Public Administration and Decision-Aiding Software - Improving Procedure and Substance

This contributed volume offers a summary of the latest ideas and applications concerning decision making software, as applied to administrative decision making and public policy-making. Stuart Nagel, the editor of this work, defines the essence of decision-aiding software to be software that is designed to enable users to process a set of (1) goals to be achieved, (2) alternatives available for achieving them, and (3) relations between goals and alternatives in order to choose the best alternative, combination, allocation, or predictive decision-rule. Containing contributions from both practitioners and theorists, this book should be of immediate value to those professionals involved in the field of public administration.

The book is organized in terms of the major fields of public administration, which have been divided into staff/procedural activities, and into line/substantive activities. The first part of the book deals with cross-cutting procedures, including organization theory, policy analysis, and financial management. The second part deals with substantive chapters, including criminal justice, health, environmental-energy, and transportation as administrative fields. The third part of the book involves chapters which combine procedures and substance. It includes developmental policy, with chapters emphasizing the perspectives of people from developing countries toward the relevance of computers and decision-aiding software. It also includes the perspective of people from more developed countries trying to apply policy analysis methods to developmental policy. The third part also deals with public administration education. It emphasizes data banks that are available through telecommunications systems to aid in teaching various aspects of public administration procedures and substance. This book should be of interest to public administrators and scholars of the field.

List of contents

Introduction
I: Staff or Procedural Activities
(A) General Matters
High-Tech Effects: A Model for Research on Microcomputers in Public Organizations by Donald F. Norris and Lyke Thompson
(B) Public Policy Making
The Uses of Models in Legislative Planning by Werner Robert Svoboda
Developing Support Systems for High-Level Policy Making by Dov Te'eni
Developing Microcomputer Problem-Solving Applications by John F. Sacco and John W. Ostrowski
(C) Financial Management
The Growing Role of Computers in U.S. Federal Tax Compliance and Administration by William J. Turnier
A Theory of Rational and Feasible Budget Allocation by Stuart S. Nagel
Line or Substance Activities
Criminal Justice
Computerization in the Prosecution Service in Scotland by Robert G. Donaldson
A Database for Sentencing by Dana van der Merwe
(E) Health Care
Choosing Among Alternative Facility Locations by Ronald E. Martin and R. Eric Greene
Health Care Innovation and Decision-Aiding Software by Miriam K. Mills
(F) Environmental Protection
Energy Program Evaluation Using P/G% Decision-Aiding Software by Thomas S. Stanton
Incentives, MCDM, and Environmental Protection by Robert Nagel
Transportation
Computer-Aided Assessment for Transportation Policies by Peter J. Mackie, Tony D. May, Alan D. Pearman, and David Simon
Procedure and Substance Combined
Developmental Administration and Policy
Documentation and Computers in Third World Development by John Baiden Amissah
Improving Public Policy Toward and Within Developing Countries by Stuart S. Nagel
Teaching
Telecommunications for Public Administration Education by Michael L. Vasu and Alex N. Pattakos
Selected Bibliography
Name Index
Subject Index

About the author

STUART S. NAGEL directs the Policy Studies Organization and is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of Policy Studies: Integration and Evaluation (Praeger, 1988), Decision-Aiding Software and Legal Decision-Making (Quorum Books, 1989), Microcomputers as Decision Aids in Law Practice (Quorum Books, 1987), and he is currently working on another book entitled Multi-Criteria Methods for Alternative Dispute Resolution (Quorum Books, forthcoming).

Product details

• Assisted by: Stuart Nagel (Editor), Stuart S. Nagel (Editor)
• Publisher: Bloomsbury
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 16.10.1990
• EAN: 9780313275180
• ISBN: 978-0-313-27518-0
• Subjects: Social sciences, law, business > Media, communication > Book trade, library system; POLITICAL SCIENCE / Public Affairs & Administration, Public Administration, Public administration / Public policy