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Disaster management depends on large volumes of accurate, relevant, on-time geo-information that various organizations systematically create and maintain. In The Netherlands municipalities are an important party in the safety management chain when accurate geo-information is concerned. As opposed to municipalities in many other countries Dutch municipalities not only carry out central government policies but also have several policy areas in which they operate autonomously. Hence Dutch municipalities have a wealth of geo-information. This is why in the safety management chain Dutch municipalities are often referred to as the fourth column besides the police, the fire department and medical care. However, due to the municipal autonomy the geo-information is structured and described in as many ways as there are municipalities. This results in a situation in which the semantics of geo-information is not even always clear to the producer and whereby formal semantics are almost never available. On the other hand following several large scale disasters such as the fire in a pub in Volendam and the exploded fireworks factory in Enschede Dutch government has decided to reorganise disaster management in The Netherlands in so called safety regions. These regions consist of several municipalities. Thus this development increases the demand for easily accessible and readily available relevant, standardized and accurate geo-information from municipalities on a regional level. Working from the same municipal autonomy that has created the described difficulties Dutch municipalities have organised themselves to found DataLand. DataLand is the non-profit on-stop-shop for municipal geo-information. The mission of this initiative is to make the municipal geo-information widely accessible. In fulfilling its mission DataLand together with its participating municipalities standardizes the registrations and formalizes the semantics so that third parties know what information they get. Also DataLand actively monitors the data quality. This paper will focus primarily on how DataLand as a one stop shop offers a solution to the problem of data management between the different columns involved in disaster management. The paper will demonstrate how challenges for data management, data collection, translation, integration, classification and attributes schemes, temporal aspects (up-to-dateness, history, predictions of the future) are tackled by using simple, low cost IT solutions. Also the paper will describe how open communication is of overriding importance in creating co-operation between different institutions involved with disaster management. Secondly how this solution works in practice will be demonstrated by discussing the results of a reallife, real-time test that DataLand recently conducted together with the Regional Rescue Service Rotterdam-Rijnmond (RHRR) over the course of a year. This experiment not only showed the improved response time of this rescue service body but also for the first time gave clear insight in the user needs of disaster management bodies with regard to municipal geoinformation. In closing the paper will reflect on the lessons learned in developing a one-stop-shop for municipal geo-information. This is important as the concept of a one-stop-shop to facilitate smooth data flows between different partners involved in disaster management is also feasible for other parties involved in disaster management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a report of the results of a survey of citizen beliefs and attitudes about public services and the quality of life in Prince George, British Columbia, Canada in the summer of 1997. Information is provided about the perceived frequency with which various services were used, the perceived satisfaction and value for tax dollars spent on the services as well as on levels of government officials generally, preferences for the provision for more or fewer services and for spending relatively more or less revenue on different services, views about user-fees, and views about smoke-free public places and the likely impact of bylaw changes on people's behaviour. Using such information, we examined correlations among perceived satisfaction, perceived value for money, use, spending preferences and demand, and, using multiple regression analysis, explained 66% of the variance in life satisfaction scores, 57% of the variance in satisfaction with the quality of life scores and 37% of the variance in happiness scores. Applying LISREL 8.14, it was shown that a model in which our three global indicators were explained by 13 domain indicators was superior to a model in which the latter indicators were explained by the former, i.e., a Bottom-Up model was superior to a Top-Down model. A simple linear model was also used to explain 32%, 20% and 19%, respectively, of the variance in satisfaction with municipal, provincial and federal government officials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on knowledge management-led cultural change in Canadian public services. The findings and discussion in the article are based on a small key informant survey of leading public and private sector executives and social scientists. Key research questions emerged from the desire to establish from the perspective of a range of contributors, their views on the author's assertion that knowledge management is generally perceived as representing an uphill climb in most complex organisations. Interviews were conducted with both public and private sector executives and leaders via a key informant survey carried out in the summer and early fall of 2000. With two exceptions dictated by distance and inclement weather, all interviews were conducted in person. Key questions posed to each person interviewed attempted to elicit ways and means to promote collaboration, open knowledge sharing environments, eliminate information silos and leverage knowledge assets in the public service.

