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British playwright David Edger will present a play this month which reflects the failure of co-ordination and relation between the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and Old Labor members of Wyverdale District Council. The full contents and the theme of play are discussed.

Warren Rudman was riding in a taxi September 11 listening to public radio when he heard that terrorists had destroyed the World Trade Center. The former Republican senator from New [...]

A study investigated performance auditing within an organizational and political setting. The analysis focused on the development of the technology of performance auditing from 1973-1998 within one research site, the Australian National Audit Office. The research aimed to determine the degree to which performance auditing is a malleable social construct, ass opposed to prior attempts to define it as an invariable technical practice.

How government agencies' imposition of a farm-to-fork regulatory approach in food safety and consumer advocates' calls for wider microbiological testing led to the decline of hazard analysis-critical control points (HACCP) is discussed. HACCP, a food safety measure with roots to the U.S. space program, had been adopted by industry sectors to enhance food safety at lower costs.

The regulatory governance for the infrastructure sector in Brazil at both federal and state levels is evaluated using an index that captures the essence of regulatory governance that translates observable attributes of the regulatory agencies into either 1 or 0. It is found that regulatory governance among the 21 agencies in the index is relatively similar with better results at the federal level compared to the state level.

Byline: Alan D. Smith The purpose of this paper is to provide practitioners of information exploration of the need for Business and e-Government Intelligence Systems (BGIS), the role such intelligence plays in competitive market research, industry, through the comparison of vendors, advantages and disadvantages, comparing the costs and benefits and some future insights. A review of the applied literature on topics that focus is on utilising Business Intelligence (BI) as a competitive tool in an online retrieval environment. The growth for BI systems may be dramatic [actual (2004, $5.3 billion; 2004, $5.6 billion) and predicted growth (2005, $6 billion; 2006, $6.5 billion; 2007, $7 billion and in 2008, $7.3 billion)], its associated costs may be equally stunning, especially in end-user query, reporting, analysis, data-mining applications and packaged data mart and/or warehousing applications. However, the figures reported in the paper should support the notion that BGIS-related systems' applications are potentially a good investment and worthy of considerable research in the knowledge management fields.

Byline: Narasimhaiah Gorla Rural Electronic Government (e-government) projects are aimed at providing government services and information to rural public. The e-government initiatives have not been very successful in developing countries because of several inherent constraints. We study ten typical rural e-government projects in India and analyse the operational, economic and personnel hurdles faced in implementing them along with their progression. Based on the implementation experiences of these projects, a list of recommendations is provided for successful execution of e-government projects. These recommendations will be useful for managing e-government projects in the developing world.

Byline: Amirhossein Ghapanchi, Amir Albadvi, Behrouz Zarei Nowadays, Information Technology (IT) allows governments to serve citizens in a more timely, effective and cost-efficient way. As many public sector organisations are either planning for or implementing major Electronic Government (e-government) projects, there is a growing need to understand what factors should be considered for successful planning. This paper proposes that the e-government needs to be planned by a holistic view to reduce the associated risks and prevent extra wastage of time and money. The scope of this research is Iran. In this regard, we identified and discussed 30 key strategic factors and elaborately included them in a framework for successful implementation of e-government.

Byline: Nardia Haigh, Andrew Griffiths In this study, we bring Information Systems (IS) and environmental sustainability together to examine the environmental sustainability of implementing Electronic Government (e-government). Results indicate that while positive environmental outcomes were sought in high-level strategies, they dissipated as they made their way down to the e-government strategy level. We analyse four strategy layers; showing the extent to which strategic intent can become diluted layer by layer, and develop an environmental perspective by which to analyse IS that highlight previously overlooked inefficiencies. We contribute to the stream of thought combining IS with environmental sustainability and discuss the implications for practitioners and researchers.

Byline: Yannis Kalfoglou In the light of high profile governmental and international efforts to realise the knowledge society, I review the arguments made for and against it from a technology standpoint. I focus on Advanced Knowledge Technologies (AKT) with applications on a large scale and in open-ended environments like the world wide web and its ambitious extension, the semantic web. I argue for a greater role of social networks in a knowledge society and I explore the recent developments in mechanised trust, knowledge certification and speculate on their blending with traditional societal institutions. These form the basis of a sketched roadmap for enabling technologies for a knowledge society.

Byline: Shalini Kesar, Vikas Jain Governments in many countries have invested significantly in building electronic infrastructures to support e-government initiatives. However, there is mixed evidence about the success of e-government initiatives. In this paper, we report the findings of a case study of e-government implementation undertaken recently at a local government authority in the UK. Despite the success of such efforts at National Health Services Direct (NHSD) in the UK, local authorities in the UK have not been able to replicate the success of e-government initiatives at NHSD. Consequently, local authorities in the UK have largely failed to meet the expectations of the UK government. We use the framework proposed by Heeks to understand the underlying reasons for the failure of local authorities to implement e-government. Using a case study at a local authority in the UK, this paper contributes to our understanding about successful implementation and adoption of e-government initiatives at the local level.

