Evaluating the best value framework in UK local government services

The aim of this article is to conduct an exploratory multiple case analysis of local government delivery of Best Value by focusing on Environmental Waste Management Service (EWMS) delivery. EWMS is chosen as a key area of Best Value development and application. The Best Value framework was developed by the UK Government to introduce performance management to local government as part of the ‘Modernising Government’ agenda. There is a need to critically evaluate Best Value so that local government can determine if this is a suitable and sustainable framework for the management of public services and that it can make a contribution to increased public service effectiveness. The article describes an exploratory multiple case research study and shows that the imposition of Best Value in local government must recognise the complexity and diversity within local government services, rather than adopting an inflexible approach to deployment. There is a need to go beyond generalised performance measures and benchmarks and to attempt to understand the difficulties and complexities of localised conditions. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The failure of environmental regulation in New York

This study uses public-domain documents to describe the complicity of government actors (including current and former environmental regulators) with organized criminals, in facilitating crimes against the environment within two waste industries of New York State. Qualitative analysis results indicate that a combination of changing market forces, inadequate environmental regulation, and various failed policies and practices of the New York Department of Environmental Conservation can explain the presence, activities, and resilience of organized crime in the construction and demolition debris disposal, and also medical waste incineration industries, as well as provide some preliminary recommendations for preventing further regulatory failure in that state.     

Is technology transfer more than a “mechanical” process?

Editorial Advisory Board     

Elemental analysis of human cremains using ICP-OES to classify legitimate and contaminated cremains

The Tri-State Crematory Incident in Nobel, GA (February 2001) revealed limitations in traditional human cremated remains (cremains) analytical methodology. The goal of this study was to develop a method for effectively classifying questionable sets of cremains as legitimate or contaminated. Eighty-eight samples of known human cremains, concrete, mixtures of the two, and questionable sets of cremains were acid digested and analyzed for 21 elements by Inductively Coupled Plasma-Optical Emission Spectroscopy (ICP-OES). Variable cluster and principle component analyses identified the seven elements (Sb, B, Li, Mn, Sr, Tl, and V) used to develop discriminant functions to classify questionable sets into two groups: cremains and concrete. The discriminant analysis shows that at the 0.90 probability level, mixtures of 50% or less human content were classified as concrete. Mixtures with 90% human content classified as cremains. Sixty percent and 75% human content mixtures remained in the questionable classification, but as the concentration of human increased in the mixture, the probability of assignment to the known cremains group increased. Most of the questionable human samples classified as cremains. This is a pilot study and cannot yet satisfy Daubert standards for courtroom admissibility, but it indicates that it is possible to determine the legitimacy of cremains using elemental analysis by ICP-OES coupled with multivariate statistical analysis.