Bottom-up development of e-safety policy for Estonian schools
Co-authored with Birgy Lorenz and Kaido Kikkas, presented on ICEGOV'11
E-learning is becoming more social and open, resulting with open learning resources, open courses, open personal... more E-learning is becoming more social and open, resulting with open learning resources, open courses, open personal learning environments. This paper focuses on policy recommendations for preventing e-safety incidents at school. The problem is that currently used rules and procedures do not define how to actually manage risks, resolve or prevent their formation. In most cases, the proposed strategy is banning and access restrictions, but we claim that it does not solve the real problem. Nowadays, each student can take mobile Internet to school premises and use it as she/he pleases. This paper discusses the results of a Delphi study, which involved 25 Estonian informatics teachers and IT staff from the Estonian Informatics Teachers' Facebook Community and Tallinn Informatics mailing list. In addition, 75 upper-secondary school students, 13 parents, 6 specialists from different ICT and education-related fields and 6 school principals contributed to the recommendations. The study resulted with recommendations regarding Internet safety policies at schools but also on the social networks. On the other hand, some of the proposed recommendations are in conflict with constitutional rights and personal freedom of students and teachers.
Perspectives on the Capacity of the Australian Public Service and Effective Policy Development and Implementation
published in the Australian Journal of Public Administration
It is a long held tradition of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA) to invite speakers to address... more It is a long held tradition of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA) to invite speakers to address the Fellow’s Colloquium as part of the annual symposium, with an aim to spark discussion and debate on a controversial and contemporary topic. In 2010 the debate was focused on the question of whether there had been a degradation of the professional capacity of the Australian Public Service (APS) with regard to effective policy development and implementation. The contributions of each of the four panel members are reproduced here, in part, and they reflect the diverse perspectives which informed a robust and compelling debate. Janine O’Flynn, the editor of these contributions, argues that any claim of degradation is based on rumour rather than hard evidence, and she sets out how we might think about policy capacity from a public sector management perspective. Sue Vardon, the former CEO of Centrelink and the architect of a transformation change program which redefined the delivery of public services in Australia, reflects on the strengths of the APS, but points out the current stresses that it now finds itself under. Anna Yeatman, an expert in political theory and its application to citizenship and public policy, argues that in the last twenty years we have witnessed degradation in the work of government and that this has impacted on policy capacity. Lyn Carson, an expert in deliberative democracy, points to the unrealised capacity that could come from increasing citizen involvement. Policy capacity is degraded, she argues, because we have systems that are neither deliberative nor representative. Individually these contributions spark their own controversies; together they ask us to consider the question in different ways.
Adams, N., Cotella, G. and Nunes, R. (eds) 2011. Territorial Development, Cohesion and Spatial Planning. Knowledge and Policy Development in an Enlarged EU. Routledge: London
This book examines some of the evolving challenges faced by EU regional policy in light of enlargement and to assess... more
This book examines some of the evolving challenges faced by EU regional policy in light of enlargement and to assess some of the approaches and trends in terms of territorial development policy and practice that are emerging out of this process. Focusing on the experiences on Central and Eastern Europe, these chapters reflect on the diversity of approaches to spatial planning and the the politics of policy formation and multi-level governance operations – from local to trans-national agendas.
Promoting increased awareness and understanding of these issues is the main purpose of the book, as well as harnessing the extensive capacity and ‘knowledge’ within these countries that can greatly enrich the discourse within an enlarged ‘epistemic community’ of European spatial planning academics, practitioners and policy-makers. The recently acquired CEE dimension provides a unique opportunity to examine the evolution of existing ‘epistemic communities’ as well as to explore the potential emergence of new ones.
Formulation of Transport Emission Reduction Policies: A Case Study in the Application of Network Analysis
Araz Taeihagh, Zun Wang and René Bañares-Alcántara, 'Formulation of Transport Emission Reduction Policies: A Case Study in the Application of Network Analysis',European conference on complex systems (ECCS2010), Lisbon, Portugal, Sept. 2010
DownloadA Case Study in the Application of an Agent-Based Approach in the Formulation of Policies for UK Transport Emission Reduction
Araz Taeihagh and Rene Bañares-Alcántara, 'A Case Study in the Application of an Agent-Based Approach in the Formulation of Policies for UK Transport Emission Reduction', European conference on complex systems (ECCS2010), Lisbon, Portugal, Sept. 2010
Why conceptual design matters in policy formulation
Araz Taeihagh, Zun Wang and René Bañares-Alcántara, ‘Why conceptual design matters in policy formulation: A case for an integrated use of complexity science and engineering design’, European conference on complex systems (ECCS2009), University of Warwick, UK, Sept. 2009
Development of a novel framework for the design of transport policies to achieve environmental targets
Araz Taeihagh, Rene Bañares-Alcántara, Claire Millican, ‘Development of a novel framework for the design of transport policies to achieve environmental targets’, Computers and Chemical Engineering, 2009, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compchemeng.2009.01.010
A novel approach to policy design using process design principles
Araz Taeihagh, René Bañares-Alcántara and Zun Wang, ‘A novel approach to policy design using process design principles’, Computer Aided Chemical Engineering, Volume 27, 2009, Pages 2049-2054. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/S1570-7946(09)70732-1