The Department of Social Security has announced a series of rewards and punishments for local authorities, whose job it is to weed out benefit fraud.Legislation will be changed to introduce financial rewards for authorities who successfully prosecute fraudsters and those which institute new measures to stop fraud occurring in the first place.
As much of the change happening in local government starts to mirror practice in America, the IDeA has brought over three key change practitioners to share experience.The Improvement and Development Agency, which is charged with modernising English councils, sees the three US practitioners as having valuable information to share on leading change and improvement.
The Scottish Parliament’s Audit Committee is to use performance as one of the tools to reverse the financial decline of Scotland’s further education colleges.In the committee’s report Scottish Further Education: Managing Costs, twin past pressures of increasing student numbers and a long-term financial squeeze are blamed for a forecast deficit for last year of more than 22 million pounds.
ANALYSISWatson S R
International Journal of Technology Management, (Switzerland), 1999 Vol 17 No 1/2
Start page: 75. No of pages: 9
Looks into the use of numerical models for the analysis of public policy consequences, asserting that few quantitative models can be an exact representation of the physical system, therefore requiring the exercise of judgement in deciding how to represent reality in the model. Explains two stages involved in testing whether a model is likely to be good at predicting outcomes, verification and validation. Believes that whereas verification can be handled by adequate quality control of the programming process, validation is more difficult to address. Describes three methods of validation: face validity, the Turing test, and the field test. Highlights the problem of selecting which experts to consult in model construction and the interpretation of models using extensive judgements.
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