International audience ; Interoperability is a critical factor for public administration-related entities that operate in collaborative/cooperative environments. Thus, performing an interoperability diagnosis based on a reference model provides an organization the opportunity to know its strengths and to prioritize actions to improve its performance and maturity. In public administrations, this issue is even more emphasized due to the need of considering standards policies imposed by national or international authorities. This paper proposes a Public Administration Interoperability Capability Model (PAICM) that describes intervals of expected results regarding the capability degree of certain measurable features related to its potential interoperability. The PAICM was applied to a government information technology agency, enabling the identification of the different barriers affecting organizational performance and a stratified analysis of the potential interoperability.
International audience ; Interoperability is a critical factor for public administration-related entities that operate in collaborative/cooperative environments. Thus, performing an interoperability diagnosis based on a reference model provides an organization the opportunity to know its strengths and to prioritize actions to improve its performance and maturity. In public administrations, this issue is even more emphasized due to the need of considering standards policies imposed by national or international authorities. This paper proposes a Public Administration Interoperability Capability Model (PAICM) that describes intervals of expected results regarding the capability degree of certain measurable features related to its potential interoperability. The PAICM was applied to a government information technology agency, enabling the identification of the different barriers affecting organizational performance and a stratified analysis of the potential interoperability.
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to discuss the role of ALM organizations within a Nordic model of the public sphere. Design/methodology/approach This is a conceptual paper discussing the role of archives, libraries and museums in light of a societal model of the Nordic public sphere. Throughout the discussions, the author draw on empirical and theoretical research from sociology, political science, media studies, cultural policy studies, archival science, museology, and library and information science to help advance our understanding of these organizations in a wider societal context. Findings The paper shows that ALM organizations play an important role for the infrastructure of a civil public sphere. Seen as a cluster, these organizations are providers of information that can be employed in deliberative activities in mediated public spheres, as well as training arenas for citizens to use prior to entering such spheres. Furthermore, ALM organizations are themselves public spheres, as they can serve specific communities and help create and maintain identities, and solidarities, all of which are important parts of a civil public sphere. Research limitations/implications Future research should investigate whether these roles are an important part of ALM organizations contribution to public spheres in other regions of the world. Originality/value Through introducing a theoretical model developed within sociology and connecting it to ongoing research in archival science, museology, and library and information science, the author connects the societal role of archives, libraries, and museums to broader discussions within the social sciences. ; Norges forskningsråd 259052 ; acceptedVersion
Public transport is recognized as a more environmentally friendly mode of transport than cars for the same number of passengers. Many countries are investing heavily in public transport to make it not only greener, but also more convenient, more attractive, faster, more competitive and more accessible. In order to promote a sustainable environment, private, public and non-motorized transport must functionally complement each other to form balanced integrated systems. There are currently two main forms of organizing public transport: a government-oriented service and a market-oriented service. Positive changes in the field of public transport are possible if in the process involves not only state and municipal institutions, but also infrastructure planners, passenger carriers and inhabitants. Public transport must be seen as a means of developing cities and regions. The aim of the article is to analyze the existing models of public transport organization and management, to compare them and submit a proposal, on the basis of which management model it would be possible to submit proposals for the improvement of the organization of Lithuanian public transport. Good