The creation of a new communist state demands from all participants in socialist construction a firm, genuinely proletarian labor discipline, the fullest use of every working day, every working hour, and the decisive elimination of all types of disorganized production, in particular absenteeism. Why do we need a second five-year plan when we have not gotten anything from the first one? Purge the Towns of Social [i.e., Human] Garbage! By the end of the term of the first five-year plan, 10.7 million new workers had entered the labor force. The cities and construction sites were teeming with people, but housing, running water, electricity, sewage disposal, and food distribution were all still woefully inadequate for the needs of the new population. People lived amid horrific conditions: crowded into single rooms and corners in subdivided apartments, in hastily erected, rickety barracks, in primitive tent and cave dwellings, even in the factories and shops themselves. Thousands of new, badly needed workers arrived each day at the country's sprawling construction sites, only to leave again for lack of housing. Turnover rates soared as workers sought better living situations in other places. Everywhere labor was on the move, trudging from building site to city, thronging the railroad stations, packing the trains. The plants and sites were extremely disorganized. Dining halls and kitchens built to serve several hundred workers now turned out meals for thousands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This story begins and ends at the gates to the working class. These “gates” have served as a metaphor for policy, or, more specifically, for the state's attempts to define and control the size, composition, and behavior of the working class. By dividing those who were permitted to enter from those who would remain outside, the state used the gates to construct the working class from above. The gates were not, however, maintained by the state alone. Put up in the 1920s to exclude women and peasants, the gates also privileged and revived an older “kadrovye” working class that had all but disappeared during the civil war. The gates were staunchly defended by the unions and contested by the Zhenotdel. In 1930, they were toppled by a vast and mobile crowd of peasants, women, and other unemployed people in search of work. As job opportunities opened up and managers everywhere faced severe labor shortages, new workers streamed into jobs and onto construction sites, forming a new working class that now encompassed formerly excluded elements. The Party struggled to keep pace with a labor-market expansion that its own industrial policies had created. Veterans of the Zhenotdel, organizers from KUTB, and female members of the planning brigades cheered as the gates fell and women edged forward toward the best of the once-protected working-class positions: production jobs in heavy industry. The unions, labor exchanges, and local labor organizations all lost their place as gatekeepers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Millions of women – wives and family members of workers and employees, servants, women in handicrafts and artels, landless women, poor peasants, collective farmers, eastern tribal women – this entire mass, once occupied with exhausting and dulling household labor, is now joining the great socialist construction of the country. The composition of the new working class takes its shape in large measure from unused reserves in the working-class family. In the spring of 1929, the Party adopted the first five-year plan. The plan, taking up three volumes and more than two thousand pages, allocated 64.5 billion rubles to investment, 78 percent of which was targeted for heavy industry and 50 percent for new construction. Adoption of the plan, in the words of one economist, was “tantamount to turning the country into a vast construction site.” After a decade of unemployment and exclusion, the gates to the working class came tumbling down. Almost 2.3 million people entered the waged labor force in 1930, followed by 6.3 million more in 1931. Party leaders, labor officials, and planners critically noted at the time that this mass influx of new workers occurred “samotek,” or independent of any state plan or policy. The building of huge new industrial complexes and hydroelectric stations such as Magnitostroi, Kuznetsstroi, and Dneprostroi drew thousands of workers. Hungry town dwellers and dispossessed peasants massed at new construction sites and factory gates in search of work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The fulfillment of the plan in 1931 and the following years demands a series of maneuvers from the labor force: a group of men must leave work, and women must replace them. Men, after retraining in their positions, will be sent to jobs that would be harmful to the female organism. In the summer of 1930, as hundreds of thousands of unemployed workers, peasants, and women poured through the tumbled gates to the working class, planners quietly tucked away a set of elaborate blueprints for the deployment of women in the files of the Commissariat of Labor (NKT), the State Planning Commission (Gosplan), and the Council of People's Commissars (SNK). The plans, redrafted many times, had resulted in a final, detailed document entitled “The Five-Year Plan for Female Labor.” Never published or publicly discussed, this plan had emerged from countless meetings of NKT, Gosplan, the Committee to Improve the Labor and Life of Women (KUTB), and other commissariats and departments throughout the spring and summer of 1930. Planners based their plan for female labor on intensive research into Soviet industry in 1930. Surveying the advances of rationalization and mechanization in various industries, they set target figures and training quotas for women throughout the economy, specifying their numbers and placement in various sectors, industries, shops, and jobs. The plans, preserved in the State Archive of the Russian Federation (GARF), are fully revealed and analyzed for the first time in this chapter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The year 2000 marked a major turning point in the history of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY). On September 24, elections for the federation's president, legislature and local municipal governments in Serbia resulted in a resounding defeat for incumbent president Slobodan Milosevie and his ruling coalition. Although Milosevie and his allies tried to deny opposition forces their victory, a major show of people power on October 5 in Belgrade and indeed throughout Serbia, swept away the old regime and effectively ended more than 50 years of Communist rule.

