Annual accountability report with Baldrige criteria fiscal year 2011-12

Each year Florence-Darlington Technical College produces an annual accountability report for the South Carolina General Assembly. Included is a mission statement, program description, program goals, major achievements from the past year, goals for the present and future years and criteria associated with the Malcolm Baldridge Award..

Annual accountability report with Baldrige criteria fiscal year 2012-13

Each year Florence-Darlington Technical College produces an annual accountability report for the South Carolina General Assembly. Included is a mission statement, program description, program goals, major achievements from the past year, goals for the present and future years and criteria associated with the Malcolm Baldridge Award..

Organização e implementação de um balanced scorecard num serviço periférico da administração directa do estado - condicionantes e potencialidades para uma gestão mais eficiente : o caso da DSCST da DRE-Alentejo

Os serviços públicos estão confrontados, cada vez mais, com uma envolvente externa e interna mais exigente, o que inevitavelmente obriga à introdução da abordagem estratégica. A avaliação de desempenho na Administração Pública, obriga à integração de metodologias de gestão estratégica, que podem ser monitorizadas com o Balanced Scorecard (BSC), funcionando este como núcleo para alimentar os ciclos anuais de gestão e o sistema de avaliação de desempenho, contribuindo assim para melhorar a gestão dessas organizações. Este trabalho consubstancia uma proposta de projecto de organização e implementação de um BSC num serviço público específico, nomeadamente a Direcção de Serviços do Comércio e Serviços e do Turismo (DSCST) da Direcção Regional da Economia do Alentejo (DRE­ Alentejo). A abordagem estratégica na DRE-Alentejo e na DSCST, apoiada no BSC, constitui uma iniciativa que implica mudanças. Permite simplificar a definição da estratégia e do plano estratégico, apoiar a construção dos planos de actividades, o mapa de pessoal, a carta de missão, facilitar a comunicação da estratégia no interior e exterior da organização. Permite ainda o alinhamento e a articulação dos objectivos em todos os níveis hierárquicos com a estratégia, bem como a medição da eficácia da estratégia. Abstract: Government departments increasingly operate within an ever more demanding environment, in both internal and external terms, and there is therefore a requirement for the adoption of a strategic approach to public administration. Performance evaluation requires the use of strategic management methodologies monitored by means of a Balanced Scorecard (BSC), which provides data for annual management reviews and the performance evaluation system, thereby contributing towards the improved management of government departments. ln this paper a proposal is presented for the organization and implementation of a BSC in a specific public department, the (DRE-Alentejo) Alentejo Regional Department of Economic Affairs (DSCST) Department of Commerce and Tourism. The strategic approach based on BSC adopted by the DRE-Alentejo involves changes in the management system. The process of setting strategy and drawing up a strategic plan is simplified, and the approach helps in the drawing up of activity plans, the official staff plan and the mission statement; it also enables the organization's strategy to be better understood both internally and externally, while bringing it into line with objectives, which can be more coherently pursued at all levels; finally, it allows for the effectiveness of strategy to be gauged.

Fiscal Year 2015-16 Accountability Report

The South Carolina Office of the Attorney General reports to the Office of State Budget its annual accountability report that includes a mission statement, program goals and objectives, and performance measures.

Fiscal Year 2015-16 Accountability Report

The South Carolina Administrative Law Court reports to the Office of State Budget its annual accountability report that includes the mission statement, program goals, objectives, performance measures, and outcomes of the agency.

Fiscal Year 2015-16 Accountability Report

The South Carolina Office of the Lieutenant Governor reports to the Office of State Budget an annual report that includes a mission statement, program goal, program objectives, and performance measures.

Fiscal Year 2015-16 Accountability Report

Each year the South Carolina Museum Commission produces an annual report for the South Carolina General Assembly and the Budget and Control Board. Included is an executive summary of services and accomplishments, mission statement, leadership, customer focus and satisfaction, performance criteria, description of programs, and program results.

Fiscal Year 2015-16 Accountability Report

Each year the South Carolina State Board for Technical and Comprehensive Education produces an annual accountability report for the South Carolina General Assembly and the governor about the South Carolina Technical College System. This report presents an executive summary of project achievements and challenges, mission statement, description of leadership system, indicators of customer focus and satisfaction, other performance excellence criteria, description of programs, and statistics.

Evaluating social and environmental impacts at Embrapa.

A strategic planning process has been implemented at the Brazilian Agricultural Research Agency (Embrapa) to introduce sustainable development objectives in all steps of agricultural Research and Development. An essential component of the institutional mission statement hence devised has called for the systematic assessment of social and environmental impacts (in addition to the traditionally studied economic ones) of all technology innovations resulting from R&D. The proposed approach emphasizes the interest of promoting close interaction between R&D teams and technology-adopting producers, under actual field contexts, in order to improve both the technology development and the demand probing processes. Given the multiplicity of technological applications ensuing from Embrapa?s very broad research encompassment, and the variety of environmental and productive contexts involved, a customized impact assessment system has been proposed. Directed at the appraisal of agricultural technology development research projects (ex-ante) as well as their ensuing innovations (ex-post), the Ambitec-Agro System comprises a set of integrated socio-environmental indicators, constructed in modules suited to Agricultural, Animal husbandry, and Agro-industrial activities, besides a specific module for Social Impact Assessment. The system has been routinely applied in technology appraisal in all of Embrapa?s Units, as a basis for their institutional performance evaluations, and toward the formulation of the annual Social Balance Report. Following the inception of this institutional technology appraisal initiative, several methodological innovations have been proposed within Embrapa, including technical improvements and applicability adaptations of the Ambitec-Agro system, and approaches to further-reaching objectives, such as the sustainable development of rural communities, and the environmental management of agricultural activities.

