Organizational research indicates that large organizations involved in many different activities can counteract the diseconomies of size and complexity, tendency to bureaucratization, and to increasing resistance to innovation by breaking up into relatively autonomous, self-contained units such as relatively autonomous, self-contained divisions, retaining mainly policy control at the centre and a powerful MIS as a monitoring device. States too can enhance their administrative capacity and innovativeness highly by decentralizing and by fragmenting themselves into relatively autonomous, self-contained units headed by professional managers with clear accountability and clear mandate. Such unbundling must, however, be in the pursuit of an integrating, shared vision of national excellence like social justice, economic growth, and improvement in the quality of life. Several case studies from a number of countries of government departments, agencies, and projects that were decentralized along the foregoing lines under a shared vision of state excellence demonstrate the efficacy of this strategy of fragmenting the state in certain effective ways. Several additional mechanisms can institutionalize the culture on innovation in governmental bodies, such as progressively higher goals, with potential conflict among goals. The operationalziation of a strong serving the “customer” commitment, an operationlized commitment to cut costs, to make increasingly technologically sophisticated offerings, to benchmarking, to entrepreneurship, to global scanning for innovations, trends, and opportunities, to periodic diagnosis of the organization’s functioning, to participative decision making and brainstorming for novel but workable solutions, to periodic, exonovation, and toa daunting developmental and growth vision are powerful mechanisms to make government bodies highly innovative.
The article discusses the role of Scandinavian local governments in providing welfare state services. Wide-ranging social care services are probably the most distinctive feature of the Scandinavian welfare societies. These services, in the main, have been financed publicly and provided by local government. The traditional principle of Scandinavian local self-government, requiring local autonomy, and the goal of a welfare state providing a uniformly equal service to all is, however, a contradiction in terms. How have the Scandinavian countries dealt with this dilemma? This question is discussed by an examination of the day-care service policies in the four Scandinavian countries. Two distinct Scandinavian policy-models seem to emerge, one that primarily respects the local discretion of municipalities and the other that favours a more centralised approach. Norway represents the local autonomy model, Sweden and Finland exemplify the centrally directed model, while Denmark displays features from both models. During the 1990s, the main responsibility for social services has been decentralized also in Sweden and Finland. At the same time, Scandinavian local government action has turned to a more liberal direction.
With the rapid growth in the number of electronic resources available via the Internet, a variety of methods have been developed to organize and access these objects. Librarians, scholars and computing engineers each have applied their own techniques to the process. Catalogers envision a "super-catalog"; scholars spawn encoded texts; computer engineers design robot-generated indexes. Each method has its strengths and its weaknesses, and each group casts a wary eye upon competing systems. In fact, it is unrealistic to believe that the organizational system of any one group will be adopted by all players in the electronic arena. While general principles of organization should apply to all approaches, cataloging the Internet is inherently different from cataloging a library. Libraries are systematically developing collections of primarily fixed objects usually under the control of one institution or agency. The Internet is more analogous to the ubiquitous ebb and flow of information and services appearing throughout society. The structure and content are not systematically developed and stable; there is no single user group or purpose for the Internet; and there is no single controlling agency. Thus, there is no one community, be it scholars, computing engineers or librarians, that is clearly vested with authority to decide upon the best means to bring control over this electronic chaos. Considering that the Internet has always been a decentralized initiative, it is not surprising that the efforts to organize it have been similarly independent and uncoordinated. Analogous to a loosely coupled communication system, each community working to organize the Internet is somewhat responsive but essentially autonomous. It is likely that each of these autonomous groups will continue to develop methods for description and access that best meet their own perceived needs. At best, cooperative efforts may result in some common understanding of a core set of descriptive data; but it is unlikely that the application, structure and use of that data will be identical within all communities. It is important, therefore, that each group recognize the contributions of the others and that together they provide bibliographic control methods that can be layered, interchanged and translated within a broad but loosely coupled system of organization. In this way, each community can continue to develop methods compatible with its own users' needs, while taking advantage of data and systems created by other groups. Remote electronic resources have engendered discussion of the catalog's scope and functions, the concept of a collection and the appropriateness of including bibliographic surrogates for remote resources in a local catalog. Traditionally, library catalogs have provided macro level access to whole items in the collection, relying on other bibliographic tools, such as indexes and bibliographies, to provide micro level access to bodies of literature and parts of items. One criticism of this distributed bibliographic system is its failure to provide access to everything in the library collection through one totally integrated catalog. More sophisticated computer technology offers new possibilities for correcting this problem. Electronic indexes and databases mounted on the local computer provide, if not a truly integrated catalog, a reasonably integrated interface that allows access to several bibliographic tools from one terminal. Work continues to develop more sophisticated layering systems that offer searchers the convenience of accessing simultaneously the OPAC and several other databases with a single search query. While providing the illusion of searching a single database, these systems could use both front-end interfaces that convert differing search commands into one common command language and multi-language thesauri that translate terms used by one database into those used in another. These techniques of layering, exchanging and translating data allow us to avoid the time, expense and proprietary problems involved with actually creating one large integrated catalog. This is another example of a loosely coupled organizational system and provides a model for the more complex goal of organizing the Internet. Due to the economic constraints of the past decade, most libraries have shifted their collection development focus from exclusive "ownership" to providing "access," a shift that has not only blurred the concept of "collection," but has caused many librarians and information specialists to lose sight of the beneficial service provided by the process of collection development. It is essential and desirable that the confining parameters that define a collection be expanded to accommodate documents that are not owned and physically housed within the library's walls; however, it is just as essential and desirable to continue the value-added concept of a collection as interrelated parts selected with a purpose. Remotely accessed electronic resources should not be excluded from the collection development scrutiny accorded documents in all other formats. In light of discussions on scholarly communication and the problems of electronic "publishing" without peer review, the inclusion of Internet resources in the library catalog based upon appropriate selection criteria may be even more necessary than in the past to assist users in finding relevant resources. The current organization of electronic resources can be described at two levels: the local agency's catalog and catalogs of Internet resources beyond the auspices of any one library. At level one, a description of the resource is contained in the local library catalog, along with bibliographic surrogates for all other materials for which that library provides access, artifactual and electronic. The Anglo-American Cataloging Rules have proved adaptable to new formats and have been modified, interpreted and supplemented to accommodate remote electronic resources. The existing MARC record also has been revised to provide special fields and coded data elements for the description and access of remote electronic resources. Specifically, field 856 has been added to convey information necessary to locate and access the electronic object. Thus, the current methods of cataloging continue to be used to describe resources that are in some ways fundamentally different from those currently owned by libraries. At present, however, only a portion of library catalogs are able to provide active links through the OPAC to access the electronic documents directly; but as libraries migrate to Web-based catalogs, these "hotlinks" will become more common. It is not surprising that the vanguard attempts to catalog Internet resources use current and familiar cataloging methods. But this AACR2/MARC-based cataloging system is not without problems. The MARC record is designed primarily for single object description and linear access. It cannot easily be adapted to describe adequately multi-level hypertext objects. In addition, these bibliographic records are designed to carry a large amount of carefully selected data and to allow access to much of that data. They are, therefore, detailed and complex structures which require much time to create and encode correctly. Recent efforts to save time and money by simplifying the cataloging process argue against traditional cataloging methods that create full MARC records for each electronic resource. As library administrators attempt to save money by purchasing cataloging data from outside sources, new ways of creating bibliographic records are being sought. While the library cataloging community was attempting to determine the feasibility of using traditional cataloging standards for Internet resources, scholars in the area of humanities computing concentrated on the electronic document itself and on a project to develop a text encoding scheme for complex electronic textual objects. The project became known as the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI). The TEI guidelines give recommendations on what features of the text to encode and how to encode them. They also include a chapter on creating a header imbedded within the electronic document that precedes the electronic text. This TEI header consists primarily of four parts: file description, encoding description, text profile and text revision history. Designed for multipurpose use, the TEI header provides metadata needed by librarians who will catalog the text, scholars who will use the text, and software programs that will operate on the text. The file description portion of the header is intended to serve as the electronic equivalent of the title page of a printed work and is the only required part of the header. When data elements for all four components of the header are encoded, TEI header structures may be as lengthy and complex as MARC records. Several groups within the library community are now examining the possibility of using TEI header information as a source of data in the automated creation of MARC records for electronic documents. Computer programs have been produced that convert TEI-tagged bibliographic headers into MARC formatted records. As research develops in the area of metadata formats, the process of TEI header to MARC data conversion may become the copy cataloging of tomorrow. At level two, the goal is to organize Internet resources independently of any library agency. Several means of organization and access currently exist, including separate catalogs of selected Internet resources, subject browsing lists and robot-generated search tools. The common feature of all these "second level" access tools is the exclusive focus on Internet resources. OCLC's InterCat Catalog is one example of a second level bibliographic tool designed through a cooperative library endeavor. Consisting of MARC records created by individual catalogers from many libraries, the database, with its Web interface, represents the beginnings of an Internet Union Catalog (IUC) that is not tied to any one library as information access provider. The database still relies, however, on individual catalogers creating and entering MARC records. The IUC, while one level above the local library OPAC, still contains many of the local OPAC's useful characteristics. The documents included have been selected by librarians for their quality and appropriateness; and bibliographic surrogates in the database contain the kinds of data and authority controlled access points that have proven useful in information retrieval. When the level two organizational goal extends beyond the library selection process to the entire corpus of information on the Internet, the task of providing description and access for these electronic resources and services becomes monumental. The amount of information requiring organization is beyond the existing methods and systems of individual professional catalogers, indexers and abstractors to manage either efficiently or effectively. Several communities have wrestled with the problem and developed different ways to provide access to these resources. Over the last few years, a dramatic increase in the amount of information on the Internet heightened the need for improved access methods. Savvy computer engineers realized they had to develop retrieval systems that could be mastered easily by the non-scientific community that now used the Internet so heavily. Their efforts resulted in three primary access methods: direct address, directory browsing lists and robot-generated searchable indexes. Direct address, i.e., entering the specific pathname, directory and filename (e.g., the URL), is a known object search and requires no organizational tools to locate the site. The two remaining methods, directory browsing lists and robot-generated searchable indexes, are organizational tools