Chapter 8 of the book "City Making: Building Communities Without Building Walls," by Gerald E. Frug is presented. It offers information on the conception and provisions of public services of different cities in the U.S. Moreover, it presents the understanding of consumers on city services and the importance of community building to them.

The article deals with marketization and the struggling logics of home care in the Netherlands. In many Western welfare states, marketization has been announced as a potential solution for almost all of the problems in the field of social care. The logic of the market was rhetorically very successful, and it restructured care in a managerial way, although it did not result in cost reduction or efficiency. Instead, it destabilized former logics of care--the fragile balance between the bureaucratic administration of public services, the professional system, and private care arrangements. Marketization is only one of the forms in which restructuring of care, a trend in many European welfare states, takes shape. It can be distinguished in a structural and a social-cultural dimension. On one hand, it is part and parcel of an overall shift in the relationships between the three institutional pillars of welfare: the state, the market, and the family. On the other hand, it reshapes the character of public services by introducing market principles in former bureaucratic/professional organizations.

Chapter 6 of the book "Vouchers & the Provision of Public Services" is presented. It focuses on the housing programs of foreign countries. It provides an overview of the housing policies and experiences of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Great Britain. It highlights the four strategies aimed at ensuring housing affordability.

Chapter 1 of the book "Vouchers & the Provision of Public Services," is presented. It defines voucher and sets its goals which include choice and efficiency, choice and equity, increased competition, replacement of other programs, restriction of choice and open ended and capped incentives. It discusses alternative and related mechanisms of vouchers, issues determining its effectiveness and issues concerning its structural design such as universality and permanence. It examines constitutional issues which may arise when offering vouchers.

Chapter 17 of the book "Vouchers & the Provision of Public Services" is presented. It discusses the results of a survey on the use of vouchers covering a wide range of programs in the U.S. It highlights various levels of government and private sector entities as well as the voucher tools and its design dimensions. It offers observations on the implementation of voucher programs.

Chapter 16 of the book "Vouchers & the Provision of Public Services" is presented. It discusses the bundling of vouchers between the structured and fragmented choices. It highlights the negative income tax paradigm and the issues raised by the structured choice model. It explores alternative approaches to the structured choice model as well as the ways of reducing income testing.

Chapter 13 of the book "Vouchers & the Provision of Public Services" is presented. It discusses the federal constitutional problems with K-12 vouchers used in U.S. public schools. It highlights the cases tried and decided by both State and Federal courts in relation to the K-12 voucher program. It discusses the use of vouchers in religious schools.

Chapter 5 of the book "Vouchers & the Provision of Public Services" is presented. It explores the housing certificate program of the U.S. where low-income households receive federal voucher assistance to help pay for rental housing. It highlights the tax benefits that the program offers to developers of low-cost housing projects as well as the history of the program. It discusses the fundamentals of the program.

Chapter 3 of the book "Vouchers & the Provision of Public Services," is presented. It describes the political contexts that frame policymaking where vouchers are considered as a tool for addressing a number of problems that range from feeding the poor to providing medical care. It cites that the theoretical attraction and practical virtues of vouchers as a policy tool will keep the idea well positioned to serve as the basis for proposals in any number of issue areas.

