Academic literature on the topic '160510 Public Policy'

The study aims to identify the role of local government and its transformation in response to the COVID-19. It also shows how local governments extended the scope of accountability and transparency to strengthen democracy. The study followed the social survey method and collected data online through Google Docs form. The data were analyzed through descriptive statistics to generate expected results and test the hypothesis by the Spearman correlation coefficient. The study found local governments were positive during COVID-19 to provide services and offered more public engagement in policy formulation, thus more democratic. The health sector has shown the highest priority, with food and environmental services. Inefficient management capacity of leaders and apathy in public engagement hamper resource mobilization at the local level. During COVID-19, ICT intervention and innovation for digital transformation in local governance increased accountability and transparency through easy and effective participation of mass people to strengthen local democracy to respond effectively against COVID-19.

Governments around the world enforced many restrictions according to the recommendations of the World Health Organization (WHO) and tried very hard to minimize spread of epidemic in their countries. One of these restrictions is on using of public spaces that led to create new challenges to think about how we design public spaces and the way of using the most dynamic nearby spaces around us such as streets. The main objectives of this research are to measure the impact of COVID-19 on behavior of local community in public street. And to what extend changed of social behavior in public streets to compensation the absence of public spaces, where they became a breathing space for locals in Amman, Jordan. Also to addresses these questions which are focused on how the local community deals physically with the COVID-19 situation? And what are the changes that are done in their behavior to entertain themselves during the COVID-19 pandemic? Researchers carried out an analysis by using a mixed used approach; qualitative and quantitative methods through executing a questionnaire and a field observation of the study area which is selected. In conclusion, the results of the study showed that activities of local residents have changed between in the lockdown of COVID-19 pandemic and beyond whereas there has been more demand on active lifestyles which is continue after COVID-19 pandemic as new behavior of local residents. although the physical quality of the street are not design to meet new behavior.

Perceptions of organizational politics are an essential aspect of organizational life for its members because they impact different practices, which eventually affect employee efficiency. This article is explored the relationship between Organizational Politics (OP) and Organizational Citizenship Behavior (organizational citizenship behavior for organization (OCB-O) and organizational citizenship behavior for individuals (OCB-I). Survey data is gathered from 200 employees work in Jordanian public sector. Partial least square (PLS-SEM) is employed to test the research hypotheses. Outcomes uncovered that OP has a negative relationship with OCB-O and OCB-I. Accordingly, the current study recommends that governments abolish or restrict OP activities in their organizations as much as possible. Besides, the findings show that OP activities harmed public-sector employee behavior. The study's limitations and recommendations for future studies are also considered.

Although much attention has been paid to the question of whether violent video games increase aggressive behaviour, little attention has been paid to how such games might encourage antecedents of gun violence. In this study, we examined how product placement, the attractive in-game presentation of certain real-world firearm brands, might encourage gun ownership, a necessary antecedent of gun violence. We sought to study how the virtual portrayal of a real-world firearm (the Bushmaster AR-15) could influence players' attitudes towards the AR-15 specifically and gun ownership in general. College undergraduates ( N = 176) played one of four modified video games in a 2 (gun: AR-15 or science-fiction control) × 2 (gun power: strong or weak) between-subjects design. Despite collecting many outcomes and examining many potential covariates and moderators, experimental assignment did little to influence outcomes of product evaluations or purchasing intentions with regard to the AR-15. Attitudes towards public policy and estimation of gun safety were also not influenced by experimental condition, although these might have been better tested by comparison against a no-violence control condition. By contrast, gender and political party had dramatic associations with all outcomes. We conclude that, if product placement shapes attitudes towards firearms, such effects will need to be studied with stronger manipulations or more sensitive measures.

The palm oil industry is a strategic sector that plays an important role for national economics. Although the palm oil industry's role and contribution are high, land clearing and operation are often associated with environmental and social issues. The sustainable certification was then developed to ensure that palm oil companies can continue to operate without involving environmental and social deprivation. The previous research related to the impact of a sustainable certification found several positive and negative impacts on palm oil companies' performance in general. Therefore, this study aimed to determine the impact of sustainable certification on Indonesia's palm oil companies' financial and market performance. This research focused on 14 palm oil companies in Indonesia that went public with an observation year between 2014 and 2019. Analysis through panel regression found that sustainable certification has no impact on Indonesia's palm oil companies' financial and market performance. The study could be a recommendation and justification for palm oil companies for consider to take a sustainable certification.

