The challenges faced by the public sector are many and varied. Civil services at the forefront of tackling pressing problems in a whole range of areas from climate change to income inequality are being allocated less money to do so. This collection explores how public sectors have adapted to address the demands placed on them in the 21st Century.

This book analyzes policy-making and implementation in Indonesia. Conducted at the School of Government and Public Policy (Indonesia), the research presented here provides original insights into the country's public policy processes by exploring the conditions on the ground that shape implementation. The studies brought together in this volume are based on fieldwork involving interviews with various stakeholders, first-hand observations, and the collection of original documents and data. They address policy issues ranging from health insurance, district recruitment, community empowerment, and solid waste management, to tourism and the status of refugees. The result is a wealth of case-study data on policy implementation experiences in Indonesia that will benefit students, academics and practitioners alike.

This book presents a detailed review of high-performance computing infrastructures for next-generation big data and fast data analytics. Features: includes case studies and learning activities throughout the book and self-study exercises in every chapter; presents detailed case studies on social media analytics for intelligent businesses and on big data analytics (BDA) in the healthcare sector; describes the network infrastructure requirements for effective transfer of big data, and the storage infrastructure requirements of applications which generate big data; examines real-time analytics solutions; introduces in-database processing and in-memory analytics techniques for data mining; discusses the use of mainframes for handling real-time big data and the latest types of data management systems for BDA; provides information on the use of cluster, grid and cloud computing systems for BDA; reviews the peer-to-peer techniques and tools and the common information visualization techniques, used in BDA.

This book examines the antecedents and consequences of citizens' confidence in different political institutions and authorities. Its main argument states that a distinction between confidence in representative and regulative institutions and authorities is of crucial importance in order to gain novel insights into the relevance of political confidence for the viability of democratic systems. Relying on individual-level data from the European Social Survey (ESS), the author provides empirical evidence that citizens from a total of twenty-one European countries make a distinction between confidence in representative institutions and authorities and confidence in regulative institutions and authorities. Furthermore, the author shows that both types of political confidence emanate from different sources and are associated with varying consequences. Overall, these findings indicate that confidence in representative and confidence in regulative institutions and authorities establish two qualitatively different types of political confidence, each with distinct implications for the functioning and well-being of modern democracies.

How do institutions shape the long-term direction of economies? What are the relevant causes of institutional change? How do institutions alter our standards of rationality and the possibilities of individual action? And are institutions raising or lowering the total sum of costs in the social order?
Addressing such questions, "The Cost of Institutions" is a detailed account of how institutions impose information costs on markets--economic, political, and cultural. This book disputes the possibility that a market under scale can achieve equilibrium. It argues that as institutions attempt to support the growth of markets, they evolve with a general tendency to favor a specific form of information. The authors explain how this distortion in the information base of the economy biases the incentive system and the pattern of resource allocation; they further explain how it transforms production probabilities and the intricacies of human exchange, causing the loss of the capacity to preserve individual liberty.
Scholars and students from a variety of fields will welcome "The Cost of Institutions," which identifies the dominant factors that link the interaction of institutions across markets and, in so doing, takes a major step toward the development of an integrated theory of institutions.

Governments worldwide struggle to remove policy deadlocks and enact much-needed reforms in organizational structure and public services. In this book, Jacob Torfing explores collaborative innovation as a way for public and private stakeholders to break the impasse. These network-based collaborations promise to multiply the skills, ideas, energy, and resources between government and its partners across agency boundaries and in the nonprofit and private sectors. Torfing draws on his own pioneering work in Europe as well as examples from the United States and Australia to construct a cross-disciplinary framework for studying collaborative innovation. His analysis explores its complex and interactive processes as he looks at how drivers and barriers may enhance or impede the collaborative approach. He also reflects on the roles institutional design, public management, and governance reform play in spurring collaboration for public sector innovation. The result is a theoretically and empirically informed book that carefully demonstrates how multi-actor collaboration can enhance public innovation in the face of fiscal constraint, the proliferation of wicked problems, and the presence of unsatisfied social needs.

As the study of public administration becomes more theoretically aware, researchers need to understand the strengths and weaknesses of different theoretical perspectives. This volume examines seven theoretical perspectives of public budgeting: incrementalism, the budget process model, the organizational process model, the median voter model, the 'greedy bureaucrat' model, a post-modern model, and the transaction cost model. Major research from each perspective is examined and critically reviewed. The development of each model is examined in detail, its strengths and weaknesses identified, and the potential for future research discussed, allowing the reader to understand the place of the model and its applicability to their own research. This volume will be a vital resource for researchers in public budgeting, public finance, public administration, and political science.

