Innovation Agents in the Public Sector: Applying Champion and Promotor Theory to Explore Innovation in the Australian Public Service

Innovation is critical to organisational success and is a process steered, and potentially thwarted, by individuals. However, despite the importance of public sector innovation given the complexity of policy issues faced and the sector's specific contextual features, our understanding of innovation processes in government requires expansion. This study, using in‐depth case analyses of three Australian Public Service agencies, focuses on understanding the ‘human component’ of the innovation process by drawing on both innovation champion and promotor theories to explore, through the lens of organisational power, how multiple human agents progress public sector innovations. The results highlight the key, and often tandem, roles of individuals at multiple organisational levels who work to inspire and motivate others to progress an innovation (champions) and those with specific power bases who help overcome organisational barriers to innovation (promotors).     

Islamophobic conspiracism and neoliberal subjectivity: the inassimilable society

O’Donnell analyses the confluence of Islamophobia and anti-government conspiracy theory in the works of the far-right think tank, the Center for Security Policy (CSP). He argues that, rather than only being a contemporary form of the religious and racialized demonologies that code ‘Islam’ as being the constitutive outside of ‘the ‘West—irrational, religious and authoritarian versus rational, secular and democratic—Islamophobic conspiracism should also be examined in the context of anxieties over the erosion of personal and state sovereignty under neoliberalization. Mobilizing an Islamophobic demonology that constructs ‘Muslims’ as inassimilable to ‘American’ subjectivity, the CSP's Islamophobic conspiracism projects this construction of absolute alterity on to American social and state systems. In doing so, O’Donnell contends, Islamophobic conspiracism takes neoliberalization's estrangement of the state and its citizens to its logical conclusion, transfiguring the societal processes that impact on the freedom of the individual—notably the state and civil society—into something inassimilable to that individual's claims to self-ownership and self-mastery.     

新时代的机构编制管理:战略定位、辩证关系与改革路径

机构编制管理关系到行政成本的高低和行政机构的效能。机构编制管理中的突出问题在于编制配置不科学、不合理,规范化和制度化建设相对滞后。新时代的机构编制管理需要站在治国理政和治理能力现代化的战略高度,平衡“管牢”与“管活”双重目标,处理好事业发展需要与总量控制、“条线”要求与编制管理整体、短期成效与长期成本、编制增加与编制减少、编制管理部门收紧与财政部门宽松之间的辩证关系。在此基础上,通过立法保障、全盘统筹、规划引领、观念更新、机制联动等多维度改革为国家治理能力现代化奠定坚实的组织基础。     

文化安全视域下高校宗教文化热的反思

从文化安全视域下，高校宗教文化热对高校马克思主义意识形态的稳固、高校科学精神的培养以及大学生对民族文化的认同存有负面影响。本文认为，高校党政领导和各职能部门应准确理解和把握党和政府的宗教理论和政策，从文化战略高度，加大科学无神论的研究和宣讲力度，弘扬优秀传统文化，以维护高校文化安全。     

Forget “Blind Leading the Seeing” – Improving Public Service Management

The aim of this research is to identify the most effective public service management approaches for outsourced services. Our focus is on the phases of transition and service management post provider selection. To reach this aim, comparative case studies across sectors were conducted. The studied cases indicate that managing an outsourced service should not be a separate area of public management research nor practice, but rather a part of service management. Best practices in (outsourced) public service management are provided. Management focus on transition phase after provider selection, performance measurement, and evaluation will bring efficiency to public sector service production.     

Job Expectations and Career Goals of Title IV-E Child Welfare Social Workers with Varying Levels of Work Experience: How Do They Differ?

A comparison of three groups of Title IV-E child welfare workers revealed significant differences among all groups on job expectations and career goals. New workers reported most positive expectations for their jobs, and greatest interest in child welfare careers and in pursuing educational goals. Seasoned workers expressed least positive expectations and least interest in future child welfare careers and educational goals. Findings may assist universities in student selection and curriculum. Child welfare agencies may benefit in areas of recruitment, training, and policies. Realistic job previews might moderate high expectations for new workers and reduce unmet expectations for experienced workers.     

观念认同与地区秩序建构——兼谈中国新安全观在建构东亚秩序中的作用

观念认同对地区秩序建构有着重要意义。观念认同建构行为体的身份和利益,进而改变或影响行为体的行为,在地区秩序建构中起到了"路线图"和"粘合剂"的作用。地区行为体之间的观念认同决定了它们互动的形式和态度,界定了地区秩序的自我属性,框定了战后地区秩序的建构原则,因而成为建构地区秩序的重要因素之一。中国首倡的新安全观与东盟主张的地区规范产生了积极互动,推动东亚观念结构由洛克文化向康德文化演进。     

Digital Wiretap Warrant: Improving the security of ETSI Lawful Interception

Lawful Interception (LI) of data communications is an essential tool for Law Enforcement Agencies (LEA) in order to investigate criminal activities carried out or coordinated by means of Internet. However, the ability to secretly monitor the activities of citizens also has a great impact on civil rights. Therefore, democratic societies must prevent abuse and ensure that LI is only employed in specific cases with justifiable grounds or a probable cause. Nowadays, in many countries each interception must be authorized by a wiretap warrant, usually issued by a judge. However, this wiretap warrant is merely an administrative document that should be checked by the network or service operator before enabling the monitoring of its customers, whose communications are later handed over to a LEA in plaintext. This paper proposes the idea of employing a Digital Wiretap Warrant (DWW), which further protects the civil liberties, security and privacy of LI by ensuring that monitoring devices can only be enabled with a valid DWW, and by encrypting the captured data so only the authorized LEA is able to decrypt those communications. Moreover, in the proposed DWW framework all digital evidence is securely time-stamped and signed, thus guaranteeing that it has not been tampered with, and that a proper chain of custody has been met. In particular this paper proposes how to apply the DWW concept to the lawful interception framework defined by the ETSI LI Technical Committee, and evaluates how the additional security mechanisms could impact the performance and storage costs of a LI platform.     

我国社会组织参与社会管理的现实性探析

改革开放后,我国社会结构发生变化,国家社会由一体化向二重化发展,社会呈现多样化,政府在社会管理中覆盖面窄、手段僵硬、效率低下的特点已不能适应现代社会的发展,急需转变社会管理方式。新时期下的社会组织获得蓬勃发展,它自主、自律、民间、灵活、高效、贴近基层的特点能够弥补市场和政府在公共领域的不足,符合我国政府职能转变的要求,将社会组织引入社会管理,能够实现政府和社会资源配置的最优化,最大程度地保障公民权益。     

韩国农村行政管理及制度建设的启示

本文结合作者的出访考察，从多个层面介绍并分析了韩国农村行政管理与制度建设，包括行政管理体系、郡政府的主要职能、管理权的制衡和约束机制，由此展示了韩国农村行政管理制度改革和建设的丰富成果，这是韩国农村社会和谐稳定发展的重要原因，其中有些成功经验值得学习和借鉴。