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"Opening the Government of Canada presents a compelling case for a more open model of governance in the digital age--but a model that also continues to uphold democratic principles at the heart of the Westminster system. Amanda Clarke details the untold story of the federal bureaucracy's efforts to adapt to digital-age pressures from the mid-2000s onwards. This book reveals the mismatch between the bureaucracy's Closed Government traditions and evolving citizen expectations and digital tools. Striking a balance between reform and tradition, Opening the Government of Canada lays out a roadmap for building a democratically robust, digital-era federal government."--

Design thinking has become a popular approach for governments around the world seeking to address complex governance challenges. It offers novel techniques and speaks to broader questions of who governs, how they govern, and the limits of rational instrumentalism in policy making. Juxtaposing design thinking with an older tradition of policy design, this article offers the first critical analysis of the application of design thinking to policy making. It argues that design thinking does not sufficiently account for the political and organizational contexts of policy work. Design thinking also errs in universally privileging one particular policy style over others, and fails to account for the reality of policy mixes. Despite these deficiencies, it is argued that design thinking can inform and enrich governance by helping policy designers produce more adaptable designs, better appreciate the behavioral dynamics of public sector design, and leverage networked approaches to social problem solving.

No longer restricted to access to information laws and accountability measures, "open government" is now associated with a broad range of goals and functions, including public participation, open data, the improvement of public services and government efficiency. The 59 country strong Open Government Partnership (OGP) suggests that consensus on the value of open government is emerging amongst public officials. Similarly, academics have shown a renewed interest in open government as they discuss, debate and critique the meaning and role of open government reforms today. Yet, despite the diverse aims and tools characterizing contemporary open government, public officials and academics typically approach the subject as a cohesive unit of analysis, making sweeping—and generally non-empirical—claims about its implications, without accounting for the homegrown flavours that may characterize open government in practice. Simply put, the practice and study of contemporary open government suffers a lack of definitional clarity: what exactly is open government today, and how does it vary across governments? In response to these questions, this paper analyses the content of open government policy documents in seven OGP member states (Azerbaijan, Brazil, Canada, Netherlands, Kenya, United Kingdom, and the United States), providing the first systematic, empirically-grounded multi-country comparison of contemporary open government. The paper suggests where the term departs from and retains its original meaning, and how its definition varies across different governments

No longer restricted to access to information laws and accountability measures, "open government" is now associated with a broad range of goals and functions, including public participation, open data, the improvement of public services and government efficiency. The 59 country strong Open Government Partnership (OGP) suggests that consensus on the value of open government is emerging amongst public officials. Similarly, academics have shown a renewed interest in open government as they discuss, debate and critique the meaning and role of open government reforms today. Yet, despite the diverse aims and tools characterizing contemporary open government, public officials and academics typically approach the subject as a cohesive unit of analysis, making sweeping—and generally non-empirical—claims about its implications, without accounting for the homegrown flavours that may characterize open government in practice. Simply put, the practice and study of contemporary open government suffers a lack of definitional clarity: what exactly is open government today, and how does it vary across governments? In response to these questions, this paper analyses the content of open government policy documents in seven OGP member states (Azerbaijan, Brazil, Canada, Netherlands, Kenya, United Kingdom, and the United States), providing the first systematic, empirically-grounded multi-country comparison of contemporary open government. The paper suggests where the term departs from and retains its original meaning, and how its definition varies across different governments

Citizens and governments live increasingly digital lives, leaving trails of digital data that have the potential to support unprecedented levels of mutual government–citizen understanding, and in turn, vast improvements to public policies and services. Open data and open government initiatives promise to "open up" government operations to citizens. New forms of "big data" analysis can be used by government itself to understand citizens' behavior and reveal the strengths and weaknesses of policy and service delivery. In practice, however, open data emerges as a reform development directed to a range of goals, including the stimulation of economic development, and not strictly transparency or public service improvement. Meanwhile, governments have been slow to capitalize on the potential of big data, while the largest data they do collect remain "closed" and under‐exploited within the confines of intelligence agencies. Drawing on interviews with civil servants and researchers in Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States between 2011 and 2014, this article argues that a big data approach could offer the greatest potential as a vehicle for improving mutual government–citizen understanding, thus embodying the core tenets of Digital Era Governance, argued by some authors to be the most viable public management model for the digital age (Dunleavy, Margetts, Bastow, & Tinkler, 2005, 2006; Margetts & Dunleavy, 2013).

ABSTRACTIssues stemming from differences and similarities in cultural identities affect residents and workforces in care homes in Scotland, as they do across the United Kingdom. Theoretical guidance and policy drivers emphasise the importance of considering cultural diversity when planning or enacting person-centred care processes, regardless of where health or social care takes place. Nevertheless, there is a recognised worldwide dearth of research concerning the intersections of culture, dementia and long-term care. This being so, a recent research study found that inadequate understandings of issues stemming from cultural diversity could be seen to constrain person-centred care in some Scottish care homes. In addition, the study uncovered little-recognised socio-cultural phenomena which were observed to positively enhance person-centre care. This article will focus on that, and will lay out findings from the study which lead to the following broad assertion: there is a broad lack of understanding of the power, and potential utility, of shared identity and community as a bulwark against the erosion of personhood which is often associated with dementia. This article describes these findings in some detail, thereby providing fresh insights into how shared cultural identity, and the sense of community it may bring, bears upon the interactions between workers and residents with dementia in Scottish care homes. It then suggests how the school of 'person-centred care' may be developed through further research into these phenomena.