Photo by Christian Wiediger on Unsplash INTRODUCTION Huge amounts of public data on the internet and the ease with which we regularly search it have resulted in the phenomenon called Patient-Targeted Googling (PTG). PTG occurs when a clinician conducts an online search for information about a patient through any search engine, internet database, or social media site. The practice has provoked ethical discussion and the creation of practical guidelines to ensure clinicians use PTG ethically. One common theme in PTG literature is privacy and confidentiality. However, given that the relevant information is publicly accessible, privacy and confidentiality may not be applicable or accurate. In health and medicine, correctly applying the concepts of privacy and confidentially is important because these terms have rigid legal definitions that are often confusing and misunderstood. By refraining from legitimizing claims that patients’ publicly accessible data is “private” information, we can avoid the risks of inappropriately applying privacy and confidentiality concepts and further muddying the waters. l. Privacy and Confidentiality in PTG Literature The literature on PTC consistently raises patient privacy and confidentiality concerns. For example, the article “Patient-targeted googling: The ethics of searching online for patient information” mentions the concept of privacy over a dozen times in its ethical and practical framework, designed for psychiatrists to use prior to engaging in a patient-targeted search.[1] A later work begins with a statement that “[m]any physicians would agree that seeking information about their patients via Google seems to be an invasion of privacy . . .” [2] Informal guidelines continue to address privacy and confidentiality when analyzing PTG and frame consent as necessary to respect patient privacy.[3] Research articles reporting investigations of PTG also categorize privacy violations as a risk to privacy and dignity.[4] The AMA does not have a PTG ethics policy, but an article on the AMA website about PTG by a staff writer stated that “physicians have a fundamental ethical responsibility to respect patient privacy.”[5] Ethical and practical discussions of PTG often involve concerns for privacy and confidentiality. However, the information found in PTG searches is not private or confidential. ll. The Information at Issue is Not Actually Private or Confidential The information at issue in PTG is not hidden or secured from public view and is available to anyone conducting an internet search. Thus, it cannot be said to be private or confidential. Yet, privacy and confidentiality routinely come up in analyses of PTG. Perhaps this is because the information feels private. The thought of clinicians digging through the internet to find information about the patient feels like an invasion. They are trying to access information that the patient did not share with them in an unexpected way. People commonly associate privacy and confidentiality concepts with personal data access issues, so it is not surprising that privacy and confidentiality find their way into discussions on PTG. While much of the literature focuses on privacy, some of the literature does acknowledge that this information is not really private or confidential. One article describes the patient experience as possibly a “perceived privacy” that stems from an assumption that clinicians will not conduct online searches for information about them just like they may assume “their psychiatrists would not eavesdrop on their conversations in restaurant.”[6] Another acknowledges that there is a difference between legal definitions of privacy and confidentiality and “the layperson’s notion.”[7] So, though looking up a patient’s Facebook profile does not legally violate the patient’s privacy, the patient may still consider it “private” in a layperson’s sense. It is important for clinicians to be sensitive to actions that may feel violating to a patient. Clinicians should be aware that patients may consider PTG a breach of privacy. But literature geared towards ethics in clinical practice ought not confuse lay and legal definitions because doing so risks legitimizing an incorrect position. It is also not necessary to use privacy and confidentiality concepts to justify concerns and practice guidelines concerning PTG. lll. PTG as a Potential Violation of the Clinician-Patient Relationship A better way to frame PTG is as a potential violation of the trust and respect inherent in the clinician-patient relationship. Patients understand and respect the traditional ways clinicians gather information about them. Clinicians simply ask their patients directly for most types of information, especially personal information. When done with sensitivity and patient understanding that the information is relevant to the interaction, collecting personal information does not feel inappropriately invasive (even if the process may be uncomfortable). This is partially because the questioning occurs within the confines of the clinician-patient relationship. Some information a clinician may discover in an online search can also be gathered by “legitimate” means (like by asking the patient). Yet, accessing this information via PTG can still violate the clinician-patient relationship. This shows that it is not the nature of the information that makes the clinician’s access feel like an invasion, but the method they use to gather it. If the information clinicians seek is clinically relevant, patients expect that the clinician will ask for it. During that conversation, patients can ask why and how the information is relevant to their health care. It is the act of gathering this information outside the accepted boundary of the clinician-patient relationship that makes PTG potentially violating. The use of PTG to gather information that is not clinically relevant is also problematic. Without resorting to privacy claims, the ethical analysis should identify the nature of the problem more accurately. Patients accept that clinicians ask them personal questions to serve their best interests. Once clinicians step outside that boundary by asking patients for clinically irrelevant information out of some voyeuristic or inappropriate interest, they break the trust and respect inherent in the relationship. A clinician that purposefully seeks out clinically irrelevant information is doing something problematic because the exercise does not connect to the clinician’s professional duties and patient interests. When clinicians ask for clinically irrelevant information during a patient visit, the patient has the opportunity to evaluate the questioning and respond accordingly (perhaps responding to an inquiry that seems purely conversational or designed to relieve stress or not answering an invasive, irrelevant question). With PTG, patients cannot evaluate and respond to the clinician or the inquiry, as they are unlikely to know it is occurring. Patients are not necessarily concerned that their doctor knows where they went to brunch last Sunday. Patients are concerned that clinicians are purposefully seeking out information neither connected to their health nor covered by the clinician-patient relationship and are likely doing so to satisfy their own interests. If the purpose of PTG does not serve the patient’s interests, clinicians should not conduct the search.