Independent auditor’s report of the State of Iowa on internal control over financial reporting and on compliance and other matters based on an audit of financial statements performed in accordance with government auditing standards for the year ended June 30, 2011

Independent auditor’s report of the State of Iowa on internal control over financial reporting and on compliance and other matters based on an audit of financial statements performed in accordance with government auditing standards for the year ended June 30, 2011

Insight into oversight : how information commissioners contribute to the achievement of access-to-information policy objectives

This thesis examines how oversight bodies, as part of an ATI policy, contribute to the achievement of the policy's objectives. The aim of the thesis is to see how oversight bodies and the work they do affects the implementation of their respective ATI policies and thereby contributes to the objectives of those policies using a comparative case study approach. The thesis investigates how federal/central government level information commissioners in four jurisdictions - Germany, India, Scotland, and Switzerland - enforce their respective ATI policies, which tasks they carry out in addition to their enforcement duties, the challenges they face in their work and the ways they overcome these. Qualitative data were gathered from primary and secondary documents as well as in 37 semi-structured interviews with staff of the commissioners' offices, administrative officials whose job entails complying with ATI, people who have made ATI requests and appealed to their respective oversight body, and external experts who have studied ATI implementation in their particular jurisdiction. The thesis finds that while the aspect of an oversight body's formal independence that has the greatest impact on its work is resource control and that although the powers granted by law set the framework for ensuring that the administration is properly complying with the policy, the commissioner's leadership style - a component of informal independence - has more influence than formal attributes of independence in setting out how resources are obtained and used as well as how staff set priorities and utilize the powers they are granted by law. The conclusion, therefore, is that an ATI oversight body's ability to contribute to the achievement of the policy's objectives is a function of three main factors: a. commissioner's leadership style; b. adequacy of resources and degree of control the organization has over them; c. powers and the exercise of discretion in using them. In effect, the thesis argues that it is difficult to pinpoint the value of the formal powers set out for the oversight body in the ATI law, and that their decisions on whether and how to use them are more important than the presumed strength of the powers. It also claims that the choices made by the commissioners and their staff regarding priorities and use of powers are determined to a large extent by the adequacy of resources and the degree of control the organization has over those resources. In turn, how the head of the organization leads and manages the oversight body is crucial to both the adequacy of the organization's resources and the decisions made about the use of powers. Together, these three factors have a significant impact on the body's effectiveness in contributing to ATI objectives.

Social Investment Policies in Times of Permanent Austerity

The objective of this paper is to identify the political conditions that are most likely to be conducive to the development of social investment policies. It starts from the view put forward by theorists of welfare retrenchment that in the current context of permanent austerity, policy is likely to be dominated by retrenchment and implemented in a way that allows governments to minimise the risk of electoral punishment (blame avoidance). It is argued that this view is inconsistent with developments observed in several European countries, were some welfare state expansion has taken place mostly in the fields of childcare and active labour market policy. An alternative model is put forward, that emphasises the notion of "affordable credit claiming". It is argued that even under strong budgetary pressures, governments maintain a preference for policies that allow them to claim credit for their actions. Since the traditional redistributive policies tend to be off the menu for cost reasons, governments have tended to favour investments in childcare and active labour market policy as credit claiming tools. Policies developed in this way while they have a social investment flavour, tend to be rather limited in the extent to which they genuinely improve prospects of disadvantaged people by investing in their human capital. A more ambitious strategy of social investment sees unlikely to develop on the basis of affordable credit claiming. The paper starts by presenting the theoretical argument, which is then illustrated with examples taken from European countries both in the pre-crisis and in the post-crisis years.

A note on the coincidence between Stackelberg and Nash equilibria in a differential game between government and firms

[cat] A Navas i Marín Solano es va demostrar la coincidència entre els equilibris de Nash i de Stackelberg per a una versi´o modificada del joc diferencial proposat por Lancaster (1973). Amb l’objectiu d’obtenir una solució interior, es van imposar restriccions importants sobre el valors dels paràmetres del model. En aquest treball estenem aquest resultat, en el límit en que la taxa de descompte és igual a zero, eliminant les restriccions i considerant totes les solucions possibles.