foreign countries practice in the management and organization of public transport shows that in some countries public transport is already organized not by individual municipalities but by regions. Based on the achievements of foreign countries, municipalities are recommended to cooperate and share experience in creating a common public transport network. It is necessary to create a management scheme in Lithuania for the development of public transport services, which at the same time would reduce public costs. Article in Lithuanian. Lietuvos ir užsienio šalių viešojo transporto organizavimo ir valdymo modeliai Santrauka Viešasis transportas yra pripažįstamas ekologiškai švaresne transporto rūšimi nei automobiliai tam pačiam keleivių skaičiui vežti. Daugelis šalių daug investuoja į viešąjį transportą, kad jis būtų ne tik ekologiškesnis, bet ir patogesnis, patrauklesnis, greitesnis, konkurencingesnis ir lengvai prieinamas. Siekiant skatinti tvarią gyvenamąją aplinką, privatus, viešasis ir nemotorinis transportas turi funkciškai papildyti vienas kitą, formuodami subalansuotas integruotas sistemas. Šiuo metu egzistuoja dvi pagrindinės viešojo transporto organizavimo formos: į vyriausybę ir į rinką orientuota paslauga. Teigiamos permainos viešojo transporto srityje yra galimos tuo atveju, jeigu į procesą yra įtraukiamos ne tik valstybės ir savivaldybių institucijos, bet ir infrastruktūros planuotojai, keleivių vežėjai ir patys gyventojai. Viešasis transportas turi būti suvokiamas kaip priemonė miestams ir regionams vystyti. Straipsnio tikslas – išanalizuoti egzistuojančius viešojo transporto organizavimo ir valdymo modelius, juos palyginti ir pateikti pasiūlymą, kurio valdymo modelio pagrindu galima būtų teikti pasiūlymus Lietuvos viešojo transporto organizavimui tobulinti. Užsienio šalių viešojo transporto valdymo ir organizavimo geroji praktika parodo, kad tam tikrose šalyse jau dabar viešasis transportas yra organizuojamas ne atskirų savivaldybių, bet regionais. Remiantis užsienio šalių pasiekimais, savivaldybėms rekomenduojama kooperuotis, aktyviai bendradarbiauti ir dalintis patirtimi, kuriant bendrą viešojo transporto tinklą. Lietuvoje būtina sukurti valdymo schemą viešojo transporto paslaugoms plėtoti, kuri kartu sumažintų viešąsias išlaidas. Reikšminiai žodžiai: viešojo transporto organizavimas, valdymo modeliai, viešasis transportas, viešojo transporto politika.
[Abstract]: This paper introduces habit-forming preferences in a Barro-type endogenous growth model with productive public services. Government expenditure, which may be subject to congestion, is financed by distortionary income taxation. Different from the standard time-separable model, the presence of habits makes the economy feature transitional dynamics, which are solved in closed form. Setting the income tax so as to equate the elasticity of public services in production is shown to maximize both long-run growth and welfare as in the standard model. This second-best solution coincides with the first-best outcome only in the presence of proportional congestion. ; Financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation through Grant ECO2008-04180
Digital prediction tools increasingly complement or replace other practices of coping with an uncertain future. The current COVID-19 pandemic, it seems, is further accelerating the spread of prediction. The prediction of the pandemic yields a pandemic of prediction. In this paper, we explore this dynamic, focusing on contagion models and their transmission back and forth between two domains of society: public health and public safety. We connect this movement with a fundamental duality in the prevention of contagion risk concerning the two sides of being-at-risk and being-a-risk. Both in the spread of a disease and in the spread of criminal behavior, a person at risk can be a risk to others and vice versa. Based on key examples, from this perspective we observe and interpret a circular movement in three phases. In the past, contagion models have moved from public health to public safety, as in the case of the Strategic Subject List used in the policing activity of the Chicago Police Department. In the present COVID-19 pandemic, the analytic tools of policing wander to the domain of public health – exemplary of this movement is the cooperation between the data infrastructure firm Palantir and the UK government's public health system NHS. The expectation that in the future the predictive capacities of digital contact tracing apps might spill over from public health to policing is currently shaping the development and use of tools such as the Corona-Warn-App in Germany. In all these cases, the challenge of pandemic governance lies in managing the connections and the exchanges between the two areas of public health and public safety while at the same time keeping the autonomy of each.