In building resilience to face the complexities of the twenty-first century, seven critical essays explore the governance challenges facing companies and governments. The book examines alternate models of societal governance, the information concerns of the electorate, redesign of citizen participation, interrelationship between enterprise and state, payment considerations for essential public services, travel towards oligarchic style government and why the role of Minister of State requires re-examination. This collection offers a unique overview of the governance of citizenship, enterprise and government.

Personalisation - the idea that public services should be tailored to the individual, with budgets devolved to the service user or frontline staff - is increasingly seen as the future of the welfare state. This book focuses on how personalisation evolved as a policy narrative and has mobilised such wide-ranging political support. It will be a valuable resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students in public policy and social policy and for researchers and practitioners working in related fields.

By comparing the autonomy, control and internal management of public organizations, this book show how New Public Management doctrines work out in three small European states with different politico-administrative regimes. Using survey data on 226 state agencies, hypotheses drawing on organization theory and neo-institutional schools are tested.

Public education is suffering attacks that are well funded and extraordinarily complex and multifaceted. These conditions make it difficult for educators and citizens to gather the information they need to mount meaningful resistance, especially since mainstream media tends to be uncritically supportive of neoliberal reforms. The Orwellian language of reforms is adopted and promoted through news outlets, politicians, and film; thus, arguments against these reforms must bubble up through social media and alternative outlets. By providing a coherent, comprehensive description of contemporary neoliberal initiatives and analyzing their effects on students, teachers, administrators, and teacher education, this book will allow educators, parents, students, and citizens to strengthen their resolve to save public education and, potentially, work to preserve the promise of democracy. This book examines and uncovers the effects of standardization and privatization on public education. Contributors consider the how of standardized curriculum and assessment, coupled with philanthropic and corporate pressure, have influenced the experiences of students, parents, and teachers. Divided in sections entitled Testing, Testing; Privatization and Militarization: Redefining Schools; Alienation: Displacing Students and Teachers; and Resistance: Opting Out and Hope for Change, this text offers a combination of information and inspiration for teachers, teacher educators, policymakers, parents and anyone interested in understanding the current state of public education.

What is the point of introducing and executing a policy, programme or project in the lifecycle of an organisation if no forethought has been given to how the success, failure or progressof the exercise will be periodically examined? Both private and public sector organisations need to be responsive to the expectations of their internal and external stakeholders to demonstrate that their performance not only yields the desired results in terms of the "bottom line" but also that those results have integrity, i.e. what was planned is reflected in their processes and in what was eventually achieved. Monitoring and evaluation of policies, programmes and projects examines the key concepts and practices involved in performance tracking and evaluation. Monitoring and evaluation of policies, programmes and projects has drawn from the diverse experiences and expertise of the authors as well as from practical insights gained from practitioners and teaching students at various training courses, nationally and internationally. The balance between theory and practice makes it easy to understand and apply in the workplace, for the achievement of improved results. In this second edition, chapters have been expanded and re-focused to address emerging trends, and new chapters have been added to address institutionalising monitoring and evaluation to make it more participatory. Monitoring and evaluation of policies, programmes and projects remains both a conceptual text and an academic resource for university students, particularly those in management and public administration, as well as a reference work for practitioners and decision-makers in public and private sector organisations.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 15th IFIP WG 5.5 Working Conference on Virtual Enterprises, PRO-VE 2014, held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, in October 2014. The 73 revised papers were carefully selected from 190 submissions. They provide a comprehensive overview of identified challenges and recent advances in various collaborative network (CN) domains and their applications, with a particular focus on the following areas in support of smart networked environments: behavior and coordination; product-service systems; service orientation in collaborative networks; engineering and implementation of collaborative networks; cyber-physical systems; business strategies alignment; innovation networks; sustainability and trust; reference and conceptual models; collaboration platforms; virtual reality and simulation; interoperability and integration; performance management frameworks; performance management systems; risk analysis; optimization in collaborative networks; knowledge management in networks; health and care networks; and mobility and logistics.

This book brings together a selection of June Pallot's most significant work. Written from a country (New Zealand) that led the world in many aspects of its financial management reforms, this work provides thoughtful comment on matters that remain of crucial importance today, especially the constitutional need to carefully monitor and respond to the reform initiatives and motives of executive government. Revisiting accounting issues and developments in the public sector, and reminding readers that the fundamental purpose of government accounting is different from that for the business sector, this book provides a timely reminder of the need for caution when considering the application in the public sector of accounting techniques devised for business purposes. June Pallot's legacy challenges accountants in the public sector to find better ways of addressing "collective decision-making under new governance approaches," proposes ways forward and offers suggestions for future research. This book, prepared by her colleague Susan Newberry, is a tribute to June's work.