Investigation of Earlham Community School District Employee’s Personal Use of a School Vehicle, July 6, 2012

We received a complaint in late September 2011 that an Earlham School District employee had borrowed a school vehicle for her personal use for one month, with the Superintendent’s permission. The school board had discussed the circumstances of the borrowed district vehicle in closed session. The complainant believed this was contrary to Iowa law and also believed no action had been taken against the school employee who borrowed the vehicle or the superintendent who allowed the personal use of the vehicle. He was aware the school district’s attorney reviewed the matter and determined the employee and superintendent violated no law or district policies. Since the school board discussed the matter only in closed session, it was unknown what, if any, discipline was taken against the employees and whether such actions were condoned by the district. We agreed to investigate to determine if the actions of school officials or employees violated Iowa law and if the response from the school board was appropriate.

Fertility discourse in parental leave policies' media coverage : a frame analysis of French-speaking Swiss press articles from 1999 to 2009

This paper analyses the media coverage of parental leave policies (parental and paternity leaves) in Swiss French-speaking press articles from 1999 to 2009. Switzerland is one of the rare European countries which has no statutory parental or paternity leave. The aim is to describe the mediatisation of these policies and to analyse the arguments in favour and against their implementation. We investigate the status of a fertility frame - the mobilisation of discourse relating to fertility issues - among the various arguments used to justify or reject parental leave policies. We proceed with a content analysis of 579 press articles, as well as a frame analysis on a subset in which parental leave policies are the central theme (N=206). Results show that paternity leave is the predominant public issue addressed in the dataset. A mediatisation peak was reached in 2007, following an initiative of a member of the Federal executive to implement a short paternity leave. Parental leave policies are predominantly represented in a positive light. The main positive frame is economic, in which leaves are represented as serving the interests of companies. Involved fatherhood and gender equality are also frequently mentioned as positive frames. The fertility frame is only moderately used in articles covering Swiss news on paternity leaves. Conversely, the fertility frame is largely mobilised in articles covering parental leave in other countries. We discuss some interpretations of this discrepancy and suggest future avenues of research on parental leave policies in Switzerland.

Políticas e práticas de conciliação entre família e trabalho no Brasil: issues and policies in Brazil

O objetivo deste trabalho é situar a problemática da conciliação entre trabalho remunerado e responsabilidades familiares no recente processo de transformação da estrutura das famílias e do mercado de trabalho no Brasil. A partir de dados da Pesquisa Nacional por Amostra de Domicílios do Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística, é feita uma caracterização das mudanças nas estruturas das famílias brasileiras e da inserção das mulheres no mercado de trabalho de acordo com a estrutura da família. Particularmente, pretendemos mostrar que o baixo desenvolvimento de serviços coletivos que permitem socializar os custos dos cuidados com a família prejudica a quantidade e qualidade da inserção feminina, sobretudo das mães, no mercado de trabalho.

Organisational reforms in active welfare states: A comparative analysis of the turn to 'single gateways' in Western Europe

Based on the case of reforms aimed at integrating the provision of income protection and employment services for jobless people in Europe, this thesis seeks to understand the reasons which may prompt governments to engage in large-scale organisational reforms. Over the last 20 years, several European countries have indeed radically redesigned the organisational structure of their welfare state by merging or bundling existing front-line offices in charge of benefit payment and employment services together into 'one-stop' agencies. Whereas in academic and political debates, these reforms are generally presented as a necessary and rational response to the problems and inconsistencies induced by fragmentation in a context of the reorientation of welfare states towards labour market activation, this thesis shows that the agenda setting of these reforms is in fact the result of multidimensional political dynamics. More specifically, the main argument of this thesis is that these reforms are best understood not so such from the problems induced by organisational compartmentalism, whose political recognition is often controversial, but from the various goals that governments may simultaneously achieve by means of their adoption. This argument is tested by comparing agenda-setting processes of large-scale reforms of coordination in the United Kingdom (Jobcentre Plus), Germany (Hartz IV reform) and Denmark (2005 Jobcentre reform), and contrasting them with the Swiss case where the government has so far rejected any coordination initiative involving organisational redesign. This comparison brings to light the importance, for the rise of organisational reforms, of the possibility to couple them with the following three goals: first, goals related to the strengthening of activation policies; second, institutional goals seeking to redefine the balance of responsibilities between the central state and non-state actors, and finally electoral goals for governments eager to maintain political credibility. The decisive role of electoral goals in the three countries suggests that these reforms are less bound by partisan politics than by the particular pressures facing governments arrived in office after long periods in opposition.