The issue of categorical vs. dimensional classification of bipolar disorder continues to generate controversy as it has for generations. Despite the evidence that no psychiatric disorder has discrete boundaries separating pathological and nonpathological states, and within a disorder, no clear differences separate subtypes-which would suggest a more dimensional approach-there are valid reasons to continue with our current categorical system, which distinguishes bipolar I from bipolar II disorder. Complicating the issue, a number of interested constituencies, including patients and their families, clinicians, scientists/researchers, and governmental agencies and insurance companies have different interests and needs in this controversy. This paper reviews both the advantages and disadvantages of continuing the bipolar I/bipolar II split vs. redefining bipolar disorder as one unified diagnosis. Even with one unified diagnosis, other aspects of psychopathology can be used to further describe and classify the disorder. These include both predominant polarity and categorizing symptoms by ACE-activity, cognition and energy. As a field, we must decide whether changing our current classification before we have a defining biology and genetic profile of bipolar disorder is worth the disruption in our current diagnostic system.
The subject of this thesis is behavioural models for route choice of passengers in multimodal public transport networks. While research in sustainable transport has dedicated much attention toward the determinants of choice between car and sustainable travel options, it has devoted less attention toward the route choices of public transport users. Clearly, identifying relevant factors that affect route choice decisions could guide stakeholders (e.g., local governmental agencies and public transport agencies) toward effective improvement of public transport services in metropolitan areas in order to increase their attractiveness with respect to the car. Accordingly, this PhD thesis faces the multi-faceted challenge of modelling route choices of travellers moving in a metropolitan multimodal network. The analysis focuses on revealed preferences data collected for the multimodal network of the Greater Copenhagen Area and solves the multiple facets of the challenge concerning (i) data collection, (ii) data analysis, (iii) choice set generation, and (iv) model estimation. From the data perspective, this thesis overcomes limitations in the collection of actual route choices of public transport users. The literature shows a lot of effort in modelling route choices of car users, which has benefitted from increasingly accurate GPS devices to track vehicles and increasingly precise map-matching algorithms to translate the GPS points into routes on GIS networks. However, the literature shows scarce effort in the estimation of route choice models of public transport users based upon observed choices. Public transport route choice models have not benefitted from the same technological enhancements as car models because of the necessity (i) to collect additional information concerning lines and transfers, and (ii) to overcome technical limitations related to GPS signals not always being retrievable in tunnels that are used by metro and urban rail systems. In this PhD project, a questionnaire to collect details about the actual route choice behaviour in public transport networks was developed and tested in a full scale test. Afterwards the questions were added to the Danish Travel Behaviour Survey that collects daily travel diaries with a questionnaire covering activities and travel of a representative sample of the population. When the travel is by public transport modes, an additional section of the survey with the new questions collects detailed information about access modes, stations, lines, departure and arrival times, trip purposes, transfers, and egress modes. In order to analyse travellers' preferences in the multimodal network, about 6,000 observations from the Greater Copenhagen Area were collected and processed in this study. The characteristics of the collected data are analysed and the actual choices of the public transport passengers are revealed in the thesis. The data were map-matched to the GIS network of the area and quality controlled in a multi-step procedure. From the choice set generation perspective, this thesis generates attractive routes for the origindestination pair of each traveller. The problem is not trivial when considering the combinatorial iv Behavioural models for route choice of passengers in multimodal public transport networks nature of the problem. The dense network of the Greater Copenhagen Area includes metro, trains (regional, suburban, urban and local), and buses (high-frequency, express and regular), and access and egress modes comprise both private (bicycle and car) and public transport modes. Accordingly, the universal realm of possible combinations (i.e., access modes, public transport modes, lines, transfers, egress modes) is large. This thesis proposes a doubly stochastic approach for generating alternative routes that are relevant to travellers, since the method allows accounting for both perceived costs of the network elements and heterogeneity in the preferences of travellers. The coverage of the observed choices with the generated choice sets provides a measure of the behavioural plausibility of the applied path