Suchergebnisse

Purpose
– The purpose of this study is to develop a novel approach to e-participation, which is based on "passive crowdsourcing" by government agencies, exploiting the extensive political content continuously created in numerous Web 2.0 social media (e.g. political blogs and microblogs, news sharing sites and online forums) by citizens without government stimulation, to understand better their needs, issues, opinions, proposals and arguments concerning a particular domain of government activity or public policy.


Design/methodology/approach
– This approach is developed and elaborated through cooperation with potential users experienced in the design of public policies from three countries (Austria, Greece and the UK), using a combination of quantitative and qualitative techniques: co-operative development of application scenarios, questionnaire surveys, focus groups and workshops and, finally, in-depth interviews.


Findings
– A process model for the application of the proposed passive crowdsourcing approach has been developed, which is quite different from the one of the usual active crowdsourcing. Based on it, the functional architecture of the required supporting information and communication technologies (ICT) infrastructure has been formulated, and then its technological architecture has been designed, addressing the conflicting requirements: low response time and, at the same time, provision of sufficiently "fresh" content for policymakers.


Practical implications
– Taking into account that traditionally government agencies monitor what the press writes about them, our research provides a basis for extending efficiently these activities in the new electronic media world (e.g. newspapers websites, blogs and microblogs, online forums, etc.) to understand better the needs, issues, opinions, arguments and proposals raised by the society with respect to important domains of government activity and public policies.


Social implications
– The proposed approach provides a new channel for the "voice" of the society to be directly communicated to the government so that the latter can design its policies and activities based on the social needs and realities and not on oversimplified models and stereotypes.


Originality/value
– Our paper proposes a novel approach to e-participation, which exploits the Web 2.0 social media – but in a quite different way from previous approaches – for conducting "passive crowdsourcing", and elaborates it: it develops an application process model for it and also an ICT infrastructure for supporting it, which are quite different from the ones of the existing "active crowdsourcing" approaches.

In 1998 three Danish universities developed an interdisciplinary, problem‐oriented curriculum in order to strengthen capacity‐building capabilities in the area of environmental education, training and research at universities and research organisations in Malaysia and Thailand earmarked for environment and development assistance by the Danish government. The programme, which was partly implemented in developing countries as periods of fieldwork, represented important educational innovations. The purpose of this study was to evaluate these activities. The distinct principles forming the educational foundation of the programme were identified. These related to the curriculum organization, the learning tasks and the learning environment. The first step in a cogent evaluation process was to examine how the educational principles were oprerationalized into practical teaching/learning steps. In the next step, they formed the criteria for the evaluation. On the basis of quantitative and qualitative data it was shown that the programme fulfilled the stipulated accademic requirements.

AbstractAcross Europe, public employment services are experimenting with more holistic and cross‐sector collaborations to tackle the wicked problem of long‐term unemployment. These collaborations operate in a context characterised by tensions produced by multiple demands for accountability. Based on case studies of the accountability relations and challenges in five such collaborations in the Netherlands, Belgium (Flanders), Estonia, Scotland and Denmark, we found that: rigorous use of quantifiable measurement regimes made it difficult to attribute salience to important aspects of the progress made by the unemployed citizen; standardised accounts come with the risk of reductionist understandings of the citizen's social circumstances and resources; superficial participation by local politicians resulted in rather weak political accountability and a marked ambiguity of the role of the client as both accountee and accountholder.

Scale is an overlooked issue in the research on interactive governance. This book takes up the important task of investigating the scalar dimensions of collaborative governance in networks, partnerships, and other interactive arenas and explores the challenges of operating at a single scale, across or at multiple scales and of moving between scales. First published as a special issue of Policy & Politics, the volume explores the role of scale and scaling in a wide range of policy areas, including employment policy, water management, transportation planning, public health, university governance, artistic markets, child welfare and humanitarian relief. Cases are drawn from Asia, Australia, Europe, and North and South America and span all levels from local to global. Together, the theoretical framework and the empirical case studies sensitize us to the tensions that arise between scales of governance and to the challenges of shifting from one scale of governance to another

This important and timely volume brings together a distinguished set of international scholars who provide rich information about the social, economic, political, and historical factors responsible for shaping ageing policy in the Mediterranean region