Armchair Auditors: Crowdsourcing Analysis of Government Expenditures

2015 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 71-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel E. O'Leary
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Local Governments ◽  
Open Data ◽  
Information And Communications Technology ◽  
Government Expenditures ◽  
Data Movement ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Potential Benefits ◽  
Open Data Movement

ABSTRACT Increasingly, there is interest in using information and communications technology (ICT) to help build a “better world.” As an example, the United Kingdom has initiated an “open data” movement to disclose financial information about federal and local governments and other organizations. This has led to the use of a wide range of technologies (Internet, Databases, Web 2.0, etc.) to facilitate disclosure. However, since there is a huge cost of generating and maintaining open data, there also is a concern: “will anyone do anything with the data?” In a speech in 2009, David Cameron, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, used the term “armchair auditor” to describe crowdsourcing analysis of that data. In that speech, Cameron (2009) noted: “Just imagine the effect that an army of armchair auditors is going to have on those expense claims.” Accordingly, as more and more countries and organizations generate open data, those “armchair auditors” could play an increasingly important role: to help crowdsource monitoring of government expenditures. This paper investigates a number of potential benefits and a number of emerging concerns associated with armchair auditors.

scholarly journals Revisiting Qualitative Data Reuse

SAGE Open ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 215824401668513 ◽  
Author(s):  
Libby Bishop ◽  
Arja Kuula-Luumi
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Qualitative Data ◽  
Open Data ◽  
Data Reuse ◽  
Research Projects ◽  
Science Data ◽  
Data Repositories ◽  
Data Movement ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Data Collections

Secondary analysis of qualitative data entails reusing data created from previous research projects for new purposes. Reuse provides an opportunity to study the raw materials of past research projects to gain methodological and substantive insights. In the past decade, use of the approach has grown rapidly in the United Kingdom to become sufficiently accepted that it must now be regarded as mainstream. Several factors explain this growth: the open data movement, research funders’ and publishers’ policies supporting data sharing, and researchers seeing benefits from sharing resources, including data. Another factor enabling qualitative data reuse has been improved services and infrastructure that facilitate access to thousands of data collections. The UK Data Service is an example of a well-established facility; more recent has been the proliferation of repositories being established within universities. This article will provide evidence of the growth of data reuse in the United Kingdom and in Finland by presenting both data and case studies of reuse that illustrate the breadth and diversity of this maturing research method. We use two distinct data sources that quantify the scale, types, and trends of reuse of qualitative data: (a) downloads of archived data collections held at data repositories and (b) publication citations. Although the focus of this article is on the United Kingdom, some discussion of the international environment is provided, together with data and examples of reuse at the Finnish Social Science Data Archive. The conclusion summarizes the major findings, including some conjectures regarding what makes qualitative data attractive for reuse and sharing.

scholarly journals Are public service media distinctive from the market? Interpreting the political information environments of BBC and commercial news in the United Kingdom

2021 ◽  
pp. 026732312110121
Author(s):  
Stephen Cushion
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Public Service ◽  
Television News ◽  
Information Environment ◽  
Political Information ◽  
The Political ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
International Issues ◽  
Market Driven

Public service media face an existential crisis. Many governments are cutting their budgets, while questioning the role and value of public service broadcasting because many citizens now have access to a wide range of media. This raises the question – do public service media supply a distinctive and informative news service compared to market-led media? Drawing on the concept of political information environment, this study makes an intervention into debates by carrying out a comparative content analysis of news produced by UK public service broadcasters and market-driven media across television, radio and online outlets (N = 1065) and interviewing senior editors about the routine selection of news. It found that almost all BBC news and commercial public service media platforms reported more news about politics, public affairs and international issues than entirely market-driven outlets. Online BBC news reported more informative topics than market-based media, which featured more entertainment and celebrity stories. The value of public service media was demonstrated on the United Kingdom’s nightly television news bulletins, which shone a light on the world not often reported, especially BBC News at Ten. Most market-driven media reported through a UK prism, excluding many countries and international issues. Overall, it is argued that the influence of public service media in the United Kingdom helps shape an information environment with informative news. The focus of the study is on UK media, but the conceptual application of intepreting a political information environment is designed to be relevant for scholars internationally. While communication studies have sought to advance more cross-national studies in recent years, this can limit how relevant studies are for debates in national political information environments. This study concludes by recommending more scholarly attention should be paid to theorising national policy dynamics that shape the political information environments of media systems within nations.

School Reform and Parental Engagement Learning in the United Kingdom

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janet Goodall
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
School Improvement ◽  
School Reform ◽  
21St Century ◽  
Parental Engagement ◽  
Reform Movements ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Per Se

Parental engagement in children and young people’s learning has been shown to be an important lever for school improvement and young people’s outcomes. However, parents are rarely involved in school reform movements. These reform movements are generally centered on the school rather than on improvement of learning per se. Shifting the focus away from the school and to learning as an overarching aim requires the inclusion of and partnership with parents. This is a new way of understanding school reform but has the best chance of supporting all students, including those not best served by the schooling systems in the early 21st century. The reforms here are chiefly concerned with U.K. schooling systems, but could be more widely applicable, and call on a wide range of evidence, from the United Kingdom and beyond.