[8] Even if it does serve the patient’s interest, PTG may not be ethical. The ethical significance does not hinge on whether the information is clinically relevant or not. What makes PTG potentially unethical is how it circumvents the methods of information gathering patients accept as appropriate in the clinician-patient relationship. Whether the information is or is not clinically relevant or in the patient’s best interests, the mode of collection is ethically problematic, nor addresses privacy. lV. Accurately Applying Concepts of Privacy and Confidentiality is Important Privacy and confidentiality are not accurate concepts to apply to PTG. This point about privacy and confidentiality is worth making, even if it does not change the way PTG should be approached in clinical practice. The concepts and legal definitions of privacy and confidentiality are extremely important in health and medicine. Thus, it is crucial that privacy not be misconstrued to protect publicly available information. One of the most important (and often misunderstood) examples is the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) Privacy Rule. This Rule protects only certain statutorily defined “individually identifiable health information” and “covered entities.”[9] Violation of the Privacy Rule is grounds for statutory penalties.[10] While there is room to criticize how well the Privacy Rule protects patients today, covered entities must follow it. The Privacy Rule remains an important component in protecting both patients and healthcare entities. Despite this, misunderstandings about HIPAA abound, even among clinicians.[11] It has even been reported that some inaccurately claim that PTG violates HIPAA .[12] Other statutes also protect health data in a variety of ways. For example, the FTC Act creates an obligation to maintain appropriate security of health data and requires entities to keep promises they make about privacy.[13] The Health Breach Notification Rule contains notice requirements for data breaches involving certain health information.[14] Additionally, the doctor-patient privilege protects confidential information from disclosure, and the exact confines of the privilege depend on the applicable statutes.[15] As these examples demonstrate, there are many different legal requirements that concern privacy and confidentiality in the health sphere. These varying legal definitions and requirements create grounds for sincere confusion, even without adding non-legal definitions or perceptions into the equation. Apart from the rigid context of existing statutes and laws, discussions surrounding the ethics of data, privacy, and security are occurring, and privacy laws are undergoing a period of rapid change. While patients and health entities can be reasonably sure what protections apply to medical records created by providers, there is significant uncertainty about the increasing amounts of health-related information generated and shared in our digital world by various entities. While it is clear that information located through a Google search is public, the actual (and ideal) legal and moral status of much of this new information is less certain. For example, a multitude of health-related apps are available to consumers, many of which collect information that would be a part of a medical record if collected by a clinician. Numerous wearable devices collect data on consumers’ heart rates, exercise patterns and sleep patterns. In-home smart devices can track when users are active and what they are doing in their homes. It is often difficult for consumers to understand whether data collected about them is private and confidential, whether it is shared with or sold to third parties, and whether any legal protections apply. People may waive their right to privacy without fully understanding what companies may do with the data. An important part of our social discourse on health, data security, and privacy involves how we treat or ought to treat that data and what protections we should afford to patients as consumers. It can be difficult to determine which health data is truly private or confidential. In our collective effort to decide how to categorize and use data, it is important not to muddy the waters unnecessarily by applying concepts of privacy and confidentiality to data that definitely does not meet those criteria and simply is not private. This is especially true in the healthcare context when there is already confusion on what is private and confidential. Getting it wrong can result in legal consequences and significant patient harm. CONCLUSION Literature on PTG often references or applies the concepts of privacy and confidentiality. However, the information found through PTG is publicly accessible. While patients may perceive PTG as a breach of privacy, patient perception is not a reason for the literature to claim that publicly accessible information is also private. Instead, PTG is better conceptualized as a potential breach of the trust and respect inherent in the clinician-patient relationship. Privacy and confidentiality are incredibly important in health and medicine and often have strict legal definitions. Data security and privacy issues are becoming increasingly important as we undergo a digital health revolution. We should be careful to avoid confusing these conversations by applying concepts of privacy and confidentiality to public information. - [1] Clinton, Brian K., et al. “Patient-Targeted Googling: The Ethics of Searching Online for Patient Information.” Harvard Review of Psychiatry, vol. 18, no. 2, 2010, pp. 103–112., https://doi.org/10.3109/10673221003683861. [2] Baker, Maria J., et al. “Navigating the Google Blind Spot: An Emerging Need for Professional Guidelines to Address Patient-Targeted Googling.” Journal of General Internal Medicine, vol. 30, no. 1, 17 Sept. 2014, pp. 6–7., https://doi.org/10.1007/s11606-014-3030-7. [3] Geppert, Cynthia. “To Google or Not to Google? Is ‘Patient-Targeted’ Googling Ethical?” Psychiatric Times, vol. 34, no. 1, Jan. 2017, pp. 1–4, https://www.psychiatrictimes.com/view/google-or-not-google-patient-targeted-googling-ethical. [4] Chester, Aaron N., et al. “Patient-Targeted Googling and Social Media: A Cross-Sectional Study of Senior Medical Students.” BMC Medical Ethics, vol. 18, no. 1, 2017, https://doi.org/10.1186/s12910-017-0230-9. [5] “Should Physicians Google Patients?” American Medical Association, 9 Mar. 2015, https://www.ama-assn.org/delivering-care/patient-support-advocacy/should-physicians-google-patients#:~:text=Although%20AMA%20has%20no%20ethics,responsibility%20to%20respect%20patient%20privacy. [6] Clinton, “Patient-targeted googling: The ethics of searching online for patient information.” [7] Lehavot, Keren, et al. “Ethical Considerations and Social Media: A Case of Suicidal Postings on Facebook.” Journal of Dual Diagnosis, vol. 8, no. 4, 2012, pp. 341–346., https://doi.org/10.1080/15504263.2012.718928. [8] Clinton, B.K., “Patient-targeted googling: The ethics of searching online for patient information.” This paper provides an excellent framework for those interested in a deeper analysis of potential uses of PTG. [9] 45 C.F.R. § 160.103. [10] “Summary of the HIPAA Privacy Rule.” HHS.gov, Office for Civil Rights, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, 26 July 2013, https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/privacy/laws-regulations/index.html#:~:text=The%20Privacy%20Rule%20protects%20all,health%20information%20(PHI).%22. [11] Lo, Bernard, et al. “HIPAA and Patient Care: the Role for Professional Judgment.” JAMA, vol. 293, no. 14, 13 Apr. 2005, pp. 1766–1771., https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.293.14.1766. [12] Geppert, “To Google or Not to Google? Is ‘Patient-Targeted’ Googling Ethical?” [13] “Health Privacy.” Federal Trade Commission, https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/privacy-security/health-privacy. [14] “Complying with FTC's Health Breach Notification Rule.” Federal Trade Commission, Jan. 2022, https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/complying-ftcs-health-breach-notification-rule-0. [15] “Doctor-Patient Privilege.” Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School, https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/doctor-patient_privilege.

