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This article discusses the home industry of blacksmith craftsmen which is a form of community business that can be empowered by the government. The aim is to find out and explain the role of the Kampar Regency Government in empowering blacksmith craftsmen. The collection of data and information was done through observation, interviews and documentation with qualitative data analysis methods. The results of the study prove that the role of the government in fostering the home industry of blacksmiths is as a coordinator by issuing various policies, as a facilitator (coordination, synchronization, and control) stimulator (integrating investment programs), and as a mediator (intermediary) cooperation with other business actors can be in the form of providing raw materials and marketing of handicrafts. The conclusion of this study is that the government plays a role in fostering blacksmiths as a policy-making coordinator, as a facilitator for business and environmental development, as a stimulator by opening up investment opportunities for companies.This article discusses the home industry ofblacksmith crafts which is aform of community business that can be empowered by thegovernment. The aim is to find out and explain the role of the KamparRegency Government in empowering blacksmith crafts. The collectionof data and information is done through observation, interviews anddocumentation with qualitative data analysis methods. The results ofthe study prove that the role of the government in fostering the homeindustry of blacksmiths is as a coordinator by issuing various policies,as a facilitator (coordination, synchronization, and control), stimulator(integrating investment programs), and as mediator (intermediary)that cooperates with other business actors in the form of providing rawmaterials and marketing the handicrafts. The conclusion of this studyis that the government plays a role in fostering blacksmiths as a policy-making coordinator, as a facilitator for business and environmentaldevelopment, and as a ...

Data control, among the newest forms of power fostered by information and communication technologies (ICTs), triggers a continuous (re)negotiation of public and private orderings, with direct implications on both regulators and intermediaries. This article examines the stance of the European Union (EU) regarding the position of Google - the world's largest internet services company as per its 2014 market value - in two controversial instances: the 'right to be forgotten' and the implementation of EU competition rules. It provides an analysis of these evolving debates and their meaning for EU regulatory thrust more broadly, discussing the shift in the approach to digital markets and the proactive development of a European framework influential beyond continental boundaries.

Social service organizations often act as civic intermediaries for their clients by facilitating their interactions with governing systems and political processes and institutions. Theories of descriptive representation and representative bureaucracy suggest that organizations will act in ways that advance the political interests of their clients when organizational leadership is racially reflective of the clientele served. Yet little is known about the effects of racial representation on nonprofit organizational activities. To what extent can these theories explain nonprofit organizational efforts to advance the political interests of their clients? This article examines this question using data from a sample of nonprofit service agencies in Michigan. Multivariate regression is used to examine the effects of racial representation on four civic intermediary roles performed by nonprofits: political representation, education, mobilization, and assimilation. Findings suggest that nonprofits engage in these activities at higher rates when agency leadership is more racially reflective of the clientele served.

