5. Impartiality and independence

This chapter examines the role of impartiality and independence in public administration. The topics that are discussed include judicial bias, administrative bias, waiver, determining civil rights, compound decision making, and the value of independence, with an explanation of the requirement of an independent tribunal in Art 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The chapter also explains the difference between bias (which is unlawful) and a lack of impartiality (which may be lawful), and explains when bias will be presumed. Bias is presented as both a lack of due process and as a flaw in the substance of a decision maker’s reasoning.

5. Impartiality and independence

This chapter examines impartiality and independence in public administration. The topics that are discussed include judicial bias, administrative bias, waiver, determining civil rights, compound decision making, and the value of independence, with an explanation of the requirement of an independent tribunal in Art 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The chapter also explains the difference between bias (which is unlawful), and a lack of impartiality (which may be lawful), and explains when bias will be presumed. Bias is presented as both a lack of due process, and also as a flaw in the substance of a decision maker’s reasoning.

The Improvement of DS Evidence Theory and Its Application in IR/MMW Target Recognition

ATR system has a broad application prospect in the military field, especially in the field of modern defense technology. When paradoxes are in existence in ATR system due to adverse battlefield environment, integration cannot be effectively and reliably carried out only by traditional DS evidence theory. In this paper, a modified DS evidence theory is presented and applied in IR/MMW target recognition system. The improvement of DS evidence theory is realized by three parts: the introduction of sensor priority and evidence credibility to realize the discount processing of evidences, the modification of DS combination rule to enhance the accuracy of synthesis results, and the compound decision-making rule. The application of the modified algorithm in IR/MMW system is designed to deal with paradoxes, improve the target recognition rate, and ensure the reliability of target recognition system. Experiments are given to illustrate that the introduction of the modified DS evidence theory in IR/MMW system is better able to realize satisfactory target recognition performance through multisensor information fusion than any single-mode system.

Conversation-Oriented Decision Support Systems for Organizations

This chapter proposes concepts for designing and developing decision support systems that acknowledge, explore and exploit the fact that conversations among people are the top-level “supporting device” for decision-making. The goal is to design systems that support, configure and induce increasingly effective and efficient decision-making conversations. This includes allowing and motivating participation in decision-making conversations of any people who may contribute positively to decision-making and to the quality of its outcomes. The proposal sees the sum total of decisions being taken in an organization as the global decision process of the organization. The global decision process of the organization is structured in decision processes corresponding to organizational domains. Each organizational domain has associated a unit decision process. If the organizational domain contains organizational sub-domains, then its compound decision process is the union and composition of its unit decision process and the unit decision processes of its sub-domains. The proposal can be seen as extending, enlarging and integrating group decision support systems into an organization-wide system. The resulting organizational decision support system, by its conversational nature, may become the kernel decision support system of an organization or enterprise. In this way, the global decision process of the organization may be made explicit and monitored. It is believed that this proposal is original.

Conversation-Oriented Decision Support Systems for Organizations

This chapter proposes concepts for designing and developing decision support systems that acknowledge, explore and exploit the fact that conversations among people are the top-level “supporting device” for decision-making. The goal is to design systems that support, configure and induce increasingly effective and efficient decision-making conversations. This includes allowing and motivating participation in decision-making conversations of any people who may contribute positively to decision-making and to the quality of its outcomes. The proposal sees the sum total of decisions being taken in an organization as the global decision process of the organization. The global decision process of the organization is structured in decision processes corresponding to organizational domains. Each organizational domain has associated a unit decision process. If the organizational domain contains organizational sub-domains, then its compound decision process is the union and composition of its unit decision process and the unit decision processes of its sub-domains. The proposal can be seen as extending, enlarging and integrating group decision support systems into an organization-wide system. The resulting organizational decision support system, by its conversational nature, may become the kernel decision support system of an organization or enterprise. In this way, the global decision process of the organization may be made explicit and monitored. It is believed that this proposal is original.