The whole problem of speaking about the end…is that you have to speak of what lies beyond the end and also, at the same time, of the impossibility of ending. Jean Baudrillard, The Illusion of the End(110) Jean Baudrillard’s insights into finality demonstrate that “ends” always prompt cultures to speculate on what can or will happen after these terminations and to fear those traumatic ends, in which the impossible actually occurs, may only be the beginning of chaos. In the absence of “rational” explanations for catastrophic ends and in the whirlwind of emotional responses that are their after-effects, the search for beginnings and origins – the antitheses of Baudrillard’s finality – characterises human response to tragedy. Strangely, Baudrillard’s engagement with the end is linked to an articulation predicated on our ability “to speak” events into existence, to conjure and to bridle those events in terms of recognisable, linear, and logical arrangements of words. Calling this verbal ordering “the poetry of initial conditions” (Baudrillard 113) in which memory imposes a structure so that the chaotic/catastrophic may be studied and its elements may be compared, Baudrillard suggests that this poetry “fascinates” because “we no longer possess a vision of final conditions” (113). The images of contemporary catastrophes and their subsequent visualisation serve as the ultimate reminders that we, as viewers and survivors, were not there – that visualisation itself involves a necessary distance between the horrified viewer and the viewed horror. In the case of the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Centre, the need to “be there,” to experience vicariously a trauma as similarly as possible to those who later became its victims, perhaps explains why images of the planes first slamming into each of the towers were played and repeated ad nauseam. As Baudrillard suggests, “it would be interesting to know whether…effects persist in the absence of causes … whether something can exist apart from any origin and reference” (111). The ongoing search for these causes – particularly in the case of the World Trade Centre’s obliteration – has manifested itself in a persistent cycle of image production and consumption, prompting those images to serve as the visible/visual join between our own survival and the lost lives of the attacks or as surrogates for those whose death we could not witness. These images frequently allowed the West to legitimise its mourning, served as the road map by which we could (re-)explore the halcyon days prior to September 11, and provided the evidence needed for collective retribution. Ultimately, images served as the fictive embodiments of unseen victims and provided the vehicle by which mourning could be transformed from an isolated act to a shared experience. Visitors on the Rooftop: Visualising Origins and the Moments before Destruction It goes without saying that most have seen the famous photograph of the bundled-up tourist standing on the observation deck of the World Trade Centre with one of the jets ready to strike the tower shortly thereafter (see Figure 1). Though the photograph was deemed a macabre photo-manipulation, it reached thousands of e-mail inboxes almost two weeks following the horrific attacks and led many to ponder excitedly whether this image truly was the “last” image of a pre-September 11 world. Many openly debated why someone would fabricate such an image, yet analysts believe that its creation was a means to heal and to return to the unruffled days prior to September 11, when terrorism was thought to be a phenomenon relegated to the “elsewhere” of the Middle East. A Website devoted to the analysis of cultural rumours, Urban Legends, somewhat melodramatically suggested that the photograph resurrects what recovery efforts could not re-construct – a better understanding of the moments before thousands of individuals perished: The online world is fraught with clever photo manipulations that often provoke gales of laughter in those who view them, so we speculate that whoever put together this particular bit of imaging did so purely as a lark. However, presumed lighthearted motives or not, the photo provokes sensations of horror in those who view it. It apparently captures the last fraction of a second of this man’s life ... and also of the final moment of normalcy before the universe changed for all of us. In the blink of an eye, a beautiful yet ordinary fall day was transformed into flames and falling bodies, buildings collapsing inwards on themselves, and wave upon wave of terror washing over a populace wholly unprepared for a war beginning in its midst…The photo ripped away the healing distance brought by the nearly two weeks between the attacks and the appearance of this digital manipulation, leaving the sheer horror of the moment once again raw and bared to the wind. Though the picture wasn’t real, the emotions it stirred up were. It is because of these emotions the photo has sped from inbox to inbox with the speed that it has. (“The Accidental Tourist”) While the photograph does help the viewer recall the times before our fears of terrorism, war, and death were realised, this image does not episodically capture “the last fraction of a second” in a man’s life, nor does it give credibility to the “blink-of-an-eye” shifts between beautiful and battered worlds. The photographic analysis provided by Urban Legends serves as a retrospective means of condensing the space of time in which we must imagine the inevitable suffering of unseen individuals. Yet, the video of the towers, from the initial impacts to their collapse, measured approximately 102 minutes – a massive space of time in which victims surely contemplated escape, the inevitability of escape, the possibility of their death, and, ultimately, the impossibility of their survival (“Remains of a Day” 58). Post-traumatic visualising serves as the basis for constructing the extended horror as instantaneous, a projection that reflects how we hoped the situation might be for those who experienced it, rather than an accurate representation of the lengthy period of time between the beginning and end of the attacks. The photograph of the “accidental tourist” does not subscribe to the usual tenets of photography that suggest the image we see is, to quote W.J.T. Mitchell, “a purely objective transcript of reality” (Mitchell 281). Rather, this image invites a Burginian “inva[sion] by language in the very moment it is looked at: in memory, in association, [where] snatches of words and images continually intermingle and exchange one for the other” (Burgin 51). One sees the tourist in the photograph as a smiling innocent, posing at the wrong place and at the wrong time. Through that ascription, viewers may justify their anger and melancholy as this singular, visible body (about to be harmed) stands in for countless, unseen others awaiting the same fate. Its discrepancies with the actual opening hours of the WTC observation deck and the positioning of the aircraft largely ignored, the “accidental tourist” photo-manipulation was visualised by countless individuals and forwarded to a plethora of in-boxes because September 11 realities could not be shared intimately on that day, because the death of aircraft passengers, WTC workers, and rescue personnel was an inevitable outcome that could not be visualised as even remotely “actual” or explainable. Computer-based art and design have shown us that approximations to reality often result in its overall conflation. Accordingly, our desperate hope that we have seen glimpses of the moments before tragedy is ultimately dismantled by an acknowledgement of the illogical or impossible elements that go against the basic rules of visualisation. The “accidental tourist” is a phenomenon that not only epitomises Baudrillard’s search for origins in the wake of catastrophic effects, but underscores a collective need to visualise bodies as once-living rather than presently and inevitably dead. Faces in the Smoke: Visualising the Unseen Although such photo-manipulations were rampant in the days and weeks following the attack, many people constructed their own realities in the untouched images that the media streamed to them. The World Trade Centre disaster seemed to implore photography, in particular, to resurrect both the unseen, unremembered moments prior to the airliners’ slamming into the building and to perform two distinct roles as the towers burned: to reaffirm the public’s perception of the attack as an act of evil and to catalyse a sense of hope that those who perished were touched by God or ushered peacefully to their deaths. Within hours of the attacks, photographic stills captured what