Chapter 9 of the book "Vouchers & the Provision of Public Services" is presented. It explores the use of vouchers for elementary and secondary education in the U.S. It highlights the history of school choice in the U.S. and the arguments for and against the use of vouchers for the said purpose. It discusses the effects of school choice on the academic performance of children.

Chapter 4 of the book "Vouchers & the Provision of Public Services" is presented. It reports whether the food stamp program can offer lessons to other fields of public service provision on the advantages and disadvantages that arise from the use of vouchers as a tool for the delivery of public services. It discusses the history of the program, how it is operated, and the rules governing the program. It concludes by saying that there are few such lessons from the food stamp program.

Chapter 2 of the book "Vouchers & the Provision of Public Services," is presented. It discusses economic issues related to vouchers and enumerates reasons for using them. It examines non voucher alternatives to problems addressed by vouchers, issues concerning consumers, and extents to which vouchers are cash equivalents. It discusses the effects of a competitive market and choice between voucher programs and public supply.

Examines the contracting process in an era of globalization and its implications for governance, policy learning and strategic management with particular reference to local government. Rise of the contracting state; Transformation of the organization and management of local government; Attempt to control the costs of providing local authority services.

This article examines some of the changes to public services that have not been cut or sold off as assets. An important facet of the restructuring of the private sector in recent years, especially in the realm of manufacturing, has, supposedly, been the investment and technical change. This category of restructuring refers to capital investment in new forms of machinery and equipment and is often associated with substantial reductions in employment levels. These include the computerization of health and welfare service records, the introduction of electronic diagnostic equipment in hospitals, cook-chill catering systems, computerized record keeping in libraries and distance learning systems in education. There is some evidence that the jobs most vulnerable to technological change within the service sector have been clerical jobs, such as when computerized word processing systems have led to staff reductions. One of the most important changes affecting those who remain within the public sector in recent years has been "intensification," that is, increases in labor productivity via managerial and organizational changes. In addition to strategies designed to make public sector workers increase their rate of work output, there have also been numerous attempts to increase the flexibility of their working practices.

Performance contracts often fail to improve the performance of state-owned enterprises because of information asymmetry, insufficient commitment, and poor incentives. The author suggests that such contracts be used sparingly, and only when a government's commitment to the exercise is strong, and in conjunction with supportive reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the role of the government in the delivery of public services and management of public finance. Tasks of government; Theory on the development of local public services in the Netherlands; Theory on the development of taxation and expenditure.

Introduction The European or North American who visited Latin America in the years before 1870 invariably came away struck by the diversity of the area – in geography, in people, in environment. Cities there were. Indeed cities had played a dominant role in the development of Spanish America at least, even when they contained only a small percentage of the area's total population. But generally they appeared small, poor and broken down. Far more impressive was the countryside of Latin America – the imposing Andean mountains, the vast Amazonian jungle, the endless grasslands of the llanos or the pampas, the picturesque Indian hamlets, the enormous landed estates. Consequently it was rural Latin America that most vividly emerged from the travel accounts, letters and dispatches of the middle decades of the nineteenth century. Nevertheless, a bird's eye view of the Latin American city in 1870 will set the stage for the dramatic changes that the ensuing decades brought to the area's urban landscape. Even the largest Latin American cities appeared small, in large measure because of their plaza-orientation. Both the residences of the wealthy and the powerful and the principal urban activities of administration, services and trade were concentrated around the central plaza. Rio de Janeiro, Havana, Mexico City and Buenos Aires all had central districts of only a few hundred blocks. These areas, often extending no more than five or ten blocks from the main plaza, had the appearance of an urbanized zone: substantial housing, paving, sidewalks and street lights. Located in this central district were markets, offices, stores, clubs, theatres, churches and schools to serve the elite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction The half-century following the wars of independence in Latin America, that is to say, the period from the 1820s to the 1860s or 1870s, had been generally disappointing in terms of economic growth, although here and there, in the niches of a somewhat ramshackle but nevertheless changing structure, modest material and organizational gains were made. Over the region as a whole, the uneven diffusion of commercialization during the colonial period had left a complex mosaic of capitalist and non-capitalist relations of production, ranging from reciprocal labour networks, slavery, other compulsory labour regimes and debt peonage to share-cropping and various forms of tenant farming, wage labour and small-scale commodity production by artisans and smallholders. Communal ownership of land still existed alongside privately held properties both large and small, while other rural holdings were controlled by ecclesiastical and public authorities. Gradually, however, over the course of several decades, relationships more compatible with capitalist modes of interaction gained ground as long established colonial mechanisms for allocating resources fell into disuse and the world capitalist system expanded. A half-century of incremental change had not been enough to transform the economic organization of Latin America, but it did sufficiently alter conditions for the more sweeping institutional and technological developments of 1870–1914 to get under way. The regulatory systems established during the colonial period were being dismantled at the same time as public administration was breaking down and new, sometimes contested, national boundaries were being drawn. These developments disrupted local commerce and in many instances halted the former inter-regional (but by then inter-country) currents of trade within Latin America, while the strong gravitational pull of the expanding North Atlantic economies reoriented economic life towards a slowly growing participation in global trade no longer determined by Iberian commercial policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reports on the debate on the issue of quality indicators in French public services. Balance between service provider and public authority; Issues which affect the construction of quality indicators; Need for standards defined as a function of the organization's priority objectives.

