Parliament, political ethics and national integrity systems

Papers on Parliament No. 55 February 2011 Charles Sampford "Parliament, Political Ethics and National Integrity Systems*" Prev | Contents |

From national integrity systems to global integrity systems

The primary focus of corruption studies and anti-corruption activism has been corruption within sovereign states. However, over the last twenty years ‘globalization’, the flow of money, goods, people and ideas across borders, has threatened to overwhelm the system of sovereign states. Much activity has moved outside the control of nation states at the same time as nation states have ‘deregulated’ and in so doing have transferred power from those exercising governmental power at the nominal behest of the majority of its citizens to those with greater wealth and/or greater knowledge in markets in which knowledge is typically asymmetric. It is now recognized that many governance problems have arisen because of globalisation and can only be addressed by global solutions. It must also be recognized that governance problems at the national level contribute to governance problems and the global level and vice versa. Nevertheless, many of the lessons learned in combating corruption at the national level are relevant to a globalized world – in particular, the need for ethics and leadership in addition to legal and institutional reform; the need to integrate these measures into integrity systems; and the awareness of corruption systems. These are applied to areas of concern within sustainable globalisation raised by the conference – including peace and security, extractive industries, climate change and sustainable banking.

Variables governing the dynamics of attacker-defender systems in team sport

This project was a step forward in the examination and identification of key variables on the perception, decision making and action of team sport athletes through theoretical insights provided by the ecological dynamics perspective. The methodology drew on experiential knowledge of elite coaches to drive further empirical investigation into the specific task, environmental and personal constraints that shape the behaviour of athletes in specific performance contexts. The thesis has provided an effective rationale for further investigation into the emergent perception, decision making and action demanded of athletes in these unpredictable, fluent, fast-paced environments.

From Greek temple to bird's nest : mapping, assessing and understanding national integrity systems

In this paper, I would like to outline the approach we have taken to mapping and assessing integrity systems and how this has led us to see integrity systems in a new light. Indeed, it has led us to a new visual metaphor for integrity systems – a bird’s nest rather than a Greek temple. This was the result of a pair of major research projects completed in partnership with Transparency International (TI). One worked on refining and extending the measurement of corruption. This, the second, looked at what was then the emerging institutional means for reducing corruption – ‘national integrity systems’

The benefits of not managing change and not communicating : towards a complex systems view of communication in evolving organisations

The relationship between change in organisations and communication about change in organisations can be analysed as a particular case of a general debate in social theory about the extent to which reality is socially constructed. Social constructivists emphasise the role of language in the construction of social realities, enacted through controlling the message agenda; material determinists assert that economic and social structural factors are more constitutive of reality as seen in strategies emphasising structural and resource interventions. Here we define a third view of language and materiality - one that leads to the potential for a reflexive, experimental approach to change based on the view that organisations are complex evolving systems.