Byline: Mary Tate, David Johnstone, Janet Toland, Robert Hynson Information Technology (IT) is often assumed to be a critical enabling factor for modern democratic processes. We briefly examine widespread reform of public service institutions along market principles, known as the New Public Management (NPM). We then examine some of the IT management issues that have arisen as a result of the changing nature of local government. We identify a disconnect between the current orthodoxy of local government, the expected benefits of IT, and the actual experience of IT management in public sector organisations. Many public sector organisations suffer from multiple IT management problems. These seriously affect their ability to deliver on the promise that IT management will deliver the quality management information that is required by increased demands for public accountability. We illustrate this with a case study.

Byline: Ernani M. Dos Santos, Nicolau Reinhard Information sharing and systems integration are critical factors for the establishment of electronic government. And to achieve effective implementation of this process, it is necessary to define the compatibility standards to be adopted. However, setting these standards maybe a complex task, owing to the number of agents involved and the adoption barriers, among other factors. This paper discusses the management of the standardisation process in an electronic government environment. It presents the preliminary findings from a case study of the Brazilian interoperability standard (e-PING), based on documents content analysis, face-to-face interviews and direct observations. As a result, this study points out some aspects that may be conditioning the setting of these standards. It is believed that the understanding of this process allows addressing future actions for standards diffusion and evolution.

Byline: Shirish C. Srivastava, Thompson S.H. Teo There are relatively few empirical studies that analyse e-government development from a global perspective. Using secondary data from 115 countries and the TechnologyOrganisationEnvironment (TOE) as the guiding theoretical lens, we examine the facilitators for e-government development. Our research highlights the importance of national technological and organisational (human capital) contexts for e-government development. Our results also show that national environment (institutional and macroeconomic) is not a significant facilitator for e-government development. Further, post hoc analysis reveals the anomalous significant relationship of public institutions with e-government development in the negative direction. Through this research, we make some important contributions that have implications for researchers, practitioners and policymakers.

Byline: Chin-Tsai Lin, Chang-Tzu Chiang This study calculates the weight of performance measures used for evaluating government-sponsored research. This study used Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to calculate the weighting of performance measures and a case study involving the Taiwanese Department of Health was used to explain the process. The analytical results presented in this study provide a reference for government.

Byline: Matthew D. Berman Government owners of petroleum subsurface rights often face constituent pressure to exercise control over the disposition of these resources in pursuit of economic development objectives. At the same time, states cannot simply dissipate the potential rent from their resources without losing a principal revenue source. The paper takes a retrospective look at the state of Alaska's policies and programmes regarding the disposition of oil and gas resources, focusing on the evolution of the royalty-in-kind programme. It examines the relative success of different programmes in achieving the objectives of import substitution and value-added export relative to the cost in foregone revenue. The analysis leads to general conclusions about programmes of this type, along with specific insights as the state prepares to embark on the biggest test yet related to the disposition of North Slope natural gas.

Bedford Borough Council has been criticised for its action over a model aircraft club following a complaint to the local government ombudsman. The complainant, who lives close to a field [...]

A South East council is urging regional planners to put back the government's targets for housing growth until supporting infrastructure is provided. Oxfordshire County Council's executive advised the South East [...]

A business consortium has been appointed to research a review of the Improvement and Development Agency. The Local Government Association appointed PricewaterhouseCoopers and Warwick Business School's local government centre to [...]

An argument that the complicated nature of family life has as least as much impact on policy development and administrative agencies, as family policies and administrative agencies have on family life is presented. There is a close relationship between family law practitioners and administrative agency professionals, as they need each other to ensure compliance with federal and state statute.

The Planning Inspectorate has achieved the 'rigorous target' set by the ODPM to measure the quality of its work, planning minister Keith Hill declared this week. A report into standards [...]

ASIO is set up by the Australian labor government in 1949 and its official function is to investigate matters related to internal security. The released ASIO files of Paddy McGuinnes and Keith Windschuttle are examined.

This article examines the power of the Senate to pass and block proposed laws. The author discusses the history of the legislative process in the Senate, focusing on the power of the supermajority rule.

This article discusses the marginalization of the State Department. The author, maintaining non-military government institutions are often held in low regard, argues the State Department has been neglected and the neglect is having an adverse effect on foreign policy.

The relationships between the new governance agencies and rural communities in the Scottish Highlands are discussed. It is argued that local state agencies must be analysed with wider circuits of power and also agencies and community groups should retain some capacity to influence processes of rural governance.