EFFICIENCY AND EFFECTIVENESS: PROBLEMS OF ASSESSMENT

Abstract: The paper focuses on the Coombs Commission's recommendations on efficiency and effectiveness in the Commonwealth Public Service. The recommendations involve the allocation of organizational responsibility for efficiency and effectiveness to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, the Public Service Board, Treasury and the Auditor-General and individual responsibility to the departmental manager through the establishment of a "Forward Estimating Budgetary" process. However the Commission has given little guidance in the matter of the technological tools which must be developed in order to secure its implementation.
The Commonwealth Public Service Board has developed over the last two years a program of Staff Utilization Reviews (S. U. Rs) as one of its management improvement programs. The paper canvases the technological aspects of efficiency and effectiveness drawing upon the development and operational experience of the S.U.R. program. It concludes that much resource-intensive work must be done before the Commission's recommendations can be implemented but Australian and overseas experience confirms the potential fruitfulness of that work.     

Legal deduction,legal predicates and expert systems

Much of the text which follows was first presented to the Conference of the Legal Expert System Association at Meiji Gakuin University, Tokyo, in August 1987, and followed by a similar argument, slightly differently angled, at a Symposium in honour of Ota Weinberger in Graz, whose proceedings remain for the moment unpublished. I have also received valuable criticisms through discussions of the latter version at meetings of an Esprit Working Group on Foundations of Legal Reasoning convened by Dr. Tim Flanagan of Cambridge, 1988–91.     

Workplace codes as tools for workers

Workers face tremendous challenges in their fight to organise, both in terms of personal risk and the sheer number of obstacles. Overcoming such challenges requires multiple strategies and broad‐ranging collaboration. In this article we begin by reviewing the repression that workers face. We then look at how voluntary workplace codes might help workers organise. Using the SA8000 standard as an example, we look at some of the elements that could be most useful in organising workers. Finally, we look at a collaborative project between the International Textile, Garment and Leather Workers' Federation and Social Accountability International to develop a training programme that not only helps workers understand how to use codes to their benefit but also builds on their current organising and education strategies.     

A Comparison of Disaster Paradigms: The Search for a Holistic Policy Guide

The following article discusses the current emphasis and attention being given to the future of emergency management, as well as theoretical constructs designed to guide research and help practitioners reduce disaster. It illustrates that while the disaster-resistant community, disaster-resilient community, and sustainable development/sustainable hazards mitigation concepts provide many unique advantages for disaster scholarship and management, they fail to sufficiently address the triggering agents, functional areas, actors, variables, and disciplines pertaining to calamitous events. In making this argument, the article asserts that any future paradigm and policy guide must be built on—yet go further than—comprehensive emergency management. The article also reviews and alters the concept of invulnerable development. Finally, the article presents "comprehensive vulnerability management" as a paradigm and suggests that it is better suited to guide scholarly and practitioner efforts to understand and reduce disasters than the aforementioned perspectives.     

AN APPRAISAL OF AUSTRALIA'S DISASTER MANAGEMENT SYSTEM FOLLOWING THE ‘ASH WEDNESDAY’ BUSHFIRES IN VICTORIA, 1983*

Abstract: Australia's current disaster management system does not provide an appropriate interorganisational counter-disaster structure, nor does it ensure an efficient operational structure. Even when allowance is made for the inadequate funding provisions that characterise this area of public operations, the present disaster management system falls short of the degree of protection which society has come to expect. A recent appraisal, requested by the Victorian State Government, which considers the reorganisation of Victoria's “emergency services” fails to address many of the significant aspects that are at the heart of Victoria's and Australia's disaster management problems.