many thought to be the image of Satan – complete with horns, face, eyes, nose, and mouth – within the plumes of smoke billowing from one of the towers (see Figure 2 and its detail in Figure 3). The Associated Press, whose footage was most frequently used to reference this visual phenomenon, quickly dismissed the speculation; as Vin Alabiso, an executive photo editor for AP, observed: AP has a very strict policy which prohibits the alteration of the content of a photo in any way…The smoke in this photo combined with light and shadow has created an image which readers have seen in different ways. (“Angel or Devil?”) Although Alabiso’s comments defended the authenticity of the photographs, they also suggested the ways in which visual representation and perception could be affected by catastrophic circumstances. While many observers openly questioned whether the photographs had been “doctored,” others all too willingly invested these images with ethereal qualities by asking if the “face” they saw was that of Satan – a question mirroring their belief that such an act of terrorism was clear evidence of evil masterminding. If, as Mitchell has theorised, photographs function through a dialogical exchange of connotative and denotative messages, the photographs of the burning towers instead bombarded viewers with largely connotative messages – in other words, nothing that could precisely link specific bodies to the catastrophe. The visualising of Satan’s face happens not because Satan actually dwells within the plumes of smoke, but because the photograph resists Mitchell’s dialogue with the melancholic eye. The photograph refuses to “speak” for the individuals we know are suffering behind the layers of smoke, so our own eye constructs what the photograph will not reveal: the “face” of a reality we wish to be represented as deplorably and unquestionably evil. Barthes has observed that such “variation in readings is not … anarchic, [but] depends on the different types of knowledge … invested in the image…” (Barthes 46). In traumatic situations, one might amend this analysis to state that these various readings occur because of gaps in this knowledge and because visualisation transforms into an act based on knowledge that we wish we had, that we wish we could share with victims and fellow mourners. These visualisations highlight a desperate need to bridge the viewer’s experience of survival and their concomitant knowledge of others’ deaths and to link the “safe” visualisation of the catastrophic with the utter submission to catastrophe likely felt by those who died. Explaining the faces in the smoke as “natural indentations” as Alabiso did may be the technical and emotionally neutral means of cataloguing these images; however, the spotting of faces in photographic stills is a mechanism of visualisation that humanises a tragedy in which physical bodies (their death, their mutilation) cannot be seen. Other people who saw photographic stills from other angles and degrees of proximity were quick to highlight the presence of angels in the smoke, as captured by WABC from a perspective entirely different from that in Figure 2 (instead, see Figure 3). In either scenario, photography allows the visual personification of redemptive or evil influences, as well as the ability to visualise the tragedy not just as the isolated destruction of an architectural marvel, but as a crime against humanity with cosmic importance. Sharing the Fall: Desperation and the Photographing of Falling Bodies Perhaps what became even more troubling than the imagistic conjuring of human forms within the smoke was the photographing of bodies falling from the upper floors of the North Tower (see Figure 5). Though newspapers (re-)published photographs of the debris and hysteria of the attacks and television networks (re-)broadcast video sequences of the planes’ crashing into the towers and their collapse, the pictures of people jumping from the building were rarely circulated by the media. Dennis Cauchon and Martha T. Moore characterised these consequences of the terrorist attacks as “the most sensitive aspect of the Sept. 11 tragedy … [that] shocked the nation” (Cauchon and Moore). A delicate balance certainly existed between the media’s desire to associate faces with the feelings of desperation we know those who died must have experienced and a now-numb general public who ascribed to the photographs an unequivocal “too-muchness.” To read about those who jumped to escape smoke and flames reveals a horrific and frightfully swift narrative of panic: For those who jumped, the fall lasted 10 seconds. They struck the ground at just less than 150 miles per hour – not fast enough to cause unconsciousness while falling, but fast enough to ensure instant death on impact. People jumped from all four sides of the north tower. They jumped alone, in pairs and in groups. (Cauchon and Moore) The text contextualises these leaps to death in terms that are understandable to survivors who read the story and later discover these descriptions can never approximate the trauma of “being there”: Why did they jump? How fast were they travelling? Did they feel anything when their bodies hit the ground? Were they conscious during their jump? Did they die alone? These questions and their answers put into motion the very moment that the photograph of the jumping man has frozen. Words act as extensions of the physical boundaries of the photograph and underscore the horror of that image, from the description of the conditions that prompted the jump to the pondering of the death that was its consequence. If, as Jonathan Crary’s analysis of photographic viewing might intimate, visualisation prompts both an “autonomy of vision” and a “standardisation and regulation of the observer” (Crary 150), the photograph of a man plummeting to his death fashions the viewer’s eye as autonomous and alive because the image he/she views is the undeniable representation of a now-deceased Other. Yet, as seen in the often-hysterical responses to the threats of terrorism in the days following September 11, this “Other” embodies the very possibility of our own demise. Suddenly, the man we see in mid-air becomes the visualised “Every(wo)man” whose photographic representation also represents our unacknowledged vulnerabilities. Thus, trauma is shared through a poignant visual negotiation of dying: the certainty of the photographed man’s death juxtaposed with the newly realised or conjured threat of the viewer’s own death. In terms of humanness, those who witnessed these falls firsthand recall the ways in which the falling people became objectified – their fall seemingly robbing them of any visible sense of humanity. Eric Thompson, an employee on the seventy-seventh floor of the South Tower, shared an instantaneous moment with one of the victims: Thompson looked the man in the face. He saw his tie flapping in the wind. He watched the man’s body strike the pavement below. “There was no human resemblance whatsoever,” Thompson says. (Cauchon and Moore) Obviously, the in-situ experience of viewing these individuals hopelessly jumping to their deaths served as the prompt to run away, to escape, but the photograph acts as the frozen-in-time re-visitation and sharing of – a turning back toward – this scenario. The act of viewing the photographs reinstates the humanness that the panic of the moment seemingly removed; yet, the disparity between the photograph’s foreground (the jumping man) and its background (the building’s façade) remains its greatest disconcerting element. Unlike those photographic portraits that script behaviours and capture us in our most presentable states of being, this photograph reveals the unwilling subject – he who has not consented to share his state of being with the camera. Though W.J.T. Mitchell suggests that “[p]hotographs…seem necessarily incomplete in their imposition of a frame that can never include everything that was there to be…‘taken’” (Mitchell 289), the eye in times of catastrophe shifts between its desire to maintain the frame (that does not visually engage the inferno from which the man jumped or the concrete upon which he died) and its inability to do so. This photograph, as Mitchell might assert, “speaks” because visualisation allows its total frame of reference to extend beyond its physical boundaries and, as evidenced by post-September 11 phobias and our responses to horrific images, to affect the very means by which catastrophe is imagined and visualised. Technically speaking, the negotiated balance between foreground and background in the photograph is lost: the desperation of the falling man juxtaposed with a seemingly impossible background that should not have been