmes is Employee Health and Wellness programme. The main focus of this programme is to bring about changes in the wellbeing and the working environment in the departments so that service delivery, employees’ health and productivity can be accelerated and improved. Thus, the Limpopo Department of Agriculture started the implementation of an Employee Health and Wellness program in 2001 in response to the government mandate which was brought about by the birth of new democracy. Since every important programme has to be evaluated, therefore this article reports on the evaluation that was conducted on the success of wellness programmes in combating absenteeism in the Limpopo Department of Agriculture. Absenteeism in most government departments is a serious problem that negatively affects the delivery of services. There are many cases of absenteeism which have varied causes. However, the focus of this article is on the effectiveness of wellness management programme on combating absenteeism, and addressing the challenges of absenteeism due to substance abuse in the public service. The findings indicated that absenteeism negatively affects service delivery in the public sector and that participants on these programmes are offered limited support by their supervisors. Supervisors tend to show negative tendencies towards the wellness management participants who show little progress in recovery. This article therefore recommends that wellness programmes have to be fully supported by the management of various organizations so that they can be successful. Departments should also develop strategies that can curb substance abuse amongst the employees. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2014.v5n27p1286

Open Data: A Paradigm Shift in the Heart of Government

In today's global economy, governments are coming to comprehend new realities and adopt new approaches to cope with the paradigm shift in citizens' relations. Among the different trends in recent years is the concept of open data where it requires governments placing more data for public consumption. The use and reuse of open data is argued to contribute to enormous potential for economies and citizens welfare. This article attempts to explore and provide a short overview of the concept of open data and its current applications. The primary contribution of the article is the presentation of a case study of how the United Arab Emirates (UAE) government envisages using open data to develop decision support models to improve public service delivery and primarily citizens’ quality of life. The presented approach aims to promote discussion among policy and decision-makers and fuel debate and knowledge development in this critical and evolving field of practice.

‘The perfect equality of all persons before the law’: the Personal Rights Association and the discourse of civil rights in Britain, 1871–1885

The Personal Rights Association was established in 1871 to watch, restrain and influence legislation ‘in matters affecting the personal rights and liberties of the people’. Though initially its remit was to scrutinise legislation for terms that would be prejudicial to women, this soon extended to criticism of increasing incursions into male freedom. The PRA's membership, which comprised both sexes, included a cohort of male parliamentarians and intellectuals who took their commitment to civil liberties into the heart of government. Classified by one critic as ‘fussy busy-bodies [and] fourth-rate politicians’, this article reveals a ‘feminisation’ of these elite men hardly considered in the rhetoric of the middle-class radical.

Knocking at the Door: The Women's Portfolio from Labor to Coalition

The lead item in the Coalition women's policy for the 2013 federal election was the return of the Office for Women to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. Since 2004 it had been located 20 kilometres from the heart of government, relegated to a line department dealing with family and community services. Did its return from exile indicate a renewed commitment to whole-of-government gender assessment of policy? This paper assesses the directions taken by women's policy under the Rudd and Gillard Governments as compared with the new Coalition Government. It examines machinery of government arrangements for gender main-streaming at national and intergovernmental levels. The paper concludes with analysis of why Australia's major parties now more readily articulate gender equality objectives in areas such as international peacekeeping and development assistance than in domestic economic and social policy outside the gender-based violence area.

A good man but a bad wizard. About the limits and future of transparency of democratic governments

Computer-mediated transparency is seen as a powerful tool to attain policy goals and to transform government. This is based on the idea that transparency is something good in itself, which can be attained by using ICTs eventually improving government and citizen relations. This article claims that although transparency of government is necessary, scholars and practitioners tend to overestimate its positive effects and underestimate its negative effects. There is no reason to believe that transparency is always a good thing. Further, ICTs are not necessarily an effective means to increase transparency; there is an increased risk of information overload, cyber propaganda and inadvertent information release. Transparency might even drive citizens away from government as it gives way to a 'gotcha' media culture and political cynicism. Moreover, transparency has potential wide scale unforeseen and unintended consequences which eventually may affect society and economy. This is not a plea against transparency, but this article gives several pointers that the risks involved with disclosing information are much more complicated than the literature has yet fully acknowledged. This article concludes that the future of transparency may be twofold: more transparency of quantifiable performance indicators, but increased control of information flows that are at the heart of governments.

