A change in government policy can send waves of crippling impacts through the design and development of publicly funded complex engineering systems. Thus it is important for system architects and designers to understand the interaction of policy with their systems, and to strive for policy robustness in their systems. To be policy robust is to successfully pass through policy changes that might arise during the course of system development in order to bring the system into operational use. The goal of this thesis research is to enable the creation of policy robust system architectures and designs through making policy an active consideration in the engineering systems architecting and design process. Qualitative and quantitative analysis methods are brought to bear on the problem using space systems as the application domain, and a process is set down through which policy can become an active consideration instead of a static constraint. Unique contributions of this thesis in the qualitative analysis of policy robust systems include new heuristics describing the interaction of policy and publicly funded engineering systems, as well as impact flow path diagrams for tracing policy interactions with technical engineering system parameters. Quantitative contributions include general relationships for the behavior of engineering system architecture sets under downward annual budget policy pressure...

For at least a decade, governments and non-profit organizations, often supported by bilateral aid, have experimented with tele-centers as means to extend access to computers, the Internet, and other information, and communication services to rural, and low-income urban areas of developing countries. Results have been mixed. This note proposes a guide for government policy on tele-centers conceived as private businesses - though with development functions - that are commercially sustainable beyond initial public support.

What are the underlying rationales for industrial policy? Does empirical evidence support the use of industrial policy for correcting market failures that plague the process of industrialization? This article addresses these questions through a critical survey of the analytical literature on industrial policy. It also reviews some recent industry successes and argues that public interventions have played only a limited role. Moreover, the recent ascendance and dominance of international production networks in the sectors in which developing countries once had considerable success implies a further limitation on the potential role of industrial policies as traditionally understood. Overall, there appears to be little empirical support for an activist government policy even though market failures exist that can, in principle, justify the use of industrial policy.

The purpose of the public finance management assessment of South Sudan s Unity State is to assess the Public Finance Management (PFM) system performance of the state government using the Public Expenditure and Financial Accountability (PEFA) framework. The execution of the assessment was limited due to prevailing security issues in the state at the time of the assessment. The assessment team after analysis of the information available to them arrived at the following observations: 1) the budget is prepared with due regard to state government policy, which is consistent with the Government of the Republic of South Sudan (GRSS) framework; 2) an electronic payroll system was established during 2010; 3) an integrated financial management information system has been established; 4) legislative oversight has been strengthened, and 5) government-donor interaction has been strengthened. However, the assessment team also deduced that certain challenges are also to be addressed: i) meaningful budget performance reports are still not being produced...

Most analyses of property rights and economic development point to the negative influence of insecure property rights on private investment. The authors focus instead on the largely unexamined effects of insecure property rights on government policy choices. They identify one significant anomaly-dramatically higher public investment in countries with insecure property rights-and use it to make the following broad claims about insecure property rights; 1) They increase rent-seeking. 2) They may reduce the incentives of governments to use tax revenues for productive purposes, such as public investment. 3) They do so whether one regards the principal problem of insecure property rights as the maintenance of law and order, which government spending can potentially remedy, or as the threat of expropriation by government itself, and therefore not remediable by government spending. The authors present substantial empirical evidence to support these claims.

Standards are the infrastructure of commerce. Just as power networks and transport systems are the infrastructure of economic production. The establishment of each of these infrastructures forms a cornerstone for modern economies. It is important that executives and managers be able to appreciate and engage with these issues if the risks to governments are to be managed. Web architects and developers may recoil in horror that government policy and leadership might intrude into these issues. But government is an obvious leader, not suggesting that it should or could regulate such standards, but because of the significance of its choices for its own operations and the weight that these carry in the economy. Government leadership in this area is more often de facto than de jure, but leadership nonetheless, which reflects the reality that government represents more than one third of the economy in most countries. This reality will be of particular significance to developing countries seeking to accelerate the technological activation of their economies and communities.

Intergovernmental fiscal relations have advanced over the last decade in the Kyrgyz Republic. Since the previous public expenditure review in 2004, the government of the Kyrgyz Republic has developed a number of policy changes in the area of intergovernmental fiscal relations. These policy changes helped the country to introduce a more transparent and equitable system of local government financing. Still, effective decentralization continues to face challenges. A set of policy recommendations for the government to consider are designed to clarify the role of local government and provide better incentives for improved service delivery. These are based on a review of the four pillars of intergovernmental fiscal relations in Kyrgyz Republic: (i) the expenditure assignment (of who does what); (ii) revenue assignment (with what resources) assignment; (iii) the system of transfers; and (iv) borrowing. In this context, the report is structured as follows: section one gives executive summary. Section two provides a brief description of the institutional context in terms of the structure of government and the elements of political and administrative decentralization. Section three analyzes the delineation of expenditure responsibilities among government tiers. Section four analyzes revenue sources assigned to each tier of government. Section five focuses on the system of intergovernmental transfers. Section six examines subnational public investments and borrowing. In each of these sections main issues and problems are identified in the current system and the desired directions for reform are pointed out.

