Suchergebnisse

AbstractThe GAO's transition report to the executive and legislative branches of government, Program Evaluation Issues, began with the section "Why Program Evaluation Is Important," which is reprinted in Chapter Two of this volume. The report concluded with several sections outlining what would be needed for agencies in the executive branch to rebuild evaluation capacity and what would happen if they do not. The sections constitute a fitting conclusion to this volume.

The Mental Capacity Act 2005 comes into effect in England and Wales in 2007. The Act contains principles, procedures and safeguards to empower people to make decisions for themselves wherever possible, but also to ensure that decisions made on their behalf if they lack the mental capacity to make the decision themselves are done in their best interests. The Act will apply to anyone working in the supported housing field or residential care where residents may lack the capacity to make decisions as a result of illness, injury or disability. This article gives an overview of the Mental Capacity Act and its relevance to the field of supported housing.

2007 marks a major step forward in the history of adult protection with the implementation of the Mental Capacity Act in England and Wales. Understandably, debates about adult protection have usually focused on the more obvious types of abuse ‐ sexual, physical, financial and emotional. The Mental Capacity Act addresses a much wider issue of abuse where a person's right to make their own decisions, and to have proper safeguards and protection if decisions need making on their behalf, is overridden or ignored. This article gives an overview of the Mental Capacity Act and its relevance to the files of adult protection.

The availability of micro‐, mini‐, and super computers has complicated the laws governing the economies of scale in computers and has increased the tendency to decentralize and distribute computing power. The optimal design of such a system requires integration of computers of varying power and a strategy for capacity loading. This paper considers the problem of capacity planning and capacity loading of a distributed computer system as a hierarchy of decisions. A linear programming model is developed for the initial capacity planning problem. A loading model that accounts for variations in arrival and processing rates of the jobs in a dynamic environment is developed to support the operations.

Noting the variety of methods by which the concept of economic capacity is measured and the different ways that the concept is defined, Richard E. Gift seeks here to develop a conceptual framework within which a meaningful interpretation of these many definitions and measures of productive capacity can be made. Gift's method is to show the common structure that is shared by all capacity concepts and arguments. This structure consists of a list of variables that must always be considered when assessing the economic capacity of productive equipment. He then shows that the problems which arise in comparing capacities for different dates can be expressed in the form of a few simple generalizations. His third step is to illustrate specific problems. Finally, he sets out to develop a test for the logical completeness of any argument about capacity.

It is often said that effective government requires a concentration of power. If we want our political leaders to adjust public policies to changing economic, social, and political circumstances, we should, in this view, leave our leaders alone: we should put in place electoral procedures that identify a clear winner in each election, and then we should let the winning political party govern without having to cooperate with others. The argument in this text is that this view is mistaken, since it seriously underestimates the ability of political decision makers to overcome democratic paralysis by compensating losers (groups that stand to lose from a reform)