Fractures, Foreigners and Fitting In: Exploring Attitudes towards Immigration and Integration in ‘Post-Conflict' Northern Ireland

The 1998 Peace Agreement was a (consociational) form of pluralist settlement designed to end conflict in Northern Ireland through giving institutional recognition to the rights and identities of the ‘two communities' (nationalist and unionist) in Northern Ireland (with some provision for a third category ‘other'). Critics of the consociational nature of the Agreement have argued that it overstates the extent and nature of the communal divide in Northern Ireland and has institutionalized division at the heart of governance in the region. Since 1998 Northern Ireland has shifted from being a region of net emigration to net immigration. Critics argue that this has brought greater levels of plurality to the region, but that the institutional framework established under the Agreement is not well equipped to deal with this plurality. The authors draw on survey data to explore this issue. It is argued that there is a good basis to the claims made by the critics, but some other factors are identified—chiefly a retreat from politics and the ambiguities of pluralism—that the authors believe also need to be considered in any attempt to understand the place of immigrants and ethnic minorities in a ‘new' Northern Ireland.

Managing European Policy at Home: Analysing Network Adaptation within the Core Executive

This article seeks to analyse the changing nature of European policy making within national core executives. Using the Irish core executive as a case study, it sets out to map the process through which national EU policy is coordinated at the very heart of government, and to evaluate and explain the nature of adaptation over the past decade. The article is critical of traditional historical institutionalist accounts of domestic change that tend to downplay the nature and significance of adaptation to EU membership. Instead the study employs a distinctive strategic-relational network framework which aims to ‘add value’ to existing accounts in three main ways: first, by analysing shifting patterns of power dependency within the EU policy network; second, by exploring the way in which strategic actors interpret and shape the nature of change; and third, by offering a critical evaluation of the impact of adaptation. In this way the framework attempts to capture the fluidity, dynamism and wider significance of domestic change.

Environmental Cleaning and Healthcare-Associated Infections

The authors of "Healthcare-Associated Infections as Patient Safety Indicators" correctly identify healthcare-associated infections (HAIs) as a growing problem with severe consequences. In contrast to most literature, their article acknowledges the importance of environmental cleaning. The paper presents credible reasons why HAIs are treated as lesser threats than other adverse events. It also appropriately emphasizes prevention and calls for multiple interventions, including reducing occupancy rates. This commentary provides additional evidence of the critical role of environmental cleaning and posits that the devaluation of cleaning and other support services lies at the heart of governments' and administrators' inadequate response to HAIs. Staff cuts and contracting out are both a motivating factor and a consequence of this devaluation. The commentary concludes with recommendations.

The Politics of Public Money: Spenders, Guardians, Priority Setters and Financial Watchdogs Inside the Government of Canada (review)

Reviewed by: The Politics of Public Money: Spenders, Guardians, Priority Setters and Financial Watchdogs Inside the Government of Canada Douglas Brown The Politics of Public Money: Spenders, Guardians, Priority Setters and Financial Watchdogs Inside the Government of Canada by David A. Good. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007. The budget lies at the heart of government and politics. It is the principal vehicle for achieving a wide range of public policy goals—economic, social, and environmental. It provides an ideological signature of the party in power. And it speaks clearly about the competency of the government of the day. Yet understanding the technical complexity and often Byzantine nature of budgetary politics and related aspects of the management of public money is a formidable challenge for those outside (and many inside) government. David Good provides a satisfying and illuminating (but not overly simple) guide to contemporary budgetary politics and process in the Government of Canada. He has a perspective as both an accomplished scholar of public policy (currently on the faculty at the School of Public Administration at the University of Victoria) and a seasoned practitioner, having spent 30 years in Ottawa in some very senior posts in both central agencies and line departments. This is not an insider’s account as such, but it does provide an insider’s perspective and reflects Good’s privileged access to key players. Interviews with 55 current and retired insiders form the main empirical basis for the study, along with a masterful grasp of the paper trail—budget papers, estimates, legislation, audits, other reports, and academic analysis. Good’s main theoretical goal is to update Aron Wildavsky’s classic 1964 formulation of budgetary politics as a continuing struggle between Spenders (line departments with spending responsibilities) and Guardians (central agencies allocating funds and overseeing expenditure control). Two other sets of players are now as influential, if not more so, in Good’s analysis: what he calls the Priority Setters, who are mainly found in the Prime Minister’s Office and the Privy Council Office; and the Financial [End Page 383] Watchdogs, some of long establishment but who now possess greater power and credibility such as the Office of the Auditor-General, and some relative newcomers such as the Comptroller-General and the Parliamentary Budget Officer. These four sets of actors jockey for position through three key sets of decisions: determining the fiscal aggregate (how much money and whether in surplus or deficit); allocating budgets among programs and departments; and implementing programs (expenditure management). The ascendant role of the Priority Setters in particular has been evident since Paul Martin’s 1995 budget. Now budgets are driven by a top-down, macro process, rather than by the bottom-up, micro process that Wildavsky described in the United States (and that for some time reflected Canadian reality as well). The book lays out the intellectual and institutional basis for this changing environment up to and including the first two years in the Harper era. Its great strength is the author’s command of and insight into the nexus of the senior public service and the ministry. His findings reinforce those of Donald Savoie and others about the continuing concentration of politics at the centre and the increasing dominance of ever-changing political considerations. Control has been long since wrestled from departmental bureaucrats. Now the independent players (and power centres in their own right), such as the Auditor-General, have major influence. Moreover, the hugely political emphasis on the “fiscal aggregate” issues, and on making room for radically shifting program priorities (cf. Martin and Harper), leaves less oxygen in the system for dealing with program performance, in particular efficiency. While this book was published before the financial and political crisis of late 2008, one can see Good’s central point in the rush to stimulate the economy and bail-out failing industrial sectors — crucial to macro success, but likely to be riddled with many micro failures. The senior bureaucrats will be left to deal with the latter largely on their own, yet the political class continues to layer on new rules and controls in reaction to real or perceived scandals. Good dealt with some of these issues more fully...

