“This is a golden opportunity to change the way public services work.”
John Denham
“Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.”
French proverb which reflected the way I felt on reading this 20-page document which was published by the DIUS yesterday. Not the best introduction to the day but I couldn't face it at 10 o'clock last night.
The document sets out the department's plans for the new adult advancement and careers service, outlines its key features and shows how the service will be designed and implemented by and through innovators across the sector.
The new service will be starting in August 2010.
Read it for yourself but please, for the sake of the planet and your ink/toner supply, if you intend to print it (and I think all guidance practitioners should so that it's available for everyone to read) then convert from PDF to a word processing program and strip the pictures out.
Friday, 31 October 2008
Thursday, 30 October 2008
Final score: virus one, Hazel two
I thought optimistically that I was winning. That was on Monday. On Tuesday I had a nasty relapse and yesterday actually managed to do some "essential docking and defects" maintenance but not much else. Still shaky today
At this point in time I have 84, as in eight-y-four, drafts from various sources sitting in a vast list.
I think, in practical terms and not optimistically this time, that I will need to group these by subject and present them to you in the same way that I do the interest items rather than overwhelm you (and me) by trying to do them all one at a time.
Some may, of course, be more than a tad old but it's sometimes useful to be able to see the genesis of a story, and some topics never grow old anyway.
I'll be back this evening to make a start!
At this point in time I have 84, as in eight-y-four, drafts from various sources sitting in a vast list.
I think, in practical terms and not optimistically this time, that I will need to group these by subject and present them to you in the same way that I do the interest items rather than overwhelm you (and me) by trying to do them all one at a time.
Some may, of course, be more than a tad old but it's sometimes useful to be able to see the genesis of a story, and some topics never grow old anyway.
I'll be back this evening to make a start!
Monday, 27 October 2008
Blame wrongly aportioned
via The Adam Smith Institute Blog on 9 October
Here's an excellent piece by Thomas J DiLorenzo on who really got us into the credit mess – American politicians and regulators.
Hazel's comment:
If you lend money to someone who can't repay it you're in trouble, but not big trouble because it's only one someone and you sort of expected that there might be a problem so you ensured that you could afford to lose the money.
If you're a bank and you are told to lend money to lots of someones that you suspect may have difficulty in repaying the money you lend them then you're in the shit!
And so are the rest of us because the misery got spread around because of global banking.
And it is still happening in a small way. Buy now, pay later screams the advert. No credit checks made!
The evolution of a national distance guidance service: trends and challenges
an article by A G Watts (National Institute for Careers Education and Counselling) and Gareth Dent (University for Industry) in British Journal of Guidance & Counselling Volume 36 Issue 4 November 2008
Abstract
Three trends in the evolution of the UK Learndirect advice service are identified:
Abstract
Three trends in the evolution of the UK Learndirect advice service are identified:
- the partial migration from telephone to web-based services;
- the trend within the telephone service from information /advice-oriented interventions to more guidance-oriented interventions; and
- the move from a mainly learning-oriented service to a more career-oriented service.
The extent to which these trends are due to changing patterns of customer needs and behaviours, or the effects of policy decisions reflected in social marketing campaigns, is reviewed. Comparable information from New Zealand is presented to indicate the impact of investment in such marketing. Implications for the proposed integration of the Learndirect service in England into a new careers service for adults are discussed. A number of more general conclusions are noted.
Hazel's comment:
Hard copy not yet available in the British Library (at least it wasn't last week) so I'll have to wait to read the whole thing. $28 to purchase if you want it purely from reading the abstract.
Sunday, 26 October 2008
Sympathy PLEASE
After a couple of days on dry toast and water (no protein to feed the nasty bugs that have infested my gut) I've come back to the land of the living to find that not only am I days behind on my "normal blogging" from government feeds and the other interesting stuff that I read on your behalf (see how good I am to you all) but I saw 197 entries in "journal feeds". What is going on?
Nothing as easy to cope with as Inderscience gone mad again. This time it was Emerald with 18, yes, I did say eighteen, sets of journal abstracts.
Why the differentiation?
Inderscience publications, as readers of ADSET Members' Update will have heard me going on about, has one feed for all its publications. Sure, it takes a while to skim through such things as chemical processes in which neither you nor I have much interest (at least not in the context of this blog) but Emerald publishes things about information, information management, management and so on. They all need reading not skimming and that takes time which is the one commodity I have very little of.
Nothing as easy to cope with as Inderscience gone mad again. This time it was Emerald with 18, yes, I did say eighteen, sets of journal abstracts.
Why the differentiation?
Inderscience publications, as readers of ADSET Members' Update will have heard me going on about, has one feed for all its publications. Sure, it takes a while to skim through such things as chemical processes in which neither you nor I have much interest (at least not in the context of this blog) but Emerald publishes things about information, information management, management and so on. They all need reading not skimming and that takes time which is the one commodity I have very little of.
Database right prevents more than just cut 'n' paste copying, rules ECJ
via OUT-LAW News on 10 October
A judgment by Europe's highest court has strengthened the rights of database creators to protect their work from being used by third parties without permission. The database right protects against more than just copying and pasting, it ruled.
A study of e-government system effectiveness: applying structuration theory ...
an article by Paul T Y Tseng in International Journal of Electronic Business Volume 6 Number 4 (2008)
Abstract
This paper is based on Giddens' structuration theory to discover what constitutes the effective use of Electronic Government Information System (EGIS) through empirical method. It investigates how to enable EGIS effectiveness among people, technology, and organisation within a public organisational context. Usable 152 respondents data are chosen from the Bureau of Foreign Trade (BOFT) and the Department of Commerce (DoC) within the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Taiwan. Causal analysis was conducted to explore the relationships among the research variables. The results indicate that the impact of ICT environment, institutional properties, and human factors on the effectiveness of EGIS is fully mediated by how the public employees use EGIS.
Hazel's comment:
In other words it's the people using the system that make the difference in how it's perceived.
I'm not entirely sure that I agree since a number of government information systems in the UK do not work as efficiently as they should (and even, in some cases, don't work at all) and there is nothing that the staff of the government department can do to make the system more efficient or to get it to work in the way in which it was envisaged that it would!
Abstract
This paper is based on Giddens' structuration theory to discover what constitutes the effective use of Electronic Government Information System (EGIS) through empirical method. It investigates how to enable EGIS effectiveness among people, technology, and organisation within a public organisational context. Usable 152 respondents data are chosen from the Bureau of Foreign Trade (BOFT) and the Department of Commerce (DoC) within the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Taiwan. Causal analysis was conducted to explore the relationships among the research variables. The results indicate that the impact of ICT environment, institutional properties, and human factors on the effectiveness of EGIS is fully mediated by how the public employees use EGIS.
Hazel's comment:
In other words it's the people using the system that make the difference in how it's perceived.
I'm not entirely sure that I agree since a number of government information systems in the UK do not work as efficiently as they should (and even, in some cases, don't work at all) and there is nothing that the staff of the government department can do to make the system more efficient or to get it to work in the way in which it was envisaged that it would!
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