generation technique. Notably, the definition of the coverage for public transport networks is different from the one for automobile users because of the increased dimensionality of the problem, as similarity in multimodal networks may be calculated at both the line level and the link level. The thesis describes testing of the choice set generation algorithm with regard to the number of routes generated as well as its ability to generate the observed routes. From the model estimation perspective, this thesis describes the estimation of route choice models able to account for similarities across alternatives. A simple approach is the formulation of a Path Size Logit in which the different definitions of similarity (i.e., at the line level and at the link level) are alternatively tested. A more elaborated approach is the formulation of a Mixed Path Size Logit. For both approaches, the utility function is specified in order to consider the multidimensional nature of the problem in terms of access/egress characteristics, waiting time, in-vehicle travel time, and transfer characteristics. Moreover, travellers' characteristics and trip purposes enrich the model and provide insight into the preference structures of different travellers with different motivations for travelling, and finally the study indicates that the actual length of the trip has an impact on the preferences of the travellers. The estimation confirms the expected importance of waiting and transfer times, shows different preferences for bus and train, emphasize the importance of the trip length, shows the effect of specific modes of access and egress, and indicates the relevance of individual characteristics within and across trip purposes. The results suggest the importance of coordination between different public transport modes, the relevance of transfer locations that allow seamless passage from one vehicle to another, and the significance of access and egress modes in terms of parking availability for both automobiles and bicycles. In this specific study, parameters not only allow assessing travellers' preferences that shed light on the necessary improvements in public transport networks for an even higher attractiveness of sustainable travel options, but also allow providing input to the public transport assignment model of the Danish National Transport Model. The contributions of the thesis are thus to demonstrate a new survey-based data collection technique that can reveal passengers route choices in large and complex multi-modal networks, how such data can be map-matched and choice sets be generated for model estimation, and the results of the estimation of a multimodal route choice model based upon this data. Finally, the thesis describes revealed preferences and behavioural interpretations of the study.
The emergence of the public service broadcasting (PSB) system in post-authoritarian countries in Asia, including Indonesia (after the 1998 political reform), is not in line with the aspiration of the democratic media system. Most public-oriented broadcasters were born as a hybrid of universal and ideal models of a democratic channel with local and transitional media systems. This article presents an analysis of various PSB models rooted in different countries. It examines the efforts made by Indonesian stakeholders to formulate an Indonesian style of PSB from 2002 until today. The qualitative method was used to review previous studies relating to PSB policies and governance throughout the world and official policies relating to the broadcast system in Indonesia. In-depth interviews were conducted with a former legislator who formulated Broadcast Law no. 32/2002, RRI and TVRI Supervisory Boards members, and media activists. The selected offices of the Radio of the Republic of Indonesia (RRI) and the Television of the Republic of Indonesia (TVRI) were also observed as the national PSB providers in Indonesia. This study found different pathways in PSB models (policy and governance) between developed democracies, such as the UK and Germany, and post-authoritarian countries, such as Indonesia. From a regulatory perspective, Indonesia's PSB model is a mixture of the ideal form rooted in matured democracies with the old management of RRI/TVRI as ex-government channels. The hybrid PSB model has impeded RRI and TVRI's transition to becoming actual public service broadcasters.
This essay is at once a critical analysis, an experiment in form, and – with some irony – a cautionary tale. Triggered by the inclusion of prodromal diagnoses in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, and the recent call by the United States' (U.S.) Obama administration for increased mental health screening, I argue that shifts toward identifying and intervening on one's potential madness, or risk, circulate with/in the contemporary U.S. climate of intensified discipline and terror, and use Bipolar Disorder as a site to critically explore how and with what implications this circulation occurs. Specifically, I weave Massumi's 'political ontology of threat' with the narrative of a woman diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder in order to trace the pre-emptive politics and affective logic of a risk-based approach to madness. I contend that the diagnosing and drugging of potential is a self-perpetuating loop that is personally and politically harmful, and consider alternatives to this burgeoning practice.
