Assessing performance in local government

The author outlines the complexity of trying to measure performance in local government and poses the questions: performance review by whom?—elected members, professional officers, outside bodies and management consultants: for whom?—ratepayers, recipients of services, central government: and for what purpose?—to cut costs, to cut services, to improve efficiency. He then outlines the various techniques used to measure and assess performance in local government.     

What influences a decision? Some results from a highly controlled defence game

A closed game is described in which one person, representing a land force commander, plays against an unknown but pre-determined threat and decides when and where to deploy reserves. The game was designed to investigate the value of various levels of intelligence data. But large changes in data have had little effect on the quality of decisions made; the dominant feature is the variation between players. The possibility that the game itself might add unnecessarily to this variation has been examined. Accepting that large variation between players may be a fact of life, a way of increasing the efficiency of highly controlled games has also been tested. A number of working hypotheses, thought to be independent of the defence context, are offered to future game designers and the question is raised as to why Operational Researchers, who claim to assist decision-taking, know so little about what influences a decision.     

Further mnemonics for the Kalman filter updating formulas

In this paper the author supplements his earlier work on the covariance matrix updating formulas of the Kalman filter by supplying mnemonics for the conditional mean updating formulas.     

A typology of adolescent runaways

No single program seems adequate to serve a highly complex adolescent runaway and homeless youth population. A service program must have many components with each part addressing the needs of a specific and different population. This paper presents a typology of runaway behavior which has three categories. These categories distinguish among runaway and homeless youth by reference to their family situation, psychological characteristics, and length of time out of home. The implications for intervention that follow from these categories are discussed.former Bush fellow at the University of California, Los Angeles.     

Hazardous Waste Incineration at Sea: EPA Decision Making on Risk

This paper critiques the Environmental Protection Agency's assessment of risk for hazardous waste incineration at sea. It reviews operational and transportation risks and considers alternative approaches for managing chlorinated organic hazardous wastes. It concludes that depending on the scale of the program, ocean incineration will either contribute little to the overall management of this waste stream or else it will engender significant risks, especially in the coastal environment. Furthermore, past assessments on the part of EPA have tended to understate the risks of incineration at sea while simultaneously holding out the promise of the technology as a commercial-scale management option. Finally, this paper observes that the Western European countries that pioneered incineration in the North Sea are now finding practical alternatives. It is recommended that waste reuse, on-site treatment, and techniques of waste reduction provide viable alternatives and obviate the need for incineration at sea.