Enhancing Performance-Based Regulation: Lessons from New Zealand's Building Control System

<p>Performance-based regulation establishes mandatory goals rather than enforcing prescriptive standards. Performance-based regulation has become popular over the past two decades as an alternative to prescriptive regulation, as it holds out the promise of simultaneously achieving health, safety and environmental outcomes while facilitating innovation and reducing regulatory costs. In the early 1990s New Zealand adopted a performance-based building control regime. This demonstrably failed and was replaced in 2004 with a new regime, still performance-based but more conservative. Using legal determinations, adjudications and court cases, and reviews of the failures, contributing factors have been identified. An assessment has been made of the extent to which these factors can be attributed to the performance philosophy and features of the regime. Strategies to addresses the weaknesses of performance-based regulation have been explored. The change from a standards-based regulatory regime, where technology shifts are on the margin and occur through a process of incremental trial-and-error, to a performance-based regime, displaced traditional institutions for aggregating knowledge required for risk-based decision-making. At the same time, the new performance-based regime was permissive of greater technology shifts, which demands more of decision-makers who are operating in an environment of inevitable uncertainty. The significance of the regime change was not well understood and new institutions did not evolve. Reverting to traditional institutions is not an option as they are inherently conservative and therefore innovation as one of the normative benefits of performance-based regulation is likely to be constrained. New institutions are required to aggregate knowledge, but also permit decisions that enable the technology threshold to be pushed out in situations where it is not possible to measure accurately how a novel technology will perform in all of the circumstances of its use, and failure in the field is a possibility. This requires knowledge that is both technical and evaluative. Technical knowledge is more than science, but increasingly knowledge in other domains such as psychology, economics, and both domestic and international law. Evaluative knowledge is that which is required to assess risks and consequences. This study explores two strategies for resolving the challenges of decision-making in a permissive performance-based regulatory environment: improving the predicative capability of decision-making systems through the better application of the intuitive judgment associated with expertise and wisdom, and treating novel technologies as explicit experiments. Both strategies show promise, but may be difficult to implement. If the conditions for materially pushing out the thresholds of technology while managing the risks cannot be met, it may be necessary to revert to incremental trial-and-error in high-risk areas. This does not preclude innovation, but it will be at a slower rate.</p>

Enhancing Performance-Based Regulation: Lessons from New Zealand's Building Control System

<p>Performance-based regulation establishes mandatory goals rather than enforcing prescriptive standards. Performance-based regulation has become popular over the past two decades as an alternative to prescriptive regulation, as it holds out the promise of simultaneously achieving health, safety and environmental outcomes while facilitating innovation and reducing regulatory costs. In the early 1990s New Zealand adopted a performance-based building control regime. This demonstrably failed and was replaced in 2004 with a new regime, still performance-based but more conservative. Using legal determinations, adjudications and court cases, and reviews of the failures, contributing factors have been identified. An assessment has been made of the extent to which these factors can be attributed to the performance philosophy and features of the regime. Strategies to addresses the weaknesses of performance-based regulation have been explored. The change from a standards-based regulatory regime, where technology shifts are on the margin and occur through a process of incremental trial-and-error, to a performance-based regime, displaced traditional institutions for aggregating knowledge required for risk-based decision-making. At the same time, the new performance-based regime was permissive of greater technology shifts, which demands more of decision-makers who are operating in an environment of inevitable uncertainty. The significance of the regime change was not well understood and new institutions did not evolve. Reverting to traditional institutions is not an option as they are inherently conservative and therefore innovation as one of the normative benefits of performance-based regulation is likely to be constrained. New institutions are required to aggregate knowledge, but also permit decisions that enable the technology threshold to be pushed out in situations where it is not possible to measure accurately how a novel technology will perform in all of the circumstances of its use, and failure in the field is a possibility. This requires knowledge that is both technical and evaluative. Technical knowledge is more than science, but increasingly knowledge in other domains such as psychology, economics, and both domestic and international law. Evaluative knowledge is that which is required to assess risks and consequences. This study explores two strategies for resolving the challenges of decision-making in a permissive performance-based regulatory environment: improving the predicative capability of decision-making systems through the better application of the intuitive judgment associated with expertise and wisdom, and treating novel technologies as explicit experiments. Both strategies show promise, but may be difficult to implement. If the conditions for materially pushing out the thresholds of technology while managing the risks cannot be met, it may be necessary to revert to incremental trial-and-error in high-risk areas. This does not preclude innovation, but it will be at a slower rate.</p>