We consider the effect of an increase in public investments on output in Europe against the background of a sharp drop of public investments in a number of EU countries during the crisis and subsequent policy discussions on the need to stimulate public investments. We start with a brief overview of recent developments in public investments, including some methodological issues, and provide a literature overview of the effect of public investments on growth. On the basis of updated estimates of the public capital stock, we estimate the output response to a public capital impulse, using VAR models. In addition, using a structural model, we investigate the sensitivity of the macroeconomic impact of an increase in public investments to alternative assumptions about economic structures and policy implementations.
Entropy has been used as measure of disorder in several ways. Originally based on physics, the term has extended its meaning, and since the late 19th century describes the upcoming end of the world, the heat death, the unstoppable increase of disorder within closed systems (e. g., the world or the universe). Understood in this way, entropy has been a shifting concept which has partly adopted the role of apocalyptic narratives. The paper follows this concept from its origin in thermodynamics (Clausius) into cybernetic theory (Wiener, von Foerster) and beyond. It emphasizes the dissimilar understandings and misunderstandings of a physical notion including its surrounding philosophical discussions. During this journey, different and sometimes opposed concepts of entropy appear: First it is part of the second law of thermodynamics measuring molecule disorder; then it makes a shift into information theory and emerges as measure of noise, of misleading and chaotic non-information. Depending upon the precise definition of information, it then pops up as "hell for cyberneticists" or – on the contrary – as the basis of any kind of progression and innovation. Finally, the paper indicates that the issue of entropy remains an unclear and a heterogeneous notion which plays a major role in theorizing (and measuring) the other side of order. However, because of the concept's ambiguity, it is inappropriate to translate entropy into the social sciences and hence as a justification of pessimistic prospects.
Publicado como: Barcelona GSE Working Paper, nº 743, November 2013 Presentada conferencia en: Facultat d'Economia i Empresa, Universitat Rovira Virgili, Reus (Tarragona), el 4 de marzo de 2014 ; We model the political process as consisting of voting on the issue considered salient, public expenditure, with a subsequent consensus over size of government and income taxation. We prove that for each majoritarian choice there is a unique consensus policy on progressivity and government size. We empirically validate the implication that the sign of the relationship between inequality and progressivity chosen by the median voter is conditional on the degree of substitutability between government and market supplied goods. We also obtain that this substitutability has a negative impact on the negative marginal effect of inequality on the size of government ; Esteban and Mayoral research has been funded by the Generalitat de Catalunya and the CICYT (ECO2011-25293) ; Peer Reviewed
Abstract Introduction Multidimensional efficiency analysis can provide important insights into the performance of hospitals. In this paper, we propose a multidimensional model based on Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) to investigate and compare the efficiency of public hospitals in Brazil. Methods Data from 21 public hospitals were collected from public databases (OECD - Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development; SIH-SUS - SUS Hospital Information System, Datasus, Brazil). Four inputs (Number of medical and non-medical staff, Annual revenue, Number of beds, Average length of patient hospitalization), four Variables of Influence (Type of hospital, Accredited hospital, Number of medical specialties, Resources from government) and four Outputs (Number of outpatient care services, Number of hospitalizations, Number of surgeries, Number of exams) were used to feed the DEA model. Results Seven hospital units reach 100% efficiency and, according to DEA, can be considered efficient units. Two units were considered "almost efficient" and the remaining twelve units perform poorly, considering the data supplied to the DEA model. As a whole, the average efficiency of the hospitals investigated was 79% (0.79). Conclusion A very heterogeneous performance has been found among the Brazilian public hospitals investigated. Besides, the reasonably low average efficiency seems to indicate that the system has a large potential for improvement in almost all areas associated with the input and output variables investigated in this paper.
The results leading to this publication have received funding from the Innovative Medicines Initiative 2 Joint Undertaking under grant agreement No 777394 for the project AIMS-2-TRIALS. This Joint Undertaking receives support from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and EFPIA and AUTISM SPEAKS, Autistica, SFARI. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; or in the decision to publish the results. Any views expressed are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the funders.
