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Press releases are a major means of communication between the government and the public, and yet they remain an under‐rated and neglected source of data. This paper describes the functions fulfilled by press releases and seeks to evaluate their potential value to the information professions and to researchers by means of interviews with the press officers of two major government departments and two quangos.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how the structure of government-funded event agencies affected the development of the events industry in Northern Ireland. The institutional arrangements for two agencies which operated at different times in Northern Ireland were analysed.

A total of 62 in-depth interviews were conducted with event organisers and public officials who had worked directly with these two organisations.

The standalone National Events Agency which began operating in 1999 was found to be more hands-on and worked closely with event organisers to develop the quality of their event. As a quango it worked at arms length from government. Unfortunately it abused this freedom and used public monies to manage its own events, highlighting the need for transparency and accountability when managing this type of agency. In 2008 it was replaced by an Events Unit which was set up within the National Tourism Organisation. Under this structure event tourism and not event development was the priority. For the events industry this created development issues and reduced its clout at government level.

This paper addressed a gap in the literature and found that the institutional arrangements did affect how a government-funded events agency operated and what it regarded as a strategic priority. This in turn had repercussions for the development of the events industry.

This chapter is aimed at contributing to the question of how institutional reforms affect multi-level governance (MLG) capacities and thus the performance of public task fulfillment with a particular focus on the local level of government in England, France, and Germany.

Drawing on concepts of institutional evaluation, we analytically distinguish six dimensions of impact assessment: vertical coordination; horizontal coordination; efficiency/savings; effectiveness/quality; political accountability/democratic control; equity of service standards. Methodologically, we rely on document analysis and expert judgments that could be gleaned from case studies in the three countries and a comprehensive evaluation of the available secondary data in the respective national and local contexts.

Institutional reforms in the intergovernmental setting have exerted a significant influence on task fulfillment and the performance of service delivery. Irrespective of whether MLG practice corresponds to type I or type II, task devolution (decentralization/de-concentration) furthers the interlocal variation and makes the equity of service delivery shrink. There is a general tendency of improved horizontal/MLG type I coordination capacities, especially after political decentralization, less in the case of administrative decentralization. However, decentralization often entails considerable additional costs which sometimes overload local governments.

The distinction between multi-purpose territorial organization/MLG I and single-purpose functional organization/MLG II provides a suitable analytical frame for institutional evaluation and impact assessment of reforms in the intergovernmental setting. Furthermore, comparative research into the relationship between MLG and institutional reforms is needed to reveal the explanatory power of intervening factors, such as the local budgetary and staff situation, local policy preferences, and political interests in conjunction with the salience of the transferred tasks.

The findings provide evidence on the causal relationship between specific types of (vertical) institutional reforms, performance, and task-related characteristics. Policy-makers and government actors may use this information when drafting institutional reform programs and determining the allocation of public tasks in the intergovernmental setting.

In general, the euphoric expectations placed upon decentralization strategies in modern societies cannot straightforwardly be justified. Our findings show that any type of task transfer to lower levels of government exacerbates existing disparities or creates new ones. However, the integration of tasks within multi-functional, politically accountable local governments may help to improve MLG type I coordination in favor of local communities and territorially based societal actors, while the opposite may be said with regard to de-concentration and the strengthening of MLG type II coordination.

The chapter addresses a missing linkage in the existing MLG literature which has hitherto predominantly been focused on the political decision-making and on the implementation of reforms in the intergovernmental settings of European countries, whereas the impact of such reforms and of their consequences for MLG has remained largely ignored.

This paper examines whether public sector reforms in a developing country is consistent with the principles of new public management (NPM). It examines whether Indonesian public sector reforms from the late 1990s to 2015, specifically the adoption of accrual accounting, are motivated by NPM philosophy. Reviewing and analysing Government regulations and reports, the study finds that the reforms are an attempt to implement NPM, specifically in relation to five financial management aspects (i.e. market-oriented, budgeting, performance management, financial reporting and auditing systems). However, the reforms are inconsistent with the NPM philosophy of efficiency and effectiveness in public service provisions. By requiring the use of the existing system, the reforms actually created inefficiency. This research is novel in investigating the gap between 'ideal concepts' and examining practices in an emerging country context.