there. Lost, too, is the viewer’s ability to “connect” visually with – literally, to share – that experience, to see oneself within the contexts of that particular visual representation. This inability to see the viewing self in the photograph is an ironic moment of experiential possibility that lingers still in the Western world’s fears surrounding terrorism: when the supposedly impossible act is finally visualised, territorialised, and rendered as possible. Dead Art: The Destructions and Resurrections of Works by Rodin In many ways, the photographing of those experiences so divorced from our own contributed to intense discussions of perspective in visualisation: the viewer’s witnessing of trauma by means of a camera and photographer that captured the image from a “safe” distance. However, the recovery of artwork that actually suffered damage as a result of the World Trade Centre collapse prompted many art historians and theorists to ponder the possibilities of art’s death and to contemplate the fate of art that is physically victimised. In an anticipatory vein, J.M. Bernstein suggests that “art ends as it becomes progressively further distanced from truth and moral goodness, as it loses its capacity to speak the truth about our most fundamental categorical engagements…” (Bernstein 5). If Bernstein’s theory is applied to those works damaged at the World Trade Centre site, the sculptures of Rodin, so famously photographed in the weeks of excavation that followed September 11, could be categorised as “dead” – distanced from the “truth” of human form that Rodin cast, even further from the moral goodness and the striving toward global peace that the Cantor Fitzgerald collection aimed to embrace. While many art critics believed that the destroyed works should not be displayed again, many (including Fritz Koenig, who designed The Sphere, which was damaged in the terrorist attacks) believe that such “dead art” deserves, even requires, resuscitation (see Figure 6). Much like the American flags that survived the infernos at the World Trade Centre and Pentagon site, these lost and re-discovered artworks have served as rallying points to accomplish both the sharing of trauma and an artistically inspired foundation for the re-development of the lower Manhattan site. In the case of Rodin’s The Thinker, which was recovered at the site and later presumed stolen, the statue’s discovery alongside aircraft parts and twisted steel girders served as a unique and rare survival story, almost as the surrogate representative body for those human bodies that were never found, never seen. Dan Barry and William K. Rashbaum recall that in the days following the sculpture’s disappearance, “investigators have been at Fresh Kills [landfill] and at ground zero in recent weeks, flashing a photograph of ‘The Thinker’ and asking, in effect: Have you seen this symbol of humanity” (Barry and Rashbaum)? Given such symbolic weight, sculpture most certainly took on superhuman proportions. Yet, in the days that followed the discovery of artwork that survived the attacks, only passing references were made to those figurative paintings and drawings by Picasso, Hockney, Lichtenstein, and Miró that were lost – perhaps because their subject matter or manner of artistic representation did not (or could not) reflect a “true” infliction of damage and pain the way a three-dimensional, human-like sculpture could. Viewers visualised not only the possibility of their own cultural undoing by seeing damaged Rodins, but also the embodiment of unseen victims’ bodies that could not be recovered. In a rousing speech about September 11 as an attack upon the humanities and the production of culture, Bruce Cole stated that “the loss of artifacts and art, no matter how priceless and precious, is dwarfed by the loss of life” (Cole). Nevertheless, the visualisation of maimed, disfigured art was the lens through which many individuals understood the immensity of that loss of life and the finality of their loved ones’ disappearances. What the destruction and damaging of artwork on September 11 created was an atmosphere in which art, traditionally conjured as the studied and inanimate subject, transformed from a determined to a determining influence, a re-working of Paul Smith’s theory in which “the ‘subject’ … is determined – the object of determinant forces; whereas ‘the individual’ is assumed to be determining” (Smith xxxiv). Damaged sculptures gave representative form to the thousands of victims we, as a visualising public, knew were inside the towers, but their survival spoke to larger artistic issues: the impossibility of art’s end and the foiling of its death. Baudrillard’s notion of the “impossibility of ending” demonstrates that the destruction of art (in the capitalistic sense that is contingent on its undamaged condition and its prescribed worth and “value”) does not equate to the destruction of meaning as such, but that the new and re-negotiated meanings deployed by injured art frighteningly implicate us – viewers who once assigned meaning becoming the subjects who long to be assigned something, anything, be it solace, closure, or retribution. Importantly, the latest plans for the re-vitalised World Trade Centre site indicate that the damaged Rodin and Koenig sculptures will semiotically mediate the significations established when the original World Trade Centre was a vital nexus of activity in lower Manhattan, the shock and pain experienced when the towers collapsed and individuals were searching for meaning in art’s destruction and survival, and the hope many have invested in the new buildings and their role in the maintenance and recovery of memory. A Concluding Thought Digital manipulation, photography, and the re-contextualisation of artistic “masterpieces” from their hermetic placement in the gallery to their brutal dumping in a landfill have served as the humanistic prompts that actively determined the ways in which culture grappled with and shared unimaginable horror. Images have transformed in purpose from static re(-)presentations of reality to active, changing conduits by which pasts can be remembered, by which the intangibility of death can be given substance, by which unshared moments can be more intimately considered. Oddly, visualisation has performed simultaneously two disparate functions: separating the living from the dead through a panoply of re-affirming visual experiences and permitting the re-visitation of those times, events, and people that the human eye could not see itself. Ultimately, what the manipulations, misinterpretations, and destructions of art show us is that the conveyance of meaning between individuals, whether dead or alive, whether seen or unseen, is the image’s most pressing and difficult charge. Works Cited “Angel or Devil? Viewers See Images in Smoke.” Click on Detroit. 17 Sep. 2001. 10 February 2003 <http://www.clickondetroit.com/sh/news/stories/nat-news-96283920010917-120936.php>. Barry, Dan, and William K. Rashbaum. “Rodin Work from Trade Center Survived, and Vanished.” New York Times. 20 May 2002: B1. Barthes, Roland. Image, Music, Text. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977. Baudrillard, Jean. The Illusion of the End. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1994. Bernstein, J.M. The Fate of Art: Aesthetic Alienation from Kant to Derrida and Adorno. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992. Burgin, Victor. The End of Art Theory: Criticism and Post-Modernity. Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press, 1986. Cauchon, Dennis and Martha T. Moore. “Desperation Drove Sept. 11 Victims Out World Trade Center Windows.” Salt Lake Tribune Online. 4 September 2002. 19 Jan. 2003 <http://www.sltrib.com/2002/sep/09042002/nation_w/768120.htm>. Crary, Jonathan. Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990. Mitchell, W.J.T. Picture Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago P, 1994. “Remains of a Day.” Time 160.11 (9 Sep. 2002): 58. Smith, Paul. Discerning the Subject. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1988. “The Accidental Tourist.” Urban Legends. 20 Nov. 2001. 21 Feb. 2003 <http://www.snopes2.com/rumors/crash.htm>. Links http://www.clickondetroit.com/sh/news/stories/nat-news-96283920010917-120936.html http://www.sltrib.com/2002/sep/09042002/nation_w/768120.htm http://www.snopes2.com/rumors/crash.htm Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Smith, Royce W.. "The Image Is Dying" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0304/09-imageisdying.php>. APA Style Smith, R. W. (2003, Apr 23). The Image Is Dying. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 6,< http://www.media-culture.org.au/0304/09-imageisdying.php>

