Showing papers on "White paper published in 2012"

Telling stories of 21st century welfare: The UK Coalition government and the neo-liberal discourse of worklessness and dependency

Abstract: Policy documents are a useful source for understanding the privileging of particular ideological and policy preferences (Scrase and Ockwell, 2010) and how the language and imagery may help to construct society’s assumptions, values and beliefs. This article examines how the UK Coalition government’s 2010 Green Paper, 21st Century Welfare, and the White Paper, Universal Credit: Welfare that Works, assist in constructing a discourse about social security that favours a renewal and deepening of neo-liberalization in the context of threats to its hegemony. The documents marginalize the structural aspects of persistent unemployment and poverty by transforming these into individual pathologies of benefit dependency and worklessness. The consequence is that familiar neo-liberal policy measures favouring the intensification of punitive conditionality and economic rationality can be portrayed as new and innovative solutions to address Britain’s supposedly broken society and restore economic competitiveness.

Smart Cities as Innovation Ecosystems sustained by the Future Internet

Abstract: The White Paper focuses on how European cities are currently developing strategies towards becoming "smarter cities" and the lessons we can draw for the future. Such strategies are based on an assessment of the future needs of cities and innovative usages of ICTs embodied in the broadband Internet and Internet-based applications now and foreseen for the future. These strategies are also based on a new understanding of innovation, grounded in the concept of open innovation ecosystems, global innovation chains, and on citizens' empowerment for shaping innovation and urban development. This White Paper is one of the main outcomes of the FIREBALL project (www.fireball4smartcities.eu), a Coordination Action within the 7th Framework Programme for ICT, running in the period 2010-2012. The aim of FIREBALL is to bring together communities and stakeholders who are active in three areas: (1) research and experimentation on the Future Internet (FIRE); (2) open and user-driven innovation (Living Labs); and (3) urban development. The goal is to develop a common vision and a common view on how the different approaches, methodologies, policies and technologies in these areas can be aligned to boost innovation and socio-economic development of cities. The White Paper has explored the landscape of "smart cities" as environments of open and user driven innovation sustained by Future Internet technologies and services. Smart cities are also seen as environments enabled by advanced ICT infrastructure for testing and validating current Future Internet research and experimentation. Overall, the smart city is built upon a triangle of "City" - "Open Innovation Ecosystems" - "Future Internet" components. The White Paper explores also how cities and urban areas represent a critical mass when it comes to shaping the demand for advanced Internet-based services in large-scale testing and validation. Shaping this demand informs ongoing research, experimentation and deployment activities related to Future Internet testbeds, and helps establishing a dialogue between the different communities involved in the development of the future Internet and user-driven environments, to form partnerships and assess social and economic benefits and discovery of migration paths at early stages. Based on a holistic instead of technology merely driven perspective on smart cities, we consider necessary to revisit the concept of the Smart City itself. The concept of the smart city that emerges from FIREBALL can be summarized as follows: "The smart city concept is multi-dimensional. It is a future scenario (what to achieve), even more it is an urban development strategy (how to achieve it). It focuses on how (Internet-related) technologies enhance the lives of citizens. This should not be interpreted as drawing the smart city technology scenario. Rather, the smart city is how citizens are shaping the city in using this technology, and how citizens are enabled to do so. The smart city is about how people are empowered, through using technology, for contributing to urban change and realizing their ambitions. The smart city provides the conditions and resources for change. In this sense, the smart city is an urban laboratory, an urban innovation ecosystem, a living lab, an agent of change. Much less do we see a smart city in terms of a Ranking. This ranking is a moment in time, a superficial result of underlying changes, not the mechanism of transformation. The smart city is the engine of transformation, a generator of solutions for wicked problems, it is how the city is behaving smart."

Pick ’n’ mix, select and project; policy borrowing and the quest for ‘world class’ schooling: an analysis of the 2010 schools White Paper

Abstract: Education reform is increasingly portrayed as a quest to achieve a ‘world class’ education system through a process of identifying and adopting the practices of those systems whose pupils perform best in league tables of achievement. This is the rationale for the range of new policies proposed by the coalition government in the schools White Paper published in November 2010, which promotes whole-system reform in England. This article examines the White Paper and analyses the sources and nature of the evidence for reform and the congruence between the policy intentions and their associated policy actions. The analysis suggests that the evidence for the proposed reforms and policy actions is at best tenuous. Both the White Paper and its key sources of evidence are characterised by: a selective use of data: a propensity to mix and match the sources of comparison; and an overall tendency to employ comparisons with high-performing systems elsewhere as a facade to legitimate preferred policy options.

