Reflecting the Public Value of Sport: A game of two halves

This article draws on qualitative research that explores the concept of public value in the delivery of sport services by the organization Sport England. The research took place against a backdrop of shifting priorities following the award of the 2012 Olympic Games to London. It highlights the difficulties that exist in measuring the qualitative nature of the public value of sport and suggests there is a need to understand better the idea. Research with organizations involved alongside Sport England in the delivery of sport is described. This explores the potential to create a public value vision, how to measure it and how to focus public value on delivery beyond the aim of ‘sport for sports sake’ and more towards ‘sport for the greater good’. The article argues that this represents a game of ‘two halves’ in which the first half focuses on 2012 with the second half concerned with its legacy.

The Private Finance Initiative: An Evolving Research Agenda

This article considers the development of the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) and contends that it is now deeply embedded and intertwined in policies to renew and modernize the United Kingdom's public services. After briefly reviewing prior research based upon the themes proposed by Broadbent and Laughlin (1999), this article suggests a new research agenda to reflect how the PFI has matured and developed in recent years.

Managing state-owned enterprises in an age of crisis:An analysis of irish experience

As with all aspects of public management, the control, financing, and regulation of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are matters subject to changing international trends and domestic political imperatives. The effects of the global financial crisis (GFC) on the ownership, financing, and role of SOEs are still unfolding, but undoubtedly will be heavily influenced by a new era of public sector reforms principally designed to reassert central political controls, as well as by fiscal pressures to balance state budgets. In this regard, the Irish experience is instructive, with the findings from two datasets being used here to examine various modes of state enterprise control and their corresponding autonomy. Significantly, there has been considerable variety within and across the SOE sector, demonstrating the need for more detailed understanding of how SOEs are managed. © 2011 Taylor & Francis.

Joined-up government in Ireland:From un-strategic choices to patriotic imperatives

Over the last decade, joined-up government has assumed a prominent place in the study and practice of public management. In this article, drawing on the Irish case we adopt an institutionalist approach to the issue of joining-up government and bureaucratic reform. We explore how the period of sustained and rapid economic growth in Ireland during the 1990s was also characterised by a fragmentation of the public service and proliferation of agencies. Subsequently, as a consequence of the sharp contraction in public spending brought about by the global financial crisis, we find an accelerated process of public sector recentralisation, retrenchment and de-agencification. Much of this is occurring in an unplanned manner but under the generic banner of 'joining up' government. We identify the drivers behind these dynamics and how they have manifested themselves, as well as the changes to politicaladministrative relationships brought about by new initiatives, the power imbalances they expose, and ultimately their consequences on public service delivery. © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Novel Radio Link Buffer Management Schemes for End-User Multi-class Traffic in High Speed Packet Access Networks

The requirement to provide multimedia services with QoS support in mobile networks has led to standardization and deployment of high speed data access technologies such as the High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) system. HSDPA improves downlink packet data and multimedia services support in WCDMA-based cellular networks. As is the trend in emerging wireless access technologies, HSDPA supports end-user multi-class sessions comprising parallel flows with diverse Quality of Service (QoS) requirements, such as real-time (RT) voice or video streaming concurrent with non real-time (NRT) data service being transmitted to the same user, with differentiated queuing at the radio link interface. Hence, in this paper we present and evaluate novel radio link buffer management schemes for QoS control of multimedia traffic comprising concurrent RT and NRT flows in the same HSDPA end-user session. The new buffer management schemes—Enhanced Time Space Priority (E-TSP) and Dynamic Time Space Priority (D-TSP)—are designed to improve radio link and network resource utilization as well as optimize end-to-end QoS performance of both RT and NRT flows in the end-user session. Both schemes are based on a Time-Space Priority (TSP) queuing system, which provides joint delay and loss differentiation between the flows by queuing (partially) loss tolerant RT flow packets for higher transmission priority but with restricted access to the buffer space, whilst allowing unlimited access to the buffer space for delay-tolerant NRT flow but with queuing for lower transmission priority. Experiments by means of extensive system-level HSDPA simulations demonstrates that with the proposed TSP-based radio link buffer management schemes, significant end-to-end QoS performance gains accrue to end-user traffic with simultaneous RT and NRT flows, in addition to improved resource utilization in the radio access network.

Reforming the Westminster Model of Agency Governance: Britain and Ireland after the Crisis

Conventional understandings of what the Westminster model implies anticipate reliance on a top-down, hierarchical approach to budgetary accountability, reinforced by a post–New Public Management emphasis on recentralizing administrative capacity. This article, based on a comparative analysis of the experiences of Britain and Ireland, argues that the Westminster model of bureaucratic control and oversight itself has been evolving, hastened in large part due to the global financial crisis. Governments have gained stronger controls over the structures and practices of agencies, but agencies are also key players in securing better governance outcomes. The implication is that the crisis has not seen a return to the archetypal command-and-control model, nor a wholly new implementation of negotiated European-type practices, but rather a new accountability balance between elements of the Westminster system itself that have not previously been well understood.