A Lei de Responsabilidade Fiscal (LRF) foi criada em 2000, tendo como um de seus objetivos o de controlar e limitar o processo de endividamento dos estados brasileiros. No entanto, em 2016, a União acertou o refinanciamento das dívidas de alguns destes estados. Este trabalho busca analisar esta aparente contradição; a crise dos estados teria como origem fatores exógenos à LRF ou os mecanismos da LRF não foram suficientes para conter o comportamento de endividamento excessivo dos estados? Utilizando a metodologia de Bohn (1998), estimou-se cinco modelos: painel completo, separação regional, separação por critério endógeno, separação por gasto com pessoal em relação a receita corrente líquida e separação pelo critério da Resolução de número 40 do Senado Federal. As estimações contemplam quatro períodos: 2001 a 2015; 2008 a 2015; 2001 a 2020 e 2008 a 2020, e consideram tanto a dívida consolidada líquida quanto a bruta. Os resultados apontam que os instrumentos que foram criados são ineficientes, pois estados que não estão constrangidos por nenhuma punição da LRF não possuem uma trajetória sustentável da dívida. Por consequência, é reforçada a ideia de que há um comportamento de risco moral por parte dos estados, que procuram endividar-se excessivamente por considerarem que a dívida será renegociada pela União, comportamento este que só pode ser combatido a partir de aprimoramentos institucionais.
The \"Fiscal Responsibility Law\" (LRF) was created in 2000, having as one of its pillars the control of the regional states\' indebtedness process. However, in 2016, the federal government approved the refinance of such debts for some states. This paper seeks to analyze this seeming contradiction: the states\' crysis is due to factors that are exogenous to the LRF, or are the LRF mechanisms not sufficient to restrain the excessive indebtness by the states? Using Bohn\'s methodology (1998), five models are estimated: complete pannel, regional separation, separation by an endogenous criteria, separation by LRF\'s resolution to stafe workers expending (wages, pensions, etc) and separation by a Senate resolution\'s criteria. The estimations are made in four time frames: 2001-2015; 2008-2015; 2001-2020; 2008-2020, and both the net debt and the gross debt are considered. Results indicate that the instruments that were created by the LRF are inefficient, in the sense that states that are not punished or affected by said instruments do not follow a sustainable fiscal policy. Consequently, the idea of a moral hazard behaviour is reemforced: the states expect that the federal government will refinance its debt, so they do not follow a sustainable fiscal policy. This behaviour can only be stopped through institucional reforms.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the shift in funding reforms at Malaysian public universities. Previous research has shown that shifts in new funding to public universities are more likely to result in a behavioural change at such institutions. This research used agency theory as a practical theoretical framework to analyse relationships between the principal (government) and the agents (public universities), and to predict the effects a change in government funding would have on teaching and research performance in institutions of higher education. In the context of Malaysia as a developing country, this theory has been used to establish a framework for determining the extent to which such institutions meet the Ministry of Higher Education objectives stated in the National Higher Education Strategic Plan beyond 2020. This research design employed a quantitative survey for major data collection, and subsequent qualitative focus group interviews to enable in-depth analysis of the survey findings.