This book is a translation and celebration of Slovenian politician France Bucar's seminal work. Divided into two parts, the book first contains several studies of Bucar's arguments. As Bucar applied his system theory to a variety of issues, so too the conglomerate of scholars and issues critically assessed is interdisciplinary, ranging from political science and economics, to law and philosophy, as well as to natural sciences. The contributors and the questions of their essays in the edited volume are as follows. Peter Verovsek (University of Sheffield) examines different branches of Critical Theory and classifies Bucar within them. Mark Hamilton (Inter-American Defense College) discusses system dynamics of Bucar's system theory. Urska Velikonja (Georgetown University) applies Bucar's system theory to the question of the ethics, rules, and regulations in financial economics. Finally, Matej Drev (Georgia Institute of Technology) connects Bucar to the issue of artificial intelligence and inequality. The second part is the English translation of Bucar's book At A New Crossroads, which addresses the role of ethics in society. Bucar normatively redefines national identity as the crux of his novel understanding of ethics. Using system theory, he addresses the problems of globalization and governance, presenting a post-modern synthesis of the logic of free flow of capital and global citizenship, with national and cultural identity. Speaking to contemporary society, he shows how society and ethical life are reproduced. Bucar provides the reader with new tools to think about national identity and global politics. Bringing an important work on ethics, government, and identity to an entirely new readership, this book will appeal to a broad academic audience, namely students and practitioners in the fields of economics, social sciences, and humanities.

Analyses the impact of the managerial reforms of the European Commission. In 1999 the resignation of the College of Commissioners triggered the implementation of a White Paper which listed 98 measures to overhaul the way the Commission did business. Ten years later what impact have the reforms had on the European Commission and European governance?

This book explores new forms of private, mutual municipal, public-private and "reverse" state funding of public investments, co-payments and shared contributions, vouchers, and pooled public risk-financing. It includes case studies taken from the Nordic countries, UK, Spain, Slovenia, Slovakia, Turkey and South Korea.

"Offices in Brussels representing the interests of regional actors in the EU have carved out a niche position within Europe's expanding multi-level political system. They are now the most visible indicators of the growing role played by EU regions. How can we understand their contribution to EU governance? What do they deliver to Europe's regions? This book covers these issues"--

This book is a valuable resource for the increasing body of researchers and practitioners in the field of geospatial technologies. Written by leading researchers and experts it is designed in such a way that technical achievements and challenges of geospatial computing applications are followed by various applications developed for society. As such, they serve as a bridge between technologists and solution developers, which is critical in the context of developing countries. There have been significant advances in geospatial technologies in India in the last decade, including advances in spatial data infrastructures, geocomputation and spatial databases, and innovative applications in natural resource development. Ranging from LIDAR standards, to data integration using ontologies, and mobile computing, such progress enhances the utility of the technology for both urban and rural development. This book discusses these achievements and considers the way forward.

Practicing E-Government: A Global Perspective presents a variety of chapters covering many of the important topics in e-government, and is intended to elicit comments, raise concerns and open dialogue as e-government programs for mainstream society are continually implemented. This book also responds to e-government's present shortcomings, while exploring a renewed understanding of e-government's visions and responsiveness. In Practicing E-Government: A Global Perspective, professionals collaborate and share best practices in an effort to take the basic concept of digital government and continue to enhance the frameworks that encourage innovation and adoption, moving e-government toward its goal of easy access for the masses. This valuable collection of contributions in this vital emerging technology area is instrumental in broadening our understanding of e-government technologies and potential.

E-government research has flourished as a way of disseminating information and providing services to citizens ever since the popularization of the Internet. Although there have been tremendous advancements in the world of e-government, critical evaluations on the effectiveness of such methods have yet to be determined. Citizens and E-Government: Evaluating Policy and Management examines the role that citizens play in the development of electronic government or e-government, specifically focusing on the impact of e-government and citizens while exploring issues of policy and management. This book not only focuses on the adoption of e-government and its impact on citizens, but it also discusses the effectiveness of this technology as a way of improving citizen access and engagement with their government. Overall, this book is essential for those interested in the importance of citizens in information technology adoption and development of electronic government.

The study of urban governance provides a valuable insight into economic, social, and political forces and how they shape city life. But who and what are the real drivers of change? This innovative text casts new light on the issues and re-examines the state of urban governance at the start of the twenty-first century. Jon Pierre analyses four models of urban governance: 'management', 'corporatist', 'pro-growth' and 'welfare'. Each is assessed in terms of its implications for the major issues, interests and challenges in the contemporary urban arena. Distinctively, Pierre argues that institutions - and the values which underpin them - are the driving forces of change. The book also assesses the impact of globalization upon urban governance. The long-standing debate on the decline of urban governance is re-examined and reformulated by Pierre, who applies a wider international approach to the issues. He argues that the changing cast of private and public actors, combined with new forms of political participation, have resulted in a transformation - rather than a decline - of contemporary urban governance.