Exit Statement : 2001-2009 CRC for Construction Innovation

The Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) for Construction Innovation is Australia’s national centre for research and innovation focused on the needs of the property, design, construction and facility management sectors. The period covered by this report is from 1 July 2001 to 30 October 2009. The report comprises of two parts. Part A details the future and possible future impact of the CRC including: The Future of the CRC, Research and Commercialisation, Economic Benefit to Australia, Public Good Benefits to Australia. Part B details the achievements during the funding period including: Economic Benefit and Commercialisation, Uptake of Research Results, Impact of Education Programs, CRC Operations.

Inclusive Education Statement - policy analysis

This study analyses the Inclusive Education Statement – 2005, Education Queensland. (Appendix 1). The Statement was a product of the Queensland State Government response to Federal Legislation. The Federal Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), 1992 and the subsequent Standards for Education 2005, sought to eliminate discrimination against people with disabilities. Under Section 22 of the Act, it became unlawful for an educational authority to discriminate against a person on the grounds of the person’s disability.

Inclusion Statement : a proposal for implementation

This paper proposes a plan to evaluate ways in which EQ Staff undertake their responsibility to implement the substantive policy, Inclusive Education Statement- 2005, Education Queensland. The Inclusive Education Statement, 2005 (Education Queensland), is a substantive policy that drove the development of the subsequent procedures, CRP-PR-009: Inclusive Education. These procedures state that “All Education Queensland (EQ) staff have responsibilities ........to implement the Inclusive Education Statement 2005”.

Multi-objective mission flight planning in civil unmanned aerial systems

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are emerging as an ideal platform for a wide range of civil applications such as disaster monitoring, atmospheric observation and outback delivery. However, the operation of UAVs is currently restricted to specially segregated regions of airspace outside of the National Airspace System (NAS). Mission Flight Planning (MFP) is an integral part of UAV operation that addresses some of the requirements (such as safety and the rules of the air) of integrating UAVs in the NAS. Automated MFP is a key enabler for a number of UAV operating scenarios as it aids in increasing the level of onboard autonomy. For example, onboard MFP is required to ensure continued conformance with the NAS integration requirements when there is an outage in the communications link. MFP is a motion planning task concerned with finding a path between a designated start waypoint and goal waypoint. This path is described with a sequence of 4 Dimensional (4D) waypoints (three spatial and one time dimension) or equivalently with a sequence of trajectory segments (or tracks). It is necessary to consider the time dimension as the UAV operates in a dynamic environment. Existing methods for generic motion planning, UAV motion planning and general vehicle motion planning cannot adequately address the requirements of MFP. The flight plan needs to optimise for multiple decision objectives including mission safety objectives, the rules of the air and mission efficiency objectives. Online (in-flight) replanning capability is needed as the UAV operates in a large, dynamic and uncertain outdoor environment. This thesis derives a multi-objective 4D search algorithm entitled Multi- Step A* (MSA*) based on the seminal A* search algorithm. MSA* is proven to find the optimal (least cost) path given a variable successor operator (which enables arbitrary track angle and track velocity resolution). Furthermore, it is shown to be of comparable complexity to multi-objective, vector neighbourhood based A* (Vector A*, an extension of A*). A variable successor operator enables the imposition of a multi-resolution lattice structure on the search space (which results in fewer search nodes). Unlike cell decomposition based methods, soundness is guaranteed with multi-resolution MSA*. MSA* is demonstrated through Monte Carlo simulations to be computationally efficient. It is shown that multi-resolution, lattice based MSA* finds paths of equivalent cost (less than 0.5% difference) to Vector A* (the benchmark) in a third of the computation time (on average). This is the first contribution of the research. The second contribution is the discovery of the additive consistency property for planning with multiple decision objectives. Additive consistency ensures that the planner is not biased (which results in a suboptimal path) by ensuring that the cost of traversing a track using one step equals that of traversing the same track using multiple steps. MSA* mitigates uncertainty through online replanning, Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) and tolerance. Each trajectory segment is modeled with a cell sequence that completely encloses the trajectory segment. The tolerance, measured as the minimum distance between the track and cell boundaries, is the third major contribution. Even though MSA* is demonstrated for UAV MFP, it is extensible to other 4D vehicle motion planning applications. Finally, the research proposes a self-scheduling replanning architecture for MFP. This architecture replicates the decision strategies of human experts to meet the time constraints of online replanning. Based on a feedback loop, the proposed architecture switches between fast, near-optimal planning and optimal planning to minimise the need for hold manoeuvres. The derived MFP framework is original and shown, through extensive verification and validation, to satisfy the requirements of UAV MFP. As MFP is an enabling factor for operation of UAVs in the NAS, the presented work is both original and significant.

UAS mission path planning system (MPPS) using hybrid-game coupled to multi-objective optimiser

This paper presents the application of advanced optimization techniques to unmanned aerial system mission path planning system (MPPS) using multi-objective evolutionary algorithms (MOEAs). Two types of multi-objective optimizers are compared; the MOEA nondominated sorting genetic algorithm II and a hybrid-game strategy are implemented to produce a set of optimal collision-free trajectories in a three-dimensional environment. The resulting trajectories on a three-dimensional terrain are collision-free and are represented by using Bézier spline curves from start position to target and then target to start position or different positions with altitude constraints. The efficiency of the two optimization methods is compared in terms of computational cost and design quality. Numerical results show the benefits of adding a hybrid-game strategy to a MOEA and for a MPPS.