Data and information are fundamental pieces for effective evidence-based policy making and provision of public services. In recent years, some private firms have been collecting large amounts of data, which, were they available to governments, could greatly improve their capacity to take better policy decisions and to increase social welfare. Business-to-Government (B2G) data sharing can result in substantial benefits for society. It can save costs to governments by allowing them to benefit from the use of data collected by businesses without having to collect the same data again. Moreover, it can support the production of new and innovative outputs based on the shared data by different users. Finally, the data available to government may give only an incomplete or even biased picture, while aggregating complementary datasets shared by different parties (including businesses) may result in improved policies with strong social welfare benefits. The examples assembled by the High Level Expert Group on B2G data sharing show that most of the current B2G data transactions remain one-off experimental pilot projects that do not seem to be sustainable over time. Overall, the volume of B2G operations still seems to be relatively small and clearly sub-optimal from a social welfare perspective. The market does not seem to scale compared to the economic potential for welfare gains in society. There are likely to be significant potential economic benefits from additional B2G data sharing operations. These could be enabled by measures that would seek to improve their governance conditions to contribute to increase the overall number of transactions. To design such measures, it is important to understand the nature of the current barriers for B2G data sharing operations. In this paper, we focus on the more important barriers from an economic perspective: (a) monopolistic data markets, (b) high transaction costs and perceived risks in data sharing and (c) a lack of incentives for private firms to contribute to the production of public benefits. The following reflections are mainly conceptual, since there is currently little quantitative empirical evidence on the different aspects of B2G transactions. Monopolistic data markets. Some firms -like big tech companies for instance- may be in a privileged position as the exclusive providers of the type of data that a public body seeks to access. This position enables the firms to charge a high price for the data beyond a reasonable rate of return on costs. While a monopolistic market is still a functioning market, the resulting price may lead to some governments not being able or willing to purchase the data and therefore may cause social welfare losses. Nonetheless, monopolistic pricing may still be justified from an innovation perspective: it strengthens incentives to invest in more and better data collection systems and thereby increases the supply of data in the long run. In some cases, the data seller may be in a position to price-discriminate between commercial buyers and a public body, charging a lower price to the latter since the data would not be used for commercial purposes. High transaction costs and perceived risks. An important barrier for data sharing comes from the ex-ante costs related to finding a suitable data sharing partner, negotiating a contractual arrangement, re-formatting and cleaning the data, among others. Potentially interested public bodies may not be aware of available datasets or may not be in a position to handle them or understand their advantages and disadvantages. There may also be ex-post risks related to uncertainties in the quality and/or usefulness of the data, the technical implementation of the data sharing deal, ensuring compliance with the agreed conditions, the risk of data leaks to unauthorized third-parties and exposure of personal and confidential data. Lack of incentives. Firms may be reluctant to share data with governments because it might have a negative impact on them. This could be due to suspicions that the data delivered might be used to implement market regulations and to enforce competition rules that could negatively affect firms' profits. Moreover, if firms share data with government under preferential conditions, they may have difficulties justifying the foregone profit to shareholders, since the benefits generated by better policies or public services fuelled by the private data will occur to society as a whole and are often difficult to express in monetary terms. Finally, firms might be afraid of entering into a competitive disadvantage if they provide data to public bodies - perhaps under preferential conditions - and their competitors do not. Several mechanisms could be designed to solve the barriers that may be holding back B2G data sharing initiatives. One would be to provide stronger incentives for the data supplier firm to engage in this type of transactions. These incentives can be direct, i.e., monetary, or indirect, i.e., reputational (e.g. as part of corporate social responsibility programmes). Another way would be to ascertain the data transfer by making the transaction mandatory, with a fair cost compensation. An intermediate way would be based on solutions that seek to facilitate voluntary B2G operations without mandating them, for example by reducing the transaction costs and perceived risks for the provider data supplier, e.g. by setting up trusted data intermediary platforms, or appropriate contractual provisions. A possible EU governance framework for B2G data sharing operations could cover these options.

Smart cities need (sensor) data for better decision-making. However, while there are vast amounts of data available about and from cities, an intermediary is needed that connects and interprets (sensor) data on a Web-scale. Today, governments in Europe are struggling to publish open data in a sustainable, predictable and cost-effective way. Our research question considers what methods for publishing Linked Open Data time series, in particular air quality data, are suitable in a sustainable and cost-effective way. Furthermore, we demonstrate the cross-domain applicability of our data publishing approach through a different use case on railway infrastructure—Linked Open Data. Based on scenarios co-created with various governmental stakeholders, we researched methods to promote data interoperability, scalability and flexibility. The results show that applying a Linked Data Fragments-based approach on public endpoints for air quality and railway infrastructure data, lowers the cost of publishing and increases availability due to better Web caching strategies.

Component 1: Supporting Implementation of MSP Sub-component 1.3.3: Data Information requirements for MSP The Analysis of Data Needs and Existing Gaps – Specifically Relating to Transboundary Working report is an intermediary document related to the SIMNORAT action on data exchanges. It provides an initial overview on the data arrangements in Portugal, Spain and France. This initial information analysis is aimed to guide the implementation of activities to enhance data exchanges between countries in the SIMNORAT context. The report analyses the current state of data needs and gaps for MSP in the countries involved in the project, in order to highlight the challenges and opportunities associated with data and information in the region. It identifies where (portals, infrastructures.) and how (accessibility, interoperability.) relevant data for MSP is available and to what extent it can be improved (assets and barriers) ; it is based on an inventory of existing data, data portals, projects and tools established according to the knowledge of the partnership. ; This report was produced as part of SIMNORAT Project (Grant Agreement N0. EASME/EMFF/2015/1.2.1.3/03/SI2.742089). Competition for maritime space – for renewable energy equipment, aquaculture and other uses – has highlighted the need to manage our waters more coherently. Maritime spatial planning (MSP) works across borders and sectors to ensure human activities at sea take place in an efficient, safe and sustainable way. That is why the European Parliament and the Council have adopted a legislation to create a common framework for maritime spatial planning in Europe. The Directive 2014/89/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 July 2014 (said Maritime Spatial Planning Directive) establishes a framework in order to reduce conflicts between sectors and create synergies between different activities, to encourage investment – by creating predictability, transparency and clearer rules, to increase cross-border cooperation – between EU countries to ...