What is it like to work at the heart of government? Ian McMillan finds out from Jeni Clarke-Moore, who recently took up a nursing officer’s post in Wales

What is it like to work at the heart of government? Ian McMillan finds out from Jeni Clarke-Moore, who recently took up a nursing officer’s post in Wales

Equal opportunities and republican revival: post-migrant politics in contemporary France (20022005)

This article explores two contradictory developments in government approaches to the socio-economic and cultural incorporation of France's post-migrant generations. It focuses on the emergence at the heart of government, of equal opportunity discourses and contrasts this with the recent reassertion of more traditionally republican values, as demonstrated by the 2004 law banning conspicuous religious symbols in public schools. In June 2004, Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin announced the launch of a Stratgie nationale pour l'galit des chances. This initiative to encourage the recruitment of French nationals of foreign origin or individuals from the overseas DOM-TOM territories into high-profile jobs would appear to signal a significant change in approach to the issue of minority politics. However, this apparent readiness to enhance the Republic's egalitarian project could be undermined by the recent debates over the Islamic headscarf and the subsequent legislation in March 2004. For while the new discourses of equal opportunities imply a readiness to publicly recognize ethnic difference in the name of greater socio-economic equality, the recent banning of conspicuous religious symbols in schools points to a wider reluctance regarding the recognition of the cultural and religious complexity of contemporary France.

Water regulation and sustainability 1997–2001: Adoption or adaptation?

In 1997 there was a change in government in the UK with the Labour Party coming into power for the first time since 1979. Among the commitments made was the intention to put sustainability at the heart of government and decision-making. There was also a commitment to introduce reforms of the utility sector. In part this was a response to public concern over the conduct and behaviour of the privatised utilities, made more pertinent in the case of the water sector by the impact of several seasons of below average rainfall and high levels of leakage. In light of this the need for change took on a particular urgency. This paper examines some of the developments in water regulation under the 1997–2001 Labour administration. Through two sets of events; the 1997 Water Summit and the 1997–1999 Price Review the paper examines the discursive processes through which sustainability has been incorporated into water regulation. It discusses the changes in the practices of regulation and whether these could be characterised as the adoption of sustainability by the water sector or a strategy of adaptation to accommodate sustainability within an existing economic paradigm.

The UK Approach to Delivering Sustainable Development in Government: A Case Study in Joined-Up Working

The impact of the public sector on the overall quality of the environment and more generally towards sustainable development is significant. An essential part of the UK Strategy for Sustainable Development is the commitment to put `sustainable development at the heart of every government department`s work`. Sustainable development is one of several cross-cutting policy objectives currently being tacked by the UK government that require cooperation and coordination among many government and non-government actors. Various key mechanisms for achieving environmental policy integration or `putting sustainable development at the heart of government` are critically assessed-special Cabinet and Ministerial subcommittees, the House of Commons Environment Audit Committee, cross-cutting departmental units, and integrated policy appraisal. In the field of sustainable development, though, a key challenge for government is that effective delivery on cross-cutting objectives requires that the objectives themselves are clear, contained, internally consistent, and capable of implementation.