that are used heavily across all Internet user communities. Directory browsing lists help people find Internet resources by arranging those resources by subject. The most commonly used lists, such as Yahoo!, use an alphabetico-classed arrangement with verbal subject topics hierarchically ordered. This arrangement is especially useful for browsing, where the user can move from the general subject to the more specific topic and then connect directly to the resources assigned to that topic. Although easy to use, this subject arrangement presents several problems: there are few cross references; many users may find difficulty identifying the hierarchy under which their narrower topic might be found; and these lists soon become lengthy and unwieldy. Other browsing tools, created outside but influenced by the library community, such as Patrick's Subject Catalog and Mundie's CyberDewey, are arranged by classification number. This affords a more logical hierarchical subject approach that is not dependent on the vagaries of the alphabet for its arrangement. While remaining less tied to semantic content than the verbally based subject systems, some type of verbal clarification is required to interpret the notation correctly. The Dewey Decimal Classification appears to be the system of choice for most of these classification-based browsing tools and has the advantage of being familiar to many users, both within the United States and internationally. As with the other subject lists, however, classification lists also need a system of cross-referencing, and the subject lists can become lengthy and unwieldy. Directory browsing lists also have other limitations. Most require a great deal of human effort to collect, arrange, encode and annotate the list of resources. When the vast number of Internet resources to be organized is considered, this could be viewed as a serious handicap. The second type of search tool, the robot-generated searchable index, attempts to overcome many of the limitations of the browsing lists. Robot-generated indexes, such as Lycos and Alta Vista, rely on computer power to collect and index electronic resources and provide an interactive interface that allows the user to enter searches for specific terms or phrases. Many allow the user to perform very sophisticated searches employing Boolean operators, adjacency and proximity operators and imbedded truncation. As a result of the automated collecting and indexing process, these search engines provide access to a much larger volume of electronic resources than the browsing lists. These computer generated search tools also have their own weaknesses. One problem is that they frequently produce extensive lists of search results, requiring users to spend time examining a great number of irrelevant and often incomprehensible citations in order to find a few pertinent hits. Searchers familiar with library catalogs and bibliographic databases may well wonder at the bewildering content of many retrieved citations. Many confusing citations are caused by extracting data directly from the document without human review and by the lack of standardized descriptions and authority control for names and subjects. Thus, while directory browsing lists and robot-generated indexes have the advantage of providing immediate access to a vast array of Internet resources and are often easy to use, they lack many features, such as selectivity, descriptive citation data and authority control, that have made the more traditional bibliographic tools most useful. If robot-generated indexes provide too little descriptive information for effective and efficient document retrieval and manually created MARC and TEI headers contain too much information for rapid and inexpensive document description, is there some method of describing Internet resources that mediates between these two extremes? With this in mind, the Dublin Core data set was developed to perform this function by defining a core data set that could describe a wide range of electronic objects. If such a core data set were adopted as an established standard and incorporated into the electronic object at the time of creation, it would increase the amount and quality of available resource descriptions with a minimal amount of human intervention. These descriptions would improve the quality of index citations created by automated tools, while enabling MARC or TEI header based records to be developed with much less expense. The Dublin Core development workshop focused on data elements necessary for the discovery of document-like objects, with consideration given to mechanisms for extending the elements to meet specialized needs. The syntax of the Dublin Core was left deliberately unspecified so that the data elements could be mapped into a variety of more complex structures from the MARC format and TEI headers to some as yet undefined structure. It is this aspect of sharing and translating descriptive data that holds the most promise, for by creating a minimum standard for descriptive data that can be used as desired by each community, we have the basis for an umbrella organizational structure based on a loosely coupled system. Then each stakeholder can continue to develop and improve its own system and structures, while overarching structures can be created to exchange, translate and layer common data. While level two provides access to a much wider range of Internet resources than any level one catalog, most information about nonelectronic resources that is provided at level one is lost with level two access tools. Although it is possible to locate and search library OPACs on the Internet via telnet or a Web interface, OPAC searches must be performed as a separate activity. A single query will not access information found at-large on the Internet and in the library OPAC, because library OPAC databases are not included in searches performed by current Internet search engines. As we move forward with efforts to create minimum standards for descriptive data, develop ways for creators of electronic resources to provide descriptive information at the time of document creation and refine search engines to enable simultaneous searches of multiple databases, we should have as our goal the creation of a third level access tool — the metacatalog. We must develop search tools whereby a user can identify specific library catalogs to include in a search query of other Internet databases, much as some existing search engines allow a user to select Web, gopher, ftp, newsgroups or commercial databases for searching. The metacatalog should be able to translate and interpret MARC records, TEI headers, SGML, HTML and any future coding. There should be language translators built in, so that searchers can use search commands and view data labels in their language of choice and translate terms in subject browsers. Multiple thesauri could be employed to assist with vocabulary control across communities, and a high-level authority control component could transparently identify and link variant forms of names. In other words, the next generation metacatalogs should be able to access all relevant information seamlessly, no matter what format or language. In order to accomplish this each stakeholder community must stop trying to recast the tools created by others into ones of their own structure, but rather concentrate on developing ways to layer, exchange and translate data within a loosely-coupled organizational system.