Component 1: Supporting Implementation of MSP Sub-component 1.3.3: Data and Information requirements for MSP The Analysis of Data Needs and Existing Gaps – Specifically Relating to Transboundary Working report is an intermediary document related to the SIMWESTMED action on data exchanges. It provides an initial overview on the data arrangements in the Western Mediterranean. This initial information analysis is aimed to guide the implementation of activities to enhance data exchanges between countries in the SIMWESTMED context. The report analyses the current state of data needs and gaps for MSP in the Western Mediterranean in order to highlight the challenges and opportunities associated with data and information in the region. It identifies where (portals, infrastructures.) and how (accessibility, interoperability.) relevant data for MSP is available and to what extent it can be improved (assets and barriers) ; it is based on an inventory of existing data, data portals, projects and tools established according to the knowledge of the partnership. ; This report/document was produced as part of the SIMWESTMED Project (Grant Agreement N0. EASME/EMFF/2015/1.2.1.3/02/SI2.742101). PROJECT: Supporting Implementation of Maritime Spatial Planning in the Western Mediterranean region (SIMWESTMED) Competition for maritime space – for renewable energy equipment, aquaculture and other uses – has highlighted the need to manage our waters more coherently. Maritime spatial planning (MSP) works across borders and sectors to ensure human activities at sea take place in an efficient, safe and sustainable way. That is why the European Parliament and the Council have adopted a legislation to create a common framework for maritime spatial planning in Europe. The Directive 2014/89/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 July 2014 (said Maritime Spatial Planning Directive) establishes a framework in order to reduce conflicts between sectors and create synergies between different activities, to encourage investment – by ...

In this discussion paper we present the findings from our surveys of artists, employees and project owners who participated in 84 artistic interventions in organizations in Spain between 2011 and 2014. We provide an extensive introduction to the research questions, methods and findings in English, followed by 9 data reports in Spanish. The reports address the characteristics of the participating organizations, the objectives of the artistic interventions, the effects of the artistic interventions, recommendations for other organizations, and the role of the intermediary. The last report offers a comparative perspective between cases in a region in Spain and a region in Germany as a first step towards considering the effect of national culture. The report also contains a methodological note about our experience combining Web-based surveys with interviews, as well as links to the survey instruments we designed so that future studies can draw on them. (author's abstract)

Intergovernmental relations play an important role in policy innovation diffusion, yet few studies have analyzed its impact on open government data (OGD) adoption. We used event history analysis to analyze the diffusion of OGD in China. The diffusion of OGD among municipal governments is primarily influenced by vertical pressure from superior governments and horizontal pressure from neighboring governments, with the latter having a greater impact. The provincial government plays an intermediary role between the central government and the municipal government. A comprehensive analysis of the interplay between policy signals and policy pilots demonstrates that provincial signals have a substantial influence on municipal pilots, whereas the impact of provincial pilots on municipal signals is insignificant. These findings contribute to OGD adoption research and practices and promote the development of policy diffusion theory.

This article studies how the decision to connect data volumes to value is made by technologists and governance people in smart cities' datafication process. Its entry point is that datafication promises to use data to make cities liveable domains. Cities on the back of this promise presuppose that more data produce value and therefore fixate on exhaustive datafication. But datafication does not appear self-evident, and knowledge of how technologists and governance people connect data volumes to data value is quite unclear in media and communication literature. Using evidence from interviews (n = 6), datafication policy documents (n = 4), and a diverse dataset of city activities (n = 299) in the open data portal of a situated datafication site, the Stavanger Smart City, Norway, and with the theoretical support of critical data studies, this article responds to the question: How does data volume connect to data value in smart cities datafication? Its findings put data quality as the intermediary that makes this connection.

We augment an otherwise standard business cycle model with a richer government sector, and add monopolistic competition in the product market, and rigid prices, as well as rigid wages a la Calvo (1983) in the labor market. This specification with the nominal wage rigidity, when calibrated to Bulgarian data after the introduction of the currency board (1999-2016), allows the framework to reproduce better observed variability and correlations among model variables, and those characterizing the labor market in particular. As nominal wage frictions are incorporated, the variables become more persistent, especially output, capital stock, investment and consumption, which helps the model match data better.