(Bibliography) Includes bibliographical references.; (Additional Physical Form) Also available in electronic format.; Based on information provided by Arthur D. Little, inc.; Issued Apr. 1978.; Reuse of record except for individual research requires license from LexisNexis Academic & Library Solutions.; At head of title: 95th Congress, 2d session. Committee print.; CIS Microfiche Accession Numbers: CIS 78 S262-7; (Statement of Responsibility) prepared at the request of Howard W. Cannon, chairman, Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, and Daniel K. Inouye, chairman, National Tourism Policy Study for the use of the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation and National Tourism Policy Study.

Involvement by government in natural resource management has traditionally been via scientific and engineering studies and enterprises. Since the 1980s there has been a movement by the community to become more involved in the management of natural resources. Government has accepted this change in societal attitude and has included the community in a more participatory manner to ensure better socioenvironmental outcomes. This change has been reflected in the way that the Murray-Darling Basin Commission includes the community in the development of its natural resource management strategies and policies. During the 1990s there has been an increasing desire by the Commission to ensure that the community has an ongoing involvement in the decision-making and policy development process. The changing governance arrangements have lead to better policy outcomes as the community accepts natural resource management strategies and policies as they have been involved during their development. The two Murray-Darling Basin case studies that are covered in this report show how ongoing community involvement is required to achieve continuing ecological outcomes. The new governance arrangements for natural resource management place an extra impost on individuals within communities which could lead to ‘burnout’ if not managed correctly. However the inclusiveness of the new arrangements is probably worth the risk.; "This discussion paper is a revised version of a Policy Analysis Report written as part of the requirements for the Masters in Public Policy...

Using panel data from US states over the period 1941-2002, I measure the impact of gubernatorial partisanship on a wide range of different policy settings and economic outcomes. Across 32 measures, there are surprisingly few differences in policy settings, social outcomes and economic outcomes under Democrat and Republican Governors. In terms of policies, Democratic Governors tend to prefer slightly higher minimum wages. Under Republican Governors, incarceration rates are higher, while welfare caseloads are higher under Democratic Governors. In terms of social and economic outcomes, Democratic Governors tend to preside over higher median post-tax income, lower posttax inequality, and lower unemployment rates. However, for 26 of the 32 dependent variables, gubernatorial partisanship does not have a statistically significant impact on policy outcomes and social welfare. I find no evidence of gubernatorial partisan differences in tax rates, welfare generosity, the number of government employees or their salaries, state revenue, incarceration rates, execution rates, pre-tax incomes and inequality, crime rates, suicide rates, and test scores. These results are robust to the use of regression discontinuity estimation, to take account of the possibility of reverse causality. Overall...

In the late 1980s the Vietnamese higher education sector was facing a crisis in terms of financing, relevance to the wider community, and its future direction. Not only did the government have insufficient finance to maintain the current system, the system itself no longer appeared to meet the needs of the country, and its employment needs in particular. In light of the difficulties facing higher education at this time, this thesis examines the changes to Vietnamese higher education and higher education policy between 1986 and 1998, and argues that the Vietnamese government began to place a new emphasis on the education sector as a means to achieving government development goals. In light of this new emphasis the government showed a definite trend towards the decentralisation of responsibilities away from the central government, in matters of finance, administration and curriculum, and in favour of the universities themselves. Universities themselves were also keen to take up new opportunities offered by the new openness in the country and initiated a number of their own innovations, with differing degrees of acceptance by the government. In summary, this thesis attempts to do three things. First, it seeks to document the changes that have taken place in higher education in Vietnam between 1986 and 1998...

Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited; Armed forces all over the world need military equipment to support their security missions. Having a domestic defense industry is one approach that countries use to supply their armed forces’ requirements. The successful development of a domestic defense industry depends on many factors, but perhaps the most significant variable is the government. Because governments are both buyers and suppliers of national security, government policies are often designed by governments to defend and regulate domestic defense industries. This professional report explores the substance costs and benefits of various government policies to establish a sustainable defense industry. The report focuses on government policies in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and South Korea, because defense industries in those countries have proven track records and tend to be profitable and sustainable.; ; Lieutenant Commander, Indonesian Navy; Lieutenant Commander, Indonesian Navy

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide explicit thinking about the organizational elements that support or hinder innovation in the government sector as it increasingly faces demand for innovative solutions to policy areas. The paper aims to present the development and findings of an evaluative case method conducted for an Australian state government department’s organizational innovation program. Design/methodology/approach – The evaluative case study was developed and conducted in two phases. First, an intellectual capital conceptual framework was applied to four independently sourced and discreet case organizations to represent multiple exemplars of innovation capacity building. These exemplars were suspended from their context in order to identify essential elements of the innovation capacity development process which in turn were then applied in phase two to the Department of Treasury and Finance (DTF), a Victorian (Australia) public policy organization. Findings – The case raises critical distinctions between “innovation capability” and “innovation capacity”. The discussion offers insight into the process of developing innovation capacity for government policy organizations. Research limitations/implications – The evaluation method incorporated a novel technique and trialed a phase development instrument for testing the embeddedness of organizational innovation. Both the technique and the instrument would benefit from further refinement...