INTRODUCTION Revolution in the Factory Into the Witch Doctor's Tent There Are No Best Practices Where Ideas Come From The Organization of This Book PART ONE: THE DESIGN FACTORY 1. INTO THE DESIGN FACTORY Our Goals Are Economic Products vs. Designs Design-in-Process Inventory Rising Cost of Change Late-Breaking News One-Time Processes Expanding Work Summary PART TWO: THINKING TOOLS 2. MAKING PROFITS NOT PRODUCTS Project Models Application Models Models of Process Economics Tactical vs. Strategic Decisions Some Practical Tips Summary 3.ENTERING THE LAND OF QUEUES An Introduction to Queueing Theory The Economics of Queues Depicting Queues Implications of Queuing Theory Dealing with Queues Increasing Capacity / Managing Demand / Reducing Variability / Using Control Systems The Location of Batch Queues Little's Law Typical Queues Summary 4. IT'S ALL ABOUT INFORMATION Information Theory Efficient Generation of Information Maximizing Information: The Magic Number 50 Percent Information Differs in Value Timing: Earlier Is Better / Batch Size Affects Timing / Iterations Generate Early Information / The Potential Profit Impact Do It Right the First Time? Communicating Failures Protecting Against Failure Task Sequencing Monitoring Summary 5. JUST ADD FEEDBACK Systems Theory Systems with Feedback Properties of Systems with Feedback Difficulty in Troubleshooting / Instability and Chaos / Accuracy and Feedback / Variability Within a System More Complex Control Systems Summary PART THREE: ACTION TOOLS 6. CHOOSE THE RIGHT ORGANIZATION The Organization as a System Assessing Organizational Forms Efficiency: The Functional Organization Speed: The Autonomous Team Performance and Cost: Hybrid Organizations Dividing Responsibilities Communications Old Communications Tools / New Communications Technologies Colocation Summary 7. DESIGN THE DESIGN PROCESS Combining Structure and Freedom One-Time Processes / Modular Processes / A Pattern Language Designing Process Stages Input Subprocesses / Technology vs. Product Development / Controlling Queues / Subprocess Design / Output Processes Key Design Principles Sequential vs. Concurrent Processes / Managing Information Profiles / Decentralizing Control and Feedback / Location of Batch Queues Specific Process Implementations Evolving the Process Summary 8. PRODUCT ARCHITECTURE: THE INVISIBLE DESIGN Underlying Principles Modularity Segregating Variability/ Interface Management Specific Architectural Implementations Low-Expense Architectures / Low-Cost Architectures / High-Performance Architectures / Fast-Development Architectures Who Does It? Summary 9. GET THE PRODUCT SPECIFICATION RIGHT It Starts with Strategy Selecting the Customer Understanding the Customer Customer Interviews / Meticulous Observation / Focus Groups Creating a Good Specification The Minimalist Specification / A Product Mission / The Specification Process Using the Specification Specific Implementations Summary 10. USE THE RIGHT TOOLS The Use of Technology Accelerated Information Flow / Improved Productivity / Reduced Delays Implementation Principles Technology Changes Process / Pay Attention to Economics Technologies Design Automation / Prototyping and Testing / Communications / Information Storage and Retrieval Summary 11. MEASURE THE RIGHT THINGS General Principles Drive Metrics from Economics / The Control Triangle / Decentralizing Control / Selecting Metrics Project-Level Controls Expense-Focused Controls / Cost-Focused Controls / Performance-Focused Controls / Speed-Focused Controls Business Level Controls Expense-Focused Controls / Cost-Focused Controls / Performance-Focused Controls / Speed-Focused Controls Summary 12. MANAGE UNCERTAINTY AND RISK Market and Technical Risk Managing Market Risk Use a Substitute Product / Simulate the Risky Attribute / Make the Design Flexible / Move Fast Managing Technical Risk Controlling Subsystem Risk / Controlling System Integration Risk / Back-up Plans World-Class Testing Cheap Testing / Low Unit Cost Impact/Maximizing Performance / Fast Testing / Continuous Improvement Summary PART FOUR: NEXT STEPS 13. NOW WHAT DO I DO? Do Your Math Use Decision Rules Pay Attention to Capacity Utilization Pay Attention to Batch Size Respect Variability Think Clearly About Risk Think Systems Respect the People Design the Process Thoughtfully Pay Attention to Architecture Deeply Understand the Customer Eliminate Useless Controls Get to the Front Lines Avoid Slogans Selected Bibliography Index About the Author
The goal of this paper is to review the state of our knowledge in the economics literature on the causal relationship between fiscal decentralization and economic growth and democratic governance, whether these relationships are uni-directional or bi-directional, and to what extent there appear to exist synergies or pre-conditions between fiscal decentralization, on the one hand, and economic growth and democratic governance, on the other.Little systematic empirical research has been dedicated to testing the strength of the bi-directional links between fiscal decentralization and democratic governance. At the present time, we have little knowledge about whether fiscal decentralization is preceded by the emergence of democratic institutions, whether fiscal decentralization encourages the establishment of local democratic institutions, or whether fiscal decentralization and subnational democratic governance occur at the same time. What we know about these issues is based on case studies and conjectures and observations from particular country experiences. The information base on decentralization and governance has been limited because case studies of the fiscal decentralization systems in particular countries often pay little attention to governance issues.There are strong reasons a priori to argue that there should be a symbiotic relationship between fiscal decentralization and democratic governance. Explicitly, and more often implicitly, democratic governance is widely acknowledged in the economics literature as a necessary condition for effective fiscal decentralization. But clearly, there is wide consensus that the relationship also works the other way. Greater fiscal decentralization, especially the devolution or delegation of tax and financing and spending powers to subnational governments promotes democratic governance through representation and accountability.