Focuses on the measurement and improvement in the quality of public services in Spain. Measurements of quality; Background and purpose of the Observatory on the quality of public services; Holding of the first administrative workshop on the assessment and improvement of service quality.

Discusses the importance of perception and expectation in analyzing satisfaction and quality of public services. Implications for management; Shift from total quality management and total satisfaction management; Focus on service management, perception management and expectation management.

St. Petersburg, or Petrograd as it was named in deference to anti-German sentiment after the outbreak of world war in August 1914, was the main theater of revolutionary activity. But it was by no means the only one. Moscow and numerous other Russian cities figured prominently in the events that brought down the old order. In the final decades of late imperial Russia the changes associated with modernization profoundly altered the Russian city and transformed the conditions of daily life and labor for most of its inhabitants. Urban industrialization obviously played an important role in this general process of social, economic, and, ultimately, political change. In few places were the consequences more plainly to be seen than in the Empire's principal cities, Moscow and St. Petersburg, which are the focus of attention in this chapter. My purpose is to describe some features of the urban environment that might serve as a backdrop to the revolution of 1917. Before embarking on this task, however, it is necessary to sketch in broad outline the pattern of population growth and industrial development in the Empire as a whole. Citizens and cities in late imperial Russia During the nineteenth century Russia grew significantly both in areal extent and in number of subjects. In the first quarter of the century the Caucasus region with its predominantly Christian, but ethnically diverse and non-Slavic peoples, was brought into the ambit of Empire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chapter 6 of the book "Sir Walter Raleigh" is presented. It examines the social, private and public life of Sir Walter Raleigh and cites some his voyages collection. It illustrates some of his characteristics including his closeness to the Queen in monopolizing energy in the public service and inexpiable offences during his adventure in Leicester.

The article presents a reprint of the article "Life in Lo-Tan, the Magnificent," by Peter Francis Nowlan, which appeared in March 1929 issue of "Amazing Stories." It explores the life of Anthony Rogers in Lo-Tan and his relationships with his comrades. It examines the depth of laziness into which the Hans had been dragged by their civilization. It highlights the economic system of the Hans.

This article focuses upon the imperative for public services to respond to the economic and social implications of the information society and knowledge economy. Essential to successfully achieving this, would appear to be the requirement to maximise the potential for integration across the many layers and tiers of existing models of service delivery. Indeed, whether discussing people or technology, it is clear that all contributors perceive the integration dynamic as being the area where both the greatest potential for, and the greatest resistance to, the achievement of change, chiefly resides. considerable levels of change have already been achieved in some public service domains and it is clear that globally, a powerful change agenda is emerging. However, the migration to new models of public service delivery is ultimately likely to be rather more evolutionary in approach than occurring as a single revolutionary act. The reasons for this are largely related to the sheer scope, scale and complexity of the public service environment and the requirement to fundamentally re-engineer all processes contained within it, in order for profound change to be possible.