scholarly journals The State of Open Data: Histories and Horizons

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tim Davies ◽  
Stephen B. Walker ◽  
Mor Rubinstein ◽  
Fernando Luis Perini
Keyword(s):  
Communities Of Practice ◽  
Open Data ◽  
The State ◽  
Data Movement ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
To Come ◽  
Open Data Movement ◽  
New Phase ◽  
Real World Problems

Its been ten years since open data first broke onto the global stage. Over the past decade, thousands of programmes and projects around the world have worked to open data and use it to address a myriad of social and economic challenges. Meanwhile, issues related to data rights and privacy have moved to the centre of public and political discourse. As the open data movement enters a new phase in its evolution, shifting to target real-world problems and embed open data thinking into other existing or emerging communities of practice, big questions still remain. How will open data initiatives respond to new concerns about privacy, inclusion, and artificial intelligence? And what can we learn from the last decade in order to deliver impact where it is most needed? The State of Open Data brings together over 60 authors from around the world to address these questions and to take stock of the real progress made to date across sectors and around the world, uncovering the issues that will shape the future of open data in the years to come.

The cereal grain trade in the United Kingdom: the problem of cereal variety

1984 ◽  
Vol 304 (1120) ◽  
pp. 395-407 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Major Constituent ◽  
Variety Identification ◽  
Starch Gel Electrophoresis ◽  
Current Frequency ◽  
Growth Environment ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Cereal Grain ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
The Impact

The production of cereals in the United Kingdom has increased steadily over recent years from 12.6 million tonnes in 1964 to 21.8 million tonnes in 1982. During this period, the United Kingdom’s accession to the E.E.C. in 1973 caused a reverse in the milling industry’s policy of including only a small proportion of home-grown wheat with imported wheat in breadmaking grists. Home-grown wheat is now the major constituent of mass produced bread. Since the passing of the Plant Varieties Rights Act in 1964, plant breeders have been able to collect royalties on the sale of seed of their varieties; this led within a decade to a large number of high yielding varieties on offer to the farmer. Thus during the period of adjustment to home-grown wheat after 1973, the milling industry had to select from a wide range of varieties of different milling and baking qualities. Selection was aided by the offer of a ‘premium’ (extra payment) for wheat of the right variety. The millers’ problem then was to be able to check that the wheat received was of the variety claimed by the supplier. Investigations of the heterogeneity ofgliadins by electrophoresis had been conducted by several workers, but a refined procedure was developed that used starch gel electrophoresis that was able to distinguish most varieties of wheat grown in France and the E.E.C. Different electrophoretic patterns were obtained from individual grains of different varieties: grains of the same variety gave similar patterns irrespective of growth environment. Subsequent developments of variety identification by electrophoresis have improved the resolution and time of analysis. Use of electrophoresis to check the varietal composition of grain being supplied to a British miller revealed that contracts that specified varietal content were usually, but not always, complied with. It was found that the miller was able to seek financial reimbursement from his supplier to compensate for the poorer grade of wheat received in about one in eight deliveries from France; and in about one in seven deliveries from the British farmer. Farmers have now adjusted to growing, storing and supplying varieties separately, such that the current frequency of erroneous grain delivery is about one in 50. The impact of variety identification by electrophoresis in barley trading has been less than in wheat trading. This is partly because it is sometimes possible to verify a purchase through examination of grain morphology, and partly because the alternative electrophoretic analysis is often impractical, because of frequently large numbers of barley varieties carrying identical hordein proteins.

Surface and Groundwater Quality and Health, with a Focus on the United Kingdom

2003 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Neal
Keyword(s):  
Drinking Water ◽  
United Kingdom ◽  
Water Resources ◽  
Groundwater Quality ◽  
Global Climate ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Basic Sanitation ◽  
Per Capita ◽  
Surface And Groundwater

Freshwater environments are of major importance to health issues in both direct (e.g., drinking water and sanitation) and indirect (e.g., industry, agriculture, and amenity/recreation) ways. However, water resources are finite, and, though renewable, demands have multiplied over the last 100 years due to escalating human populations and the growing requirements of industry and agriculture. Hence, there are increasing global concerns over the extent of present and future good quality water resources. As Gleick (1998) emphasizes: . . . ·Per-capita water demands are increasing, but percapita water availability is decreasing due to population growth and economic development. . . . . . . ·Half the world’s population lacks basic sanitation and more than a billion people lack potable drinking water; these numbers are rising. Incidences of some water-related diseases are rising. . . . . . . ·The per-capita amount of irrigated land is falling and competition for agricultural water is growing. . . . . . . ·Political and military tensions/conflicts over shared water resources are growing. . . . . . . ·A groundwater overdraft exists, the size of which is accelerating; groundwater supplies occur on every continent except Antarctica. . . . . . . ·Global climate change is evident, and the hydrological cycle will be seriously affected in ways that are only beginning to be understood. . . . The chemical composition of surface and groundwaters is influenced by a wide range of processes, some of which are outside the influence of humans while others are a direct consequence of anthropogenic pollution or changing of the environment. Starting with the range and nature of the processes involved, the changing nature of surface and groundwater quality is illustrated here, based on the evolution of the United Kingdom from a rural to an industrial and to a post- industrial society. The issue of what constitutes a health risk is outlined in relation to the pragmatic approaches required for environmental management. Surface and groundwater exhibit a wide range of chemical compositions, and, in ecosystems uninfluenced by humans, the range of compositions can vary considerably.

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