This article describes the efforts of the Mexican government toward more efficient management of water resources. Inaccordance with the Mexican Constitution, municipal governments have been responsible for urban water and sanitation services. However; in practice most municipalities have weak finances and little expertise in managing water systems and the federal government still plays an important role in the management and financing of water infrastructure. The article highlights the current state of the water sector in Mexico, including some of the main aspects of the legal and institutionalframework. It discusses the main difficulties faced by the municipalities in accomplishing their task. The strategy of the federal government, in order to achieve better urban water management, has focused on four main policies: changes in the legal and institutional framework for water management, further decentralization, new financing schemes, and greater private sector involvement. It concludes that flexible approaches should allow municipalities to find appropriate institutional, financial, and technical solutions.
Equal employment opportunity has been an explicitly stated national goal since enactment of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In furtherance of this goal, Congress authorized creation of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) to enforce compliance with the act's provisions against discrimination in employment, and to work with state and local fair employment practices agencies in their enforcement of related antidiscrimination laws. These joint efforts have led to complex intergovernmental relations among national, state, and local governmental organizations. The impetus for this study lies in understanding the relationship between national and state administrative agencies charged with enforcing antidiscrimination statutes in the public and private workplace. Such understanding is important in refining current theory and practice regarding equal employment opportunity. Although extensive literatures exist in the areas of intergovernmental relations and civil rights, research is sparse regarding the linkage between equal employment opportunity as a public policy in a federal system and its implementation through intergovernmental means.[1] Three primary questions underlie this research. First, to what extent and in what ways does the presence of overlapping authority help or hinder administrative enforcement? Second, what variation exists in the degree of interdependence between the EEOC and state fair employment practices agencies, and what effect does the degree of interdependence have on enforcement? Third, what is the nature and extent of bargaining in the development of consensus between the national agency and state entities, and how does it affect the content of contracts between them? The Evolution of Employment Discrimination Policy Employment discrimination policy has developed within the context of a federal system of governance. Both the national government and individual states create and execute policies.[2] A division of responsibility between levels of government based on the nature of the program or service provided is part of the ongoing debate over proper allocation of authority among governmental levels (Rivlin, 1992). From early conflict over slavery to clashes over desegregation and voting rights, disagreement about the nature of federalism has often centered on issues related to states rights in a federal system (Nice, 1987). Traditional views about dual federalism, in which power and responsibility is divided between the national and state governments and each exercises authority in its respective jurisdiction, reinforced the perspective that states, when enacting segregation laws, were exercising authority in their own relatively autonomous sphere. The national government, however, exerted authority in a variety of areas, including fair employment, particularly during the New Deal and Great Society periods. When the national Civil Rights Act of 1964 was enacted, over 20 states had some type of fair employment law, and several states had laws requiring racially segregated employment.[3] The coordinated enforcement requirement in Title VII of the act, which indicated that the newly created EEOC was to work with subnational fair employment agencies, was reinforced by views about cooperative and creative federalism. Instead of separate spheres of authority, there were areas of overlap, with power and responsibility for certain policies shared between national and state governments to varying degrees. Growing federal involvement in the implementation of civil rights policy was challenged during the Reagan administration as part of an overall effort to shift many governmental responsibilities to the states (Amaker, 1988; Nathan and Doolittle, 1987). Devolution and decentralization varied by state and program (Lester, 1986; U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations, 1993). Fair housing enforcement by states increased (Lamb, 1991) and fair employment enforcement showed a mixed approach (Wood, 1990). …
Smart contracts combine protocols with user interfaces to formalize and secure relationships over computer networks. Objectives and principles for the design of these systems are derived from legal principles, economic theory, and theories of reliable and secure protocols. Similarities and differences between smart contracts and traditional business procedures based on written contracts, controls, and static forms are discussed. By using cryptographic and other security mechanisms, we can secure many algorithmically specifiable relationships from breach by principals, and from eavesdropping or malicious interference by third parties, up to considerations of time, user interface, and completeness of the algorithmic specification. This article discusses protocols with application in important contracting areas, including credit, content rights management, payment systems, and contracts with bearer.