Barriers to Partnership Working in Public Health: A Qualitative Study

Abstract: Background Public health provision in England is undergoing dramatic changes. Currently established partnerships are thus likely to be significantly disrupted by the radical reforms outlined in the Public Health White Paper. We therefore explored the process of partnership working in public health, in order to better understand the potential opportunities and threats associated with the proposed changes.

Patient-generated health data. White paper

Abstract: A. How should PGHD be defined, and which concepts are central in this definition? How have health care providers and patients defined and treated PGHD up to now?. (―There's a difference between sensing data and making sense out of the data.‖ Charles Safran 1)

Rebalancing England: sub-national development (once again) at the crossroads

Abstract: Over the last two decades there has been continuous tinkering and wholesale review of the remit, governance and territorial focus of sub-national development in England. There has also been mounting agreement that subsidiarity will produce optimum material outcomes. It is against this background that we provide a critical reading of the UK Coalition government's 2010 ‘White Paper’ on Local Growth. Revealing the peculiarities of an economic transition plan which dismantled a regional (strategic) framework, we explore the opportunities that cross-boundary local enterprise partnerships (LEPs) may provide. After abandoning regions, LEPs have been promoted as the only possible ‘replacements’ for regional development agencies and, thus, a prime example of new ‘techniques of government’. We probe the potentials and pitfalls from the dash to establish new sub-national techniques of government, and crystallize some key implications that apply beyond the shores of England. Our key contention is that LEPs have desig...

A Report on the ELI Focus Session

Abstract: On April 11 and 12, 2012, the ELI teaching and learning community gathered for an online focus session on learning analytics (LA). This white paper is a synthesis of the key ideas, themes, and concepts that emerged from those sessions. This white paper also includes links to supporting focus session materials, recordings, and resources. It represents a harvesting of the key elements that we, as a teaching and learning community, need to keep in mind as we work to explore how LA can be helpful for instructors (regarding learning activities and course design), for students (regarding progress), and for administrators (regarding course and degree completion data).

The Higher Education White Paper: The Good, the Bad, the Unspeakable – and the Next White Paper

Abstract: This article argues that reforms of higher education finance for undergraduates in England introduced by the Blair government in 2006 provided a progressive strategy for achieving the central objectives of higher education of quality (better), access (wider) and size (larger). Reforms in 2012 are a not a strategy but a collection of ad hoc arrangements. They include the good (a higher fees cap, a higher interest rate on student loans, better information and improved support for part-time study), the bad (abolishing most taxpayer support for teaching in the arts and humanities and the social sciences, and raising excessively the threshold at which loan repayments start) and the unspeakable (abolishing Education Maintenance Allowances and AimHigher). The reforms are fiscally costly and hence perpetuate the central problem of capped student numbers, and will not stand the test of time. The concluding section outlines the next White Paper.

Think Like A Startup: a white paper to inspire library entrepreneurialism

Abstract: Facing the Future We don’t just need change, we need breakthrough, paradigm-shifting, transformative, disruptive ideas.

Still a fine mess? Local government and the NHS 1962 to 2012

Abstract: Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to take “a long view” of initiatives taken to promote integration between local government and the NHS with the objective of seeking to understand why they have achieved consistently disappointing results.Design/methodology/approach – The paper's analysis is based on an historical overview drawn from official documents and empirical research from the time of the creation of the NHS in 1948. It primarily focuses on the principles shaping the separate but parallel reorganisations of 1974 and their continuing influence up to and including the current White Paper “Liberating the NHS”, and the Health and Social Care Bill.Findings – The fundamental sources of integration barriers today lie in the foundational principles of basing their responsibilities on the skills of providers rather than the needs of service users and their organisational forms on separation rather than interdependence, with national uniformity driving the NHS and local diversity local authorities. In a...