A foreword to the book "Vouchers & the Provision of Public Services" is presented.

Presents the advantages of the fisheries household resettlement program in Newfoundland. Offer of employment; Possibility of greater social activity; Provision of public services.

"One of the most striking facts of twentieth century life is the population explosion in metropolitan America. In every decade since the first census was taken in 1790 except the 1930's there has been enormous population growth in metropolitan areas. Demographers assert this growth is likely to continue for the indefinite future. This population explosion is one of the major factors contributing to the metropolitan problem; i.e., the problem of providing urban services efficiently and at reasonable cost to residents of these areas. . . . Problems in providing urban services . . . have grown beyond city limits, but the city's power to cope with these problems ends abruptly at its boundary lines." One proposed solution is city‐county consolidation, defined by the National Association of County Officials as "the unification of the governments of one or more cities with the surrounding county." Presented in this bibliography are selected books, newspaper and periodical articles, U.S. government publications, theses, and dissertations relating to city‐county consolidation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The author examines the process of ascertaining the cost of providing local services and determining a user fee or charge thereby. Discussed are the pertinent public policy issues, the use of cost‐finding processes, the cost finding process in action, and issues to consider in establishing rates when the decision is made to implement user fees. Several public policy concerns and issues that local officials will confront when setting user fees and charges may be identified, among them issues of equity and how the fees relate to community problems and needs. In the author's view, the issue that will generate the most concern is that of equity: who will pay the charge, how much they will pay, and whether the full cost of service should be paid by those who use it. Determining the actual cost of a governmental activity is a critical component in this process, and is crucial to the needs of local managers and policymakers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This book is a multifaceted study of the delivery of police services. "It addresses key issues of urban service delivery from the perspective of police operations. [The authors] offer an intensive analysis of police services using data covering both the crime and noncrime aspects of police activity. Their examination of police services provides the foundation for exploring the effects of urban politics on service delivery. This study raises serious questions about the validity of some of the current basic premises about service delivery, including the role of politics and bureauucratic decision rules as determinants of service disbursements. The authors outline the need for a more comprehensive approach to the study of service delivery—an approach that would account for all possible sources of influence on the delivery process, the content of those influences, and the linkages between the sources of influence and the process. Their recommendations include . . . ideas for dealing with the bureaurcratic and political influences on the service delivery process." [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This report examines changes in municipal services in New York City during the past four years, 1978–1981. The report also recommends that the City of New York and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority establish and publish long‐range performance goals for each of the services for which they are responsible. Specifically, the report suggests performance goals for fiscal year 1986 for each of the seven major services examined (police, correction, fire, sanitation, transit, public education, and health and hospitals). The report examines changes in three major aspects of each service: the volume or level of service provided, the quality of the service, and the efficiency with which the service is delivered. Both the changes for the last fiscal year (1980–1981) and those of the last four fiscal years are presented and discussed in the body of the report. These four year changes are summarized in a figure. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

"The quality of life in cities is intimately affected by the most mundane public services: collection of garbage, maintenance of public spaces and facilities, regulation of local traffic, and so on." Despite the importance of these services, little is known about how they function or why they are so often deemed unsatisfactory. "This book treats the process of urban service dispensation as a problem of bureaucratic behavior and organization. Because, in [the author's] opinion, urban service systems, and the bureaucracies that drive them, are best understood when explored in specific detail, the book is a case study: it concentrates on the activity of a single government agency (housing inspection) in one major American city (Boston) during a fairly recent period (circa 1973)." The book is based on quantitative data pertaining to Boston's housing‐inspection system in 1973, and on additional empirical research which began then and was largely completed by 1974. Since that time a number of innovations have been introduced into the management of Boston's housing code. Essentially housing is used as an example to provide some insights into the nature of city services. "Public agencies . . . share some similar organizational problems, and thus pose, to some degree, certain common issues of public administration." [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]