Various types of sysfems o/ proai/istc proa/s have played a decisive role in the development of Computer Science Theory in the last decade. This can be verified through the great number of studies about interactive proofs, zero-knowledge proofs, and transparent (or holographic) proofs. These topics are guided by the robustness of the codifications and by the computational capacity of checking them. In this text, we aim at presenting a ecncal ntroduc on reZaiue fo the proabilstcaZZy checkaZe robust proa/s. Within this approach. the new characterization of the non-deterministic polynomial-time class through the Probabilistically Checkable Proofs class formulated by Arara, Lund, Motwani. Sudan e Szegedy in IALM+92], ./V'P = PCP(logo, 1), is of central importance. We intend to prove this characterization, because it encompasses the principal points of the subject and. furthermore, covers subjacently a wide set of computational, algebraic. and probabilistic tools. which are fundamental in this topic.
As men and women with an abiding commitment to public service, the participants in this symposium will surely be forgiven if they occasionally yield to the temptation to paraphrase Charles Dickens by saying: It is the worst of times; it is the worst of times. But even the worst of times has something to offer those blessed with a sanguine temperament. Banished to the fringe of events, we need not pass our days languishing in irrelevance. Instead, we should make use of our present unhappy condition to reflect upon how we might do better when public service once again enjoys popular support -- as it surely will some day. I believe serious reflection along these lines is already underway and has been for some time. I take the salience of the word governance in our recent literature as a sign of repentance for past transgressions and firm purpose to mend our ways. The transgression was our failure in happier times to link administration to governing, preferring instead to see it as some sort of neutral technique or even as a science. The marked tendency today to criticize the new-found enthusiasm for management for neglecting the rule of law should be seen not as a rejection of management, but as a constructive effort to tame its excesses by grounding it in the well-established norms of governing a constitutional republic. The salience of governance in our field has spawned a renewed interest in constitutionalism. Indeed, a symposium in Public Administration Review just three years ago identified a school of constitutional thought within the public administration community. The purpose of this article is to contribute to this growing interest in constitutionalism by adding a comparative dimension. Comparativists in the field of political science are fond of quoting a line from Kipling -- what knows he of England who only England knows? -- to make the point that one can learn much about one's own country by studying another one. Comparative studies stimulate the political imagination. They prepare us to think creatively about how we might integrate administrative institutions into traditional constitutional structures and how these structures themselves might be adapted to suit the times that lie ahead. My choice of Canadian federalism as a topic of inquiry needs a word of explanation in view of the seemingly endless string of constitutional crises that have bedeviled that otherwise pleasant land over the past three decades. I focus upon Canada for two reasons: 1. Frequent comments have been made by both Quebec sovereigntists and Ottawa federalists on the need to find administrative solutions to the Canadian constitutional crisis. Here is a bold claim that students of public administration would ignore at their peril. Since the referendum of October 1995, there has been precious little progress -- administrative or otherwise -- toward accommodating Quebec's demands within the present constitutional order, but the mere fact that serious people would even talk about administration doing the deeds of high statesmanship challenges the crabbed American view on the possibilities of administrative activity. In Canada, constitutional debates over the very survival of the regime evoke detailed discussions of such classic administrative themes as environmental management, immigration policy, public finance, civil service pensions, education, manpower and training, unemployment benefits, and control of natural resources. I hope that my article will provide a helpful, albeit rather sketchy, constitutional background for American administrationists who take the trouble to follow the dramatic events unfolding among our neighbors to the north. 2. There is a current American rediscovery of the Tenth Amendment, which promises a pronounced redistribution of authority away from Washington and to the states. There can be little doubt that we are about to enjoy (or, alas, endure) still another round of new but this time all signs point to a more profound and more lasting reprise on this theme than Presidents Nixon and Reagan were able to deliver The political culture of Canada is sufficiently similar to our own to warrant the expectation that by studying its highly decentralized federalism, we can learn something of the advantages of decentralization while avoiding its excesses. …