White Paper Report of the 2011 RAD-AID Conference on International Radiology for Developing Countries: Integrating Multidisciplinary Strategies for Imaging Services in the Developing World

Abstract: The 2011 RAD-AID Conference on International Radiology for Developing Countries discussed data, experiences, and models pertaining to radiology in the developing world, where widespread shortages of imaging services significantly reduce health care quality and increase health care disparities. This white paper from the 2011 RAD-AID conference represents consensus advocacy of multidisciplinary strategies to improve the planning, accessibility, and quality of imaging services in the developing world. Conference presenters and participants discussed numerous solutions to imaging and health care disparities, including (1) economic development for radiologic service planning, (2) public health mechanisms to address disease and prevention at the population and community levels, (3) comparative clinical models to implement various clinical and workflow strategies adapted to unique developing world community contexts, (4) education to improve training and optimize service quality, and (5) technology innovation to bring new technical capabilities to limited-resource regions.

LEPs - living up to the hype? The changing framework for regional economic development and localism in the UK

Abstract: From when the idea of local enterprise partnerships was first floated in the run-up to the May 2010 general election, there has been fervent discussion and steadfast work by the Coalition government to replace the nine regional development agencies of England with the new LEPS. Vince Cable MP called the decision to abolish the RDAs the Coalition’s “Maoist moment”. Thirteen years of work to establish a comprehensive system of regional development for England has since been abolished and abandoned. The philosophy and rationale for the establishment of the RDAs was set out in the 1997 white paper Building Partnerships for Prosperity: Sustainability, Growth, Competitiveness and Employment in the English Regions. Their main promoter was John Prescott MP, then deputy prime minister under the Blair government. This chapter examines whether LEPs are living up to the hype.

Improving public services through open data: public toilets

Abstract: Bichard’s work for the TACT3 project (Bichard REF Output 3) found that UK toilet provision is not centrally collated and no national map or database of toilets exists. In contrast, the UK government’s white paper Open Public Services (2011) emphasised its commitment to incorporating the use of Open Data in public services provision that could be tailored to community preferences, and therefore be more sustainable. Incorporating Open Data on public toilet provision, Bichard and Knight (RCA) developed The Great British Public Toilet Map (GBPTM). Whilst a number of other websites and applications map toilets by ‘crowd surfing’, GBPTM is entirely populated by Open Data, and not only uses the data as information for users, but informs members of the public that such information is available and accessible for their use. This paper presents the development of the GBPTM, including inclusive design research and studies that compare accuracy of information directly provided by users with Open Data collected by local authorities. It suggests that, to meet the health and well-being of an ageing population, a sustainable and cost-effective solution must be found for ‘publicly accessible’ toilet provision, including opening up provision beyond that ‘for customers only’ and providing accurate information on current public provision. The paper highlights the barriers encountered in the production of Open Data by local authorities. A review of the paper in the journal Civil Engineering (May 2013) described the design of the GBPTM as a ‘simple and elegant solution’. The development of a digital output and an understanding of digitally based research led to Bichard’s successful submission to an EPSRC Digital Economy sandpit, in which she developed an interdisciplinary project with the Universities of Newcastle, Bournemouth and the West of England. The project, Family Rituals 2.0, secured £750,000 in research funding with Bichard as co-investigator (2013–15).

Alluring Ideas: Cherry Picking Policy from Around the World

Abstract: A common feature of contemporary policymaking is the sharing and adaptation of policies from other countries. As neo-liberal globalisation continues to impact on the development of policy, such practices are increasingly commonplace. This article considers the current phenomenon of ‘policy borrowing’ with reference to the use of data from the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the 2010 Schools White Paper The Importance of Teaching. The article also traces the origins of policy borrowing and shows what philosophy of education can bring to its discourse.

Adolescent brain development : implications for behavior

Abstract: This comprehensive yet brief overview of the adolescent human brain discusses how the brain develops during this critical period of life, and how that development impacts decision making and risk-taking behavior in the adolescent. This originated as a white paper requested by the Canadian government for a specific group looking to understand adolescent brain development in the context of adolescent behavior. The paper was not made available to the Canadian government outside of the specific task force that requested it nor to the general public. The authors have since decided that having put so much effort into concisely summarizing research on adolescent brain development, it would be a useful addition to researchers in psychology generally. The original paper has since been updated and revised considerably.

Strengthening primary healthcare in India: white paper on opportunities for partnership.