Historiography of Scythian migration in the mirror of information technologies

This article is devoted to the insight of the migration process in the diachronic aspect on the example of Scythians history. This choice is caused by the fact that the information about the Scythians, their arrival in Eastern Europe and movements in the ancient Oecumene, is one of the main problems of Scythian archaeology. A significant range of sources contains information about the arrival of the Scythians and their movements in Europe. These sources include both the works of historians of Antiquity and Modern Times, as well as the works of modern archaeologists. The change of ideas about the Scythians migration is reviewed in accordance with the concept of the information technology shifts, which was put forward by Russian scientists Y.L. Shchapova and S.N. Grinchenko, specifically: information technology of articulate speech and language, information technology of writing, information technology of book printing, information technology of computers, information technology of networks. As result, conclusions were drawn from oral traditions about the vision changes on the causes of migration, about the arrival of a mythological hero – first ancestor at an unpopulated land, wars and tribal confrontation in the era of information technology of speech and language and information technology of writing.

THE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION REVOLUTION

In the context of sweeping social, economic, technological, and demographic changes, digital transformation is a series of deep and coordinated culture, workforce, and technology shifts that enable new educational and operating models and transform an institution’s operations, strategic directions. Digital transformation is a destination that is practically mandatory for most organizations. The interconnectivity that it fosters will make the communication flow between students and teachers more fluid. It also helps to improve the relationship and promotes the best use of available resources, especially in higher education. So, the researchers shed light on digital transformation, its importance and the challenges it faces, especially in higher education institutions Therefore, higher education institutions must keep pace with all these changes and take them into account if they want to develop and compete with their peers.

Leadership Disruption: Time to Reimagine Leadership Talent

Rapid changes in the global orbit, whether these are demographics, politics, pandemics or even technology shifts, all have considerable implications for leaders. The current world context is disrupting leadership practices because they are no longer meeting the needs of organizations and are forcing the reimagining of the talent needed to lead in this volatile era. The purpose of this article is to first identify the major drivers of the disruption. Secondly, to examine leadership through Humanocracy termed by Hamel and Zanini [1]. Third, there is a conversation around being able to adapt to the speed of change through a process of hyper-learning, that transitions to hyper-leading [2, 3]. Finally, as all great writing connects to theories, this article will include IQ, EQ, CQ, and LQ and their relevancy to leading through disruption.

Mobiles and the Self: A Trajectory of Paradigmatic Change

This chapter identifies old and new paradigms for how people engage with mobile media and their implications for the self. The first involves talking to distant others, which can divide the self when done around co-present others in public settings. The next paradigm marks a shift from voice conversations to messaging, which can be more easily weaved into the flows of daily life moments and movements. The authors revisit how over time this leads to routinization, to the extent that the technology becomes a deeply embedded part of the self. Finally, the authors identify a paradigm presently gaining momentum with mobile conversational agents (e.g., Siri and Google Assistant), which heralds a return to talking. With this mode of engagement, the technology shifts away from the self to become the “other” as users interact with and not just through it.

The hidden cost of digitization – things to consider

Purpose – The paper aims to explore some of the hidden costs of these endeavors through an exploration of some the current literature. Despite the perceived ease of creating digital access, the road to digitization is long and fraught with a number of obstacles. Design/methodology/approach – Some of the key ideas researched are the steps to consider when planning a digitization project, the long-term sustainability of such projects and issues of copyright and ownership. This article will benefit any institution planning to embark upon a future digitization project. Findings – More research needs to be conducted as the needs of users change and as the technology shifts and changes. Originality/value – This paper will benefit any institution planning to embark upon a future digitization project.