The 1990s has been labeled as the decade of the small in Canada (Candalino and Knowlton 1994). While large Canadian firms are trying to be more competitive through downsizing, re-engineering, and decentralization, small firms are forging ahead (Candalino and Knowlton 1994; Morgan 1994). This is particularly true for small Canadian firms that are developing innovations with a clear competitive advantage and are leaders in sunshine industries such as high technology (Candalino and Knowlton 1994). Many of the firms are also picking up products and services dropped by large firms in their downsizing efforts. As a result, small Canadian firms are making major inroads in global markets (Morgan 1994). Small firms play a significant role in the Canadian economy. They contribute nearly 40 percent of Canada's Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and employ about half the labor force (Labbe 1994). Also, small businesses create nearly 60 percent of the new jobs in Canada. Hence their success is critical for the Canadian economy (Morgan 1994). Recognizing the importance of small firms in the stability of the economy, the Canadian government has set up programs like the Program for Export Market Development and Promotional Projects Programs to encourage their start-up and growth. Canadian provinces have also enacted legislation to encourage small business. For example, in Ontario, the Small Business Development Corporation Act provides tax breaks for individuals investing in small firms. However, regardless of this support, the success of small firms in the global market depends on their ability to manage human assets (Deshpande and Golhar 1995). Today's global market expects reasonably priced, high quality products delivered on time. Hence, small firms need a highly motivated, skilled, and satisfied workforce that can produce quality goods at low cost (Holt 1993). It is therefore important that small firms implement an appropriate human resource management strategy to develop such a work force. It is not surprising that, next to general management, small firms rank personnel management as their most important management activity (Hess 1987). Unfortunately, recruiting, motivating, and retaining employees are some of the biggest problems faced by small firms (Hornsby and Kuratko 1990; Mathis and Jackson 1991). However, in practice, other functional areas such as finance, production, and marketing usually get more attention than does personnel management (McEvoy 1984). For example, one study suggested that training in personnel management is not as critical as training in finance or marketing in small firms (Curran 1988). Even textbooks on small business management pay scant attention to personnel management issues (Deshpande and Golhar 1995; Hess 1987). Other research, however, suggests that inadequate and inefficient management of human resources has often resulted in low productivity, high dissatisfaction, and turnover among the employees (Mathis and Jackson 1991). Previous research has found lack of progressive HRM practices to be the leading cause of failures of small firms (McEvoy 1984). Thus there is little consensus among researchers regarding the role of HRM in the success of small firms. The empirical research in this study tries to resolve this issue by presenting a comparative study of small and large Canadian firms. Literature Review The purpose of a good HRM program is to recruit, select, motivate, and retain employees with such required characteristics as concern for the firm's success, ability to work in groups, and quantitative skills (Deshpande and Golhar 1994). Most of the published research in the U.S. and Canada investigating HRM issues in small businesses is conceptual and has concentrated on various HRM topics like selection, training and development, compensation, and industrial relations. For example, Gatewood and Field (1987) propose a model selection program for small business, while Curran (1988) suggests several training strategies for a small business. …
<p>We study the behavior of interactive arguments under sequential iteration, in particular how this affects the error probability. This problem turns out to be more complex than one might expect from the fact that for interactive proofs, the error trivially decreases exponentially in the number of iterations.<br />In particular, we study the typical efficient case where the iterated protocol is based on a single instance of a computational problem. This is not a special case of independent<br />iterations of an entire protocol, and real exponential decrease of the error cannot be expected, but nevertheless, for practical applications, one needs concrete relations<br />between the complexity and error probability of the underlying problem and that of the iterated protocol. We show how this problem can be formalized and solved using the<br />theory of proofs of knowledge.<br /> We also prove that in the non-uniform model of complexity the error probability<br />of independent iterations of an argument does indeed decrease exponentially - to our knowledge this is the first result about a strictly exponentially small error probability in a computational cryptographic security property. <br />As an illustration of our first result, we present a very efficient zero-knowledge argument<br />for circuit satisfiability, and thus for any NP problem, based on any collision-intractable hash function. Our theory applies to show the soundness of this protocol. Using an efficient hash function such as SHA-1, the protocol can handle about 20000 binary gates per second at an error level of 2^−50.</p><p>Keywords -- Interactive proofs, arguments, proofs of knowledge, computational security,<br />efficient general primitives, multi-bit commitment, statistical zero-knowledge.</p>
The Family Division of the High Court exercises jurisdiction in family proceedings in England and Wales. A broadly similar jurisdiction is exercised under the Children Act in care proceedings and in private law disputes between parents by county courts and family proceedings courts. It should be emphasised that this article is about civil, not criminal, proceedings in which the burden of proof is diVerent and the practice which I describe does not apply. 