As the public service is "thrown open to the cold winds of competition" (Hartigan, 2000), and the implementation of new public management advances past simple contracting-out, contestability of policy advice to government is receiving increased interest as new area of reform to pursue. The Government's commitment to establish an Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) is motivated by the potential for that institution to provide contestable advice on defence and security policy issues. To understand how the creation of this Institute might assist the Government's desire for policy contestability, this paper will look more closely at the principles of contestability and consider how the experience of other similar ventures by Government have contributed to increased contestability in policy advice. This understanding should inform the establishment of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.; no

Ten years ago the Australian Government developed a strategy that has been described as 'unique in providing a national commitment to, and framework for, equity, which has itself been the stimulus for action in all institutions' (NBEET 1996: 11). One of the policy's objectives was to increase the representation of people from low socio economic (SES) backgrounds in higher education. Statistical data suggests that has not been achieved. Yet despite this evidence and changes of government the 1989 framework survives intact today. This report explores the development and of the policy framework, some of the current explanations of the policy's failure and asks if it is time to look afresh at equity in higher education.; no

This paper discusses the evolution of Australian Afghanistan and Pakistan policies from 2001 and reviews the policy challenges and options facing the Australian Government in 2009. From 1919 until 1978 Afghanistan was a relatively stable state free from foreign interference. This relative stability was destroyed in 1978 when the Communist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) overthrew the government and in 1979 when the Soviet Union invaded. This set Afghanistan upon a path of intermittent warfare between foreign and Afghan factions that has lasted until the present. The latest phase began in the wake of the terrorist attacks against the United States on 11 September 2001. These were the most horrific in the history of the United States. The United States responded to these attacks by launching an invasion of Afghanistan in an attempt to capture Osama Bin Laden, the leader of the global terrorist network AI-Qaeda, who claimed responsibility for the attacks. The Australian Government was also spurred into action through the impetus given by the horrific nature of these attacks. As a result the Howard Government invoked the ANZUS Treaty and contributed military forces to support the initial US operations in October 2001 under the banner of the War on Terror. However by March 2003 a US-led coalition including Australia invaded Iraq. From March 2003 until July 2005 Australia had almost no military presence in Afghanistan and only continued to provide development aid. In July 2005 the Howard Government decided to recommit troops to Afghanistan when pressured by the US. The Howard Government publicly used rhetoric treating Afghanistan as one of two important theatres in the War on Terror {Iraq being the other) to try and convince the Australian public. The November 2007 election saw the election of the new Rudd Labor Government. Throughout 2008 the Rudd Government maintained Australia's level of military commitment and increased development aid. However the Rudd Government did change its public message...

The medium-term objective of this review of the Center of Government (CoG) is to improve the Government's policy performance by strengthening Romania's policy process and policy institutions. The objective of the review will be accomplished by identifying short- and medium-term measures to strengthen central capacity to deliver high quality policy management to the Prime Minister and government and effectively coordinate policy with other central institutions and line ministries. Four critical success factors will signal effective implementation: 1. Decision makers will focus increasingly on strategic rather than legal or administrative issues; 2. Sound policy formulation will precede and guide legal drafting; 3. GSG will be empowered by the Prime Minister to enforce the rules and assure the quality of ministry proposals; and 4. The central institutions responsible for public policy and public finance management will work collaboratively to provide coherent, high quality support to the GoR. 2. The CoG review seeks to engage Romania's decision makers in these deliberations and...

Since 2008, the Government of Seychelles has successfully undertaken major reforms to secure macroeconomic stability and create conditions for sustainable, private sector-led growth. The continuous strengthening of Seychelles' public financial management (PFM) system plays a central role in facilitating fiscal consolidation and improving the delivery of government services. Over the past few years, the government has implemented a series of reforms to address public sector governance, including: (i) modernizing the public sector and improving the alignment of institutions with policy and service delivery mandates; (ii) rolling back the government's role in commercial activities by reducing the large number of parastatals, improving management, and introducing a new wage bill together with the private sector; and (iii) redefining the accountability structure between the government agencies responsible for service delivery. Despite the government's ambitious macroeconomic reform program and its efforts to strengthen the PFM system...

Countries vary widely with respect to the share of government spending on health, a metric that can serve as a proxy for the extent to which health is prioritized by governments. World Health Organization (WHO) data estimate that, in 2011, health's share of aggregate government expenditure in the 170 countries for which data were available averaged 12 percent. However, country differences were striking: ranging from a low of 1 percent in Myanmar to a high of 28 percent in Costa Rica. Some of the observed differences in health's share of government spending across countries are unsurprisingly related to differences in national income. However, significant variations exist in health's share of government spending even after controlling for national income. This paper provides a global overview of health's share of government spending and summarizes key theoretical and empirical perspectives on allocation of public resources to health vis-a-vis other sectors from the perspective of reprioritization, one of the modalities for realizing fiscal space for health. Theory and cross-country empirical analyses do not provide clear...

This article focuses on the interaction between government policy and public attitudes in order to explain why the Howard government was reasonably pragmatic given that it maintained enough popular support to win four successive federal elections from 199