An almost universal scheme of national service in Australia in the 1950s

While the Australian Government partly justified the introduction of a universal National Service Training Scheme for eighteen-year old males in 1951 by highlighting the threat of imminent war and the consequent need for military preparedness, advocates also believed that national service encouraged the development of a sense of civil responsibility. Its confidence in the potential of national service to promote citizenship explains why the government was so strongly committed to the scheme's universality. Nonetheless, although the government went to great lengths to enforce compliance, Aborigines and those from other &quot;non-white&quot; backgrounds were actively discouraged from participation and women were only reluctantly admitted to the professional army. As would be expected in this period, they were never considered for national service. An examination of the rationale for national service and the associated discourse for inclusion and exclusion not only indicates the social assumptions shaping policy-making by government and bureaucratic elites in 1950s Australia, but also reveals their wider social aspirations.<br />

The importance of national ICT visions for information society in South East Asia

This paper addresses the question &lsquo;How necessary is a national information and communications technology (ICT) strategy/vision for the development of an information society?&rsquo; For the purpose of this paper, &lsquo;information society&rsquo; is reduced to two key dimensions: penetration of ICT, and access to government information on-line. In considering the question, the paper calls on data contained in the International Telecommunication Union&rsquo;s (ITU) case studies of e-readiness in eight South East Asian (SEA) nations (Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam). The background to the paper includes an overview of the SEA nations in terms of demographics and a discussion of the dilemma of government involvement in developing an information society in the light of the &lsquo;small government mantra&rsquo; that has dominated in recent years. National ICT strategies visions of each nation are presented, followed by on overview of their information society policies and practices and their ICT penetration. The importance of the vision is then contrasted with other factors including level of development and national income. The conclusions draw attention to the importance of a vision irrespective of level of development and resource availability. In fact, for the least developed nations, poor infrastructure may be an opportunity to leap frog to the most advanced networks supporting an information society, if the vision is relevant, powerful and broadly held.<br />

Effectiveness of national elite sport policies : a multidimensional approach applied to the case of Flanders

While the results of nations in international sport competitions are most often used as an evaluation of effectiveness of elite sport policies, they do not take into account the long-term duration of an athletic career, nor the many confounding variables influencing international success. This paper argues that output evaluation is a one-sided approach to policy assessment. It applies a multidimensional approach to the measurement of the effectiveness of elite sports policy evaluation (meso-level) by examining a four-year cycle of elite sport policies in Flanders. This study endeavors to advance the development of a framework to assess effectiveness of elite sport policies of nations. Data were collected at multiple points of the input-throughput-output and feedback cycle. It was found that in spite of the increasing elite sport expenditures in Flanders (inputs), and notwithstanding the development of the throughputs (processes), this has not as yet lead to acceptable results (outputs) at an international level.<br />

Accuracy of national mortality codes in identifying adjudicated cardiovascular deaths

<b>Objective</b>: This study investigated the sensitivity and specificity of the national mortality codes in identifying cardiovascular disease (CVD) deaths and documents methods of verification.<br /><br /><b>Methods</b>: A 12-year retrospective case ascertainment of all ICD-coded CVD deaths was performed for deaths between 1990 and 2002 in the Melbourne Collaborative Cohort Study, comprising 41,528 subjects. Categories of non-CVD codes were also examined. Stratified samples of 750 deaths were adjudicated from a total of 2,230 deaths. Expert panels of cardiologists and neurologists adjudicated deaths.<br /><br /><b>Results</b>: Of the 750 deaths adjudicated, 582 were verified as CVD [392 coronary heart disease (CHD) and 92 stroke] and 168 non-CVD. Estimated sensitivity and specificity of national mortality codes for identifying specific causes of death were: CHD 74.2% (95% CI: 69.8&ndash;78.5%) and 97.6% (96.0&ndash;99.2%), respectively; myocardial infarction 59.9% (50.9&ndash;69.0%) and 94.2% (92.4&ndash;96.0%), respectively; haemorrhagic stroke 58.9% (46.0&ndash;71.7%) and 99.8% (99.4&ndash;100.0%), respectively and; ischaemic stroke 38.7% (20.5&ndash;56.9%) and 99.9% (99.6&ndash;100.0%), respectively. Misclassification was most common for deaths with primary ICD codes for endocrine-metabolic and genito-urinary diseases.<br /><br /><b>Conclusions</b>: National mortality coding under-estimated the true proportion of CHD and stroke deaths in the cohort by 13.6% and 50.8%, respectively.<br />

Exploring the global and local networks of national information system integration initiatives : a case study of national cultural collection integration from an actor-network perspective

Australian Museums Online (AMOL) was the earliest attempt to make Australia&rsquo;s distributed cultural collections accessible from a single online resource. Despite early successes, significant achievements and the considerable value it offered certain groups, the project ran into operational difficulties and was eventually discontinued. By using Actor-Network Theory and analysing the global and local actor-networks, it is revealed that although the project originated from large, state museums, buy-in was restricted to individuals, rather than institutions and the most significant value was for smaller, regional institutions. Furthermore, although the global networks that governed the project could translate their visions through the local production networks, because the network&rsquo;s underlying weaknesses were never addressed, over time this destablised the global networks. This case study offers advice for projects attempting to consolidate data sources from disparate sources, and highlights the importance of individual actors in championing the project.<br />

The evolution of national level historic district registration and conservation in China: the Beijing Yandaixiejie and Beijing Guozijian districts in Beijing, China

From the 1980s, Chinese experts from some mainland universities, such as Tongji Universtiy in Shanghai and Tsinghua University in Beijing, commenced research into heritage management and historic architectural conservation in China. With the announcement of the First and Second Lists of 10 Chinese Historic and Cultural Districts in 2009 and 2010, the conservation of historic districts was generally received and elevated in agreements from state-level government to local level governments. This paper considers literature about international and Chinese regulations and presents the evolution of historic district conservation in China. The paper explores the effective and ineffective results of the &ldquo;Selection Contest of Chinese Top 10 Historic and Cultural Districts&rdquo; in two cases selected from the First and Second Lists of 10 Chinese Historical and Cultural Districts during upon recent research and investigations. In each example, the paper provides a detailed examination of public awareness and their evaluation of conservation effectiveness through questionnaires.