2 The most recent example is the acknowledgment by the Court of Appeal that paediatricians and child psychiatrists are entitled in family proceedings to express opinions on child abuse which are based on or take into account the expert's assessment of the child's truthfulness: see Re M and R (Child Abuse: Evidence) [1996] 2 FLR 195, CA. Equally, I do not have space to address the duties of experts generally, as to which there is agreement across all the divisions of the High Court that expert evidence presented to the court should be and should be seen to be the independent product of the expert uninfluenced as to form or content by the exigencies of litigation. In Re J [1991] FCR 191 at 226/7, Cazalet J said that in children's cases the duty to be objective and not to mislead is as vital as in any case, because the child's welfare is at stake, and his/her interests are paramount. He added that an absence of objectivity may result in a child being wrongly placed and thereby unnecessarily at risk. It must also be borne in mind that a misleading opinion from an expert may well inhibit a proper assessment of a particular case by the non-medical professional advisers and may also lead parties, and in particular parents, to false views and hopes. 3 By section 12 of the Administration of Justice Act 1960, as amended by Schedule 13, para 14 of the Children Act 1989, it is a contempt of court to publish information relating to proceedings brought (inter alia) under the Children Act. 4 Oxfordshire County Council v M [1994] Fam 151, CA: Re L (A Minor) (Police Investigation) [1996] 2 WLR 395, HL. 5 By section 1(2) the court is required to have regard to the general principle that any delay in determining questions relating to the upbringing of children is likely to prejudice their welfare. 6
Organization Activity Support and Information System (OASIS) is a computer-based information system that supports; the construction and deployment of business applications. It is aimed at supporting the following 4 major organizational needs: (a) using data processing, reasoning, and communication in an integrative manner; (b) allowing control over one's own applications; (c) tying together independently developed applications for organizational use; and (d) simplifying certain types of changes or evolution. OASIS accomplishes these needs by viewing organizations as consisting of autonomous units with the capability of interacting with each other and by the integrative use of blackboards and forms. This article describes the OASIS system, presents a small example of its abilities, and describes planned future research.
The author focuses on the link between local government decentralization and democracy in Eastern Europe. It is shown that decentralization is a multidimensional concept and that actual local government systems can be positioned differently on each dimension (functions, control, and finance) depending on the implicit model of local government. Formal and substantive definitions of democracy are distinguished and some conventional measures examined; it is concluded that decentralization and democracy do not necessarily go together. The degree of decentralization and implicit models of postsocialist local government in Eastern Europe are then outlined, with a focus on the contrast between Budapest and Moscow. The development of social movements in the two capitals is taken as an index of substantive democracy and is shown to be influenced not only by the extent of decentralization but also by other features of the local political context. This illustrates the earlier argument that the relation between decentralization and democracy is an empirically variable one rather than a necessary one.
An active decentralization policy was initiated by the Chamorro Government in 1990. Institution-building initiatives have involved the creation of the Instituto Nicaraguense de Fomento Municipal (INIFOM) whose mandate includes the restoration of municipal capacities and the creation of equity among municipalities which have been subject to divergent financial conditions based on their different economic and resource base. This process is ongoing and progress in notable. However, the definition of the responsibilities of municipalities, the evolution of their tax base, ability to collect taxes and develop realistic investment programs in addition to running their daily affairs, are still in their infancy. Meanwhile donors play a major role with both positive results resource transfer and building-up of skills) and negative consequences (pet geographical areas and project types, investment projects rather than programming orientation, creation of a plethora of institutions). Seen in a dynamic context, the donor assistance has been helpful in setting the stage for homegrown municipal development if it is properly redirected. The report analyzes the financial basis for the municipalities, their sources of investment finance, and an estimation of the total external contributions, the decentralization policies and their consequences, the institutional setting and its potential for conflict, and new legislative initiatives.
Jayanth N. Kudva, Kari Appa, A. P. Jardine, Christopher Martin · 5 authors
The concept of an adaptive aircraft wing, i.e., whose shape parameters such as camber, span-wise twist, and thickness can be varied to optimize the wing shape for various flight conditions, has been extensively studied by numerous researchers. While the aerodynamic benefits (in terms of increased lift/drag ratios, improved maneuverability, and delayed flow separation) have been analytically and experimentally established, the complexity and weight penalty of the designs and actuation using smart materials could potentially alleviate the shortcomings of prior designs, leading the way to a more practical `smart' adaptive wing which responds to changes in flight and environmental conditions by optimally modifying its shape. A summary of recent work in the area of adaptive wing concepts incorporating smart structures technologies is presented. Emphasis is placed on continuing research at Northrop Grumman under a United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency contract entitled `Smart Structures and Materials Development-Smart Wing,'. Limitations and potential benefits of adaptive wing designs, applications and advantages of smart material actuators and sensors, and results of recent tests are discussed. Recommendations for future work required to develop an operational smart adaptive wing are also outlined.