Abstract: Mala Rao and David Mant explore how India and the UK can work together on education, professional development, affordable technologies, public-private partnerships, governance, and innovation in primary care in India

Engaging the Asian century

Abstract: Over the course of 2012, much has been said in Australia about its future in the Asian century. The Australian Prime Minister has established a high-level Task Force, chaired by the former Treasury Head, Ken Henry, to produce a White Paper that has been given the task of mapping the scale and pace of Asia's transformation and its implications for Australia. The Government is convinced that just as the United States dominated the twentieth century, the twenty-first century will be an Asian century; and that Australia will have to negotiate this reality to take advantage of the likely economic and strategic changes in the region. To be released in late 2012, the White Paper has been asked to examine Australia's links with the diverse nations of Asia, in an attempt to define the government's policy settings and strategies across most of the policy domains, including education and the arts. It will thus consider 'the potential contribution of business, nongovernment organisations and individual citizens and provide a blueprint to navigate the Asian Century - a period of transformative economic, political, strategic and social change' (Henry, 2012: 1). Fundamental to the demand for this blueprint is a conviction that Australia's integration into Asia is essential for its national prosperity, its social and economic vibrancy and its security.

Global Reach-Global Power: Air Force Strategic Vision, Past and Future

Abstract: : The analysis presented in this thesis evaluates the contents of past Air Force strategic vision documents and studies the process used to create such documents. The thesis argument is that strategic vision documents can fulfill important functions for an organization, and that greater attention to the process of creating these documents can result in a more effective final product. The author defines a strategic vision document as a formal, written product endorsed by the organization's senior leader that provides broad and motivational guidance for the organization in the present while providing sage direction for the future. Based on current literature addressing the subject, the author proposes a framework of three attributes and two functions for strategic vision statements. The attributes of such statements are a declaration of organizational identity, a disclosure of future goals, and a view of the methods by which goals will be met. The two functions of strategic vision are to unify internally and advocate externally. Within this framework the author examines three past Air Force strategic vision documents for content and details the known processes behind their creation and distribution: General Arnold's 1945 report Air Power and the Future, the 1990 white paper The Air Force and US National Security: Global Reach Global Power, and the 1992 white paper Global Reach Global Power: The Evolving Air Force Contribution to National Security. Additionally, the author discusses the processes involved in two other official works, Global Presence and the ongoing efforts aimed at creating a new Air Force strategic vision. Based on analysis of both content and process, the author develops and proposes a standard developmental process for vision documents including specific recommendations for content based on required attributes and functions.

Still-Unpopular Sanctions: Developments in Private Antitrust Enforcement In Poland after the 2008 White Paper

Abstract: The European Commission published a White Paper on 2 April 2008 on damages actions for breach of EU antitrust rules. The content of the White Paper is since then being prepared to be converted into EU legislation on private antitrust enforcement. This paper presents the developments in private antitrust enforcement in Poland after 2 April 2008. It commences with an outline of EU actions in this field which act as an introduction to the more detailed analysis of recent jurisprudential and legislative developments in Poland. The latter part of the paper covers, in particular, the 2009 Act on the Pursuit of Claims in Group Proceedings and the 2011 Act Amending the Civil Procedure Code and Some Other Acts which abolishes all specific elements of commercial proceedings, including the statutory ‘non-admission of evidence’ principle. These two legal acts are assessed in order to establish whether their introduction is likely to help facilitate private antitrust enforcement in Poland and to consider to what an extent are these developments responding to the challenges outlined by the European Commission.

An Integrated Developmental Model for Poverty Reduction in South Africa: An NGO's Perspective

Abstract: For most of its 17 years of democracy, South Africa fight against poverty has been fragmented and uncoordinated. South Africa adopted a developmental social welfare policy in the White Paper for Social Welfare (1997). The SAVF (South African Women's Federation), a welfare sector NGO, has designed an integrated development model for social work to address poverty holistically. The model's 6 pillars are discussed, with reference to their application in the Thuthukani project. Conclusions will be based on a discussion of the value of the SAVF model in demonstrating its relevance as an antipoverty strategy within a developmental social welfare approach.

Changing localities for teacher training: the potential impact on professional formation and the university sector response

Abstract: Early in its period of office the new United Kingdom coalition government produced an Education White Paper containing potentially devastating news for higher education training institutions in England and Wales. Drawing on research papers and policy documents, this article takes an historic approach to map the changing face of teacher training over the past 30 years. A variety of approaches to the training of teachers are examined in terms of the partnership arrangements each model espouses and the training approaches that each locality arrangement represents. A small-scale research project maps early responses from higher education institutions as they consider the implications of new policies. Finally, a future scenario where higher education institutions struggle for survival as meaningful providers of teacher education is postulated.