Semantic modeling method for configurable enterprise information systems

Business practices vary from one company to another and business practices often need to be changed due to changes of business environments. To satisfy different business practices, enterprise systems need to be customized. To keep up with ongoing business practice changes, enterprise systems need to be adapted. Because of rigidity and complexity, the customization and adaption of enterprise systems often takes excessive time with potential failures and budget shortfall. Moreover, enterprise systems often drag business behind because they cannot be rapidly adapted to support business practice changes. Extensive literature has addressed this issue by identifying success or failure factors, implementation approaches, and project management strategies. Those efforts were aimed at learning lessons from post implementation experiences to help future projects. This research looks into this issue from a different angle. It attempts to address this issue by delivering a systematic method for developing flexible enterprise systems which can be easily tailored for different business practices or rapidly adapted when business practices change. First, this research examines the role of system models in the context of enterprise system development; and the relationship of system models with software programs in the contexts of computer aided software engineering (CASE), model driven architecture (MDA) and workflow management system (WfMS). Then, by applying the analogical reasoning method, this research initiates a concept of model driven enterprise systems. The novelty of model driven enterprise systems is that it extracts system models from software programs and makes system models able to stay independent of software programs. In the paradigm of model driven enterprise systems, system models act as instructors to guide and control the behavior of software programs. Software programs function by interpreting instructions in system models. This mechanism exposes the opportunity to tailor such a system by changing system models. To make this true, system models should be represented in a language which can be easily understood by human beings and can also be effectively interpreted by computers. In this research, various semantic representations are investigated to support model driven enterprise systems. The significance of this research is 1) the transplantation of the successful structure for flexibility in modern machines and WfMS to enterprise systems; and 2) the advancement of MDA by extending the role of system models from guiding system development to controlling system behaviors. This research contributes to the area relevant to enterprise systems from three perspectives: 1) a new paradigm of enterprise systems, in which enterprise systems consist of two essential elements: system models and software programs. These two elements are loosely coupled and can exist independently; 2) semantic representations, which can effectively represent business entities, entity relationships, business logic and information processing logic in a semantic manner. Semantic representations are the key enabling techniques of model driven enterprise systems; and 3) a brand new role of system models; traditionally the role of system models is to guide developers to write system source code. This research promotes the role of system models to control the behaviors of enterprise.

Empirical evaluation of an autonomous vehicle in an urban environment

Operation in urban environments creates unique challenges for research in autonomous ground vehicles. Due to the presence of tall trees and buildings in close proximity to traversable areas, GPS outage is likely to be frequent and physical hazards pose real threats to autonomous systems. In this paper, we describe a novel autonomous platform developed by the Sydney-Berkeley Driving Team for entry into the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge competition. We report empirical results analyzing the performance of the vehicle while navigating a 560-meter test loop multiple times in an actual urban setting with severe GPS outage. We show that our system is robust against failure of global position estimates and can reliably traverse standard two-lane road networks using vision for localization. Finally, we discuss ongoing efforts in fusing vision data with other sensing modalities.

Use of virtual index for measuring efficiency of innovation systems : a cross-country study

In this study we propose a virtual index for measuring the relative innovativeness of countries. Using a multistage virtual benchmarking process, the best and rational benchmark is extracted for inefficient ISs. Furthermore, Tobit and Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression models are used to investigate the likelihood of changes in inefficiencies by investigating country-specific factors. The empirical results relating to the virtual benchmarking process suggest that the OLS regression model would better explain changes in the performance of innovation- inefficient countries.

PTZ camera pose estimation by tracking a 3D target

We present a technique for estimating the 6DOF pose of a PTZ camera by tracking a single moving target in the image with known 3D position. This is useful in situations where it is not practical to measure the camera pose directly. Our application domain is estimating the pose of a PTZ camerso so that it can be used for automated GPS-based tracking and filming of UAV flight trials. We present results which show the technique is able to localize a PTZ after a short vision-tracked flight, and that the estimated pose is sufficiently accurate for the PTZ to then actively track a UAV based on GPS position data.

The Chronic Heart-Failure Assistance by Telephone (CHAT) Study: Assessment of Telephone Support for Vulnerable Patients with Chronic Disease

Aim: To determine whether telephone support using an evidence-based protocol for chronic heart failure (CHF) management will improve patient outcomes and will reduce hospital readmission rates in patients without access to hospital-based management programs. Methods: The rationale and protocol for a cluster-design randomised controlled trial (RCT) of a semi-automated telephone intervention for the management of CHF, the Chronic Heart-failure Assistance by Telephone (CHAT) Study is described. Care is coordinated by trained cardiac nurses located in Heartline, the national call center of the National Heart Foundation of Australia in partnership with patients’ general practitioners (GPs). Conclusions: The CHAT Study model represents a potentially cost-effective and accessible model for the Australian health system in caring for CHF patients in rural and remote areas. The system of care could also be readily adapted for a range of chronic diseases and health systems. Key words: chronic disease management; chronic heart failure; integrated health care systems; nursing care, rural health services; telemedicine; telenursing