This research examines the causes and effects of job satisfaction among public sector workers in Saudi Arabia. A Job Satisfaction Model was developed based on theories supporting factors in job satisfaction, organisational commitment, and intention to leave and the research questions were tested within the scope of the model. A range of intrinsic and extrinsic factors was proposed to analyse causes affecting job satisfaction, while the effects were examined in terms of organisational commitment and intention to leave.

This study provided empirical evidence to support the point of view that selective models of local govemance as endorsed by multilateral donor agencies such as the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the IMF, can be applied in the specific situation of a developing country if they are careful designed with a full participation of potential stakeholders including the beneficiaries. Furthermore, it showed a participatory method for collecting and widening the views and perspectives of the citizen in shaping a political future of a country in transition, which is a unique experience in the history of all public administrations.

In Malaysia, the government has invested in public libraries with the intention of promoting development, particularly in rural areas. Despite the increasing number of rural public libraries being built throughout Malaysia, providing users with many services, activities and programs, previous research indicates that they are underutilised. The research reported in this thesis aimed to explore relationships between rural public libraries and their communities in both Malaysia and Australia, with particular attention to empowerment and community development processes.

The main purpose of this study was to analyze the new public management reforms practiced by some of the developed countries and determine their applicability to Nepal. New Public Management (NPM) was defined as cost cutting and downsizing, introducing agencies, separation of purchaser and provider, decentralization of management authority, performance management, introduction of market mechanisms, changes in personnel systems and quality and customer responsiveness. The term 'applicability' was determined by the perceived usefulness of NPM to stakeholders. The main focus of this research was to find an answer to the pertinent question - Is NPM applicable to Nepal? This research explored the political and bureaucratic environment inherent in Nepal, examined the influence of political and bureaucratic factors to the applicability of NPM and suggested recommendations for future reform in Nepal.

This thesis investigates the relevance of digital democracy in enhancing citizen participation in policy making within the Malaysian civil service. A qualitative research method is applied through an empirical, in-depth interview based, data collection exercise of a sample of civil servants and commentators on government and technology in Malaysia. It assesses, from a broad perspective, the possible contribution of Information Communications Technology (ICT) in strengthening citizen participation in the democratic processes of government. In these contexts it offers a perspective on how the legal, political and social interpenetrates. The literature reviewed covers: the concept of democracy and assumed influences of ICT on democratic processes; Malaysia’s history with a focus on nation building, the civil service and also its government’s ICT agendas; and, laws structuring citizen participation in government in Malaysia, framed within autopoietic theory. This, as a metaphor, offers a flexible perspective of law’s affect on its environment and vice versa, and, further illustrates and emphasises the importance of context. The findings suggest that civil servants agree that there are numerous opportunities for policy making to benefit from digital democracy practices based on ICT. However there is a gap between their appreciation of this potential as a concept and their confidence in its implementation in policy making within the civil service. Civil servants are not ready to hand over the role of defining the process and content of policy making to citizens. Civil servants are generally uncertain about the actual value or weight they are willing to afford to inputs from digital democracy practices and what its influence on policy making will be. The thesis is significant because it describes, from viewpoints within the civil service, the role of ICT in enhancing citizen participation in democratic processes within a context of issues, benefits, enablers and barriers to citizen participation in policy making. This description is placed against a background of the history, culture and law which situates Malaysian civil servants’ understanding of the concept of digital democracy and how they frame its relevance to policy making. The research informs the formulation of policy for the use of digital democracy practices in Malaysia. More generally, it contributes to the debate over the factors, including historic democratic practices, which affect the capacity for ICT to enhance participatory democracy. Through this focus on a South East Asian state and its civil service, the study explores new dimensions and offers a significant contribution to the emerging field of digital democracy.

The research focuses on the development of e-government initiatives at public sector organisations in Oman. As e-government matures in importance and priority for governments worldwide, an understanding of the factors that influence their successful development is invaluable. Therefore, in order fore-government initiatives to be successful, the influencing factors should be identified and evaluated. This research examines the factors that could guide the successful development of egovernment initiatives in public-sector service organisations in Oman. Based on the research objectives, a case study approach was found to be appropriate and employed throughout this research. The data was gathered utilising a questionnaire and semistructured interviews.

A multiple sector collaboration (MSC) approach to public health and social policy development and implementation is becoming the norm in postmodern cities and communities. The development of a theoretical framework in relation to MSC practice is still in its infancy. As an approach to policy development and implementation, MSC has been subjected to criticism for (a) its often value driven, complex, and time-consuming methods, and (b) the lack of measurable or tangible outcomes. The gaps found in the literature reveal a significant need for further evidence-based research that focuses on gaining greater insight into the operations of MSC and how the approach might contribute to improved social, health, and community outcomes. The aim of the present research is to close the identified gaps. Utilising a single-case approach, an existing and well-reputed MSC was selected for in-depth study over a 3-year period. Findings from this case study show that values, common purpose, group processes and dynamics, relationships, interactions, and synergy are vital components in the development and operation of a fully-functioning MSC.

The accession of James VI in England saw a Catholic toleration campaign which was at least as aggressive as the better-known puritan one. Catholic lobbying in the end helped to trigger the reimposition, via new legislation, of an augmented version of the previous reign’s penal law against aspects of contemporary Catholicism. In turn, this provoked some Catholics into sometimes aggressive public displays of separatist independence, notably in the Welsh borders in summer 1605, all by way of reaction against what they saw as the king’s reneging on promises that he had made before his accession in England. Ultimately this led into whatever the Gunpowder Plot was. That conspiracy provoked further parliamentary legislation and a series of subsequent confrontations between Catholics and the regime over what appropriate political loyalty and compliance actually were. There were fewer treason prosecutions of Catholics in the early Jacobean period; but the ones that were taken all the way tell us a good deal about the place of Catholicism in the new Jacobean polity. The regime formulated a new oath of allegiance, and it was promulgated in statute. Catholics’ responses to the oath framed most of the proceedings against clergy in the period after 1606. Faced with royal hostility and the seeming evidence of actual sedition by some of their co-religionists, those who had fronted the appeals against the archpriest late in Elizabeth’s reign renewed their lobbying at Rome for the institution of an episcopal hierarchy which would govern English Catholics appropriately.