The purpose of this paper is to give a working librarian's view of the role of the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC), and make some suggestions about how effective it is from the perspective of practice with a view to justifying its role in terms of recent policies introduced by national government in the UK.

The author sketches some of the broader government initiatives that affect this area and combines this sketch with commentary from the arena of information practice, in order to sum up the case for and against the value of JISC.

In balance, this paper finds the evidence for the beneficial impact of JISC's work to be quite compelling, but also argues that there is a lack of awareness of how strong this case is at practitioner level. At a time when all public services are under strong financially led scrutiny, this lack of appreciation at practitioner level is of some concern.

This is a brief and selective account of one particular sphere of JISC's workings. In order to make the case more effectively, a broader investigation could be carried out, but with the requirement that the findings should be focussed on practical outcomes and benefits that are well understood by information professionals working in everyday library and information environments.

This account tries to make clear in straightforward and practical terms what the larger specific benefits of introducing federated access into the UK university community have been.

This paper gives a double viewpoint on its topic, combining a high‐level view of national information management issues from the government perspective, with a practice‐led view of the same issues.

This review frames the state of agencification studies to explore the development and results achieved to date (Q1: what has been done?) and identify future directions (Q2: what could be done?) of the studies.

A systematic approach is carried out to summarize how agencification is adopted, variability of implementation, and its effects, from literature published in the past 48 years (1973–2020). Eligibility criteria include a combination of literature quality (number of citation) and source reputation (journal impact factor). From this, 84 articles and 9 books were included in the review.

The review finds various country-specific adoptions of agencification and some similarities and differences of agencification practice across various administrative settings. Studies on the effects of agencification is limited and offer mixed results. Meanwhile, little attempt was made to reveal how micro-processes are happening in the everyday practice of agencification. The paper outlines a set of research agenda and possible alternative approaches for future studies.

This review provides an avenue for scholars and practitioners to pay more attention to the “street level” of agencification. Future studies may challenge New Public Management's view of agencification by proposing new perspectives based on a direct observation.

This study contributes to the growing amount of agencification studies by synthesizing theoretical and empirical works across countries covering developed and developing economies in local, regional, and national levels of government.

The global perception of Nigeria as the ‘black hole of corruption’ should be seen in its proper historical context, where corruption is the vestige of a colonial legacy. Moreover, within the international trade which is dominated by the North, corruption is the norm in Nigeria. With the introduction of corruption into the Nigerian ethos, its tentacles permeate from the highest echelons of government to the lowest level of the Civil Service, both national and local. Any transaction involving a public official must involve a bribe from the corrupter to the corruptee. The proceeds of crime are handled by fences — the financial institutions. The perpetrators of corruption are deemed to have personality defects which are responsible for their deviant behaviour. The victims are the Nigerian public who have been adversely affected by the deprivation which has resulted in underdevelopment and perpetual economic slavery. The myriad corruption control measures adopted have failed essentially because of the protection of vested interests compounded with corruption in the judiciary, quangos and law enforcement agencies.

WITH, no doubt, tears in his eyes, Mr. Russell Miller, who is a National Officer employed by the Association of Scientific, Technical and Managerial Staffs (ASTMS) complains in a recent issue of his Union's Journal that quangos are “under attack”. Facing drastic cuts, he cries, their very existence is in jeopardy. Is this such a bad thing?

This paper aims to explore how resilience is evident in healthcare supply chains in the public sector when faced with pandemic disruption and to identify any learnings to inform recovery and future-readiness phases.

An exploratory case study was conducted, consisting of seven semi-structured interviews with public sector supply chain actors in the healthcare personal protective equipment supply chain. The data included document analysis.

Key findings show how specific resilience strategies such as agility, collaboration, flexibility and redundancy, contributed to supply chain resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic response. Collaboration is identified as a key mechanism for resilience with public sector networks viewed as facilitating this. Established collaborative relationships with suppliers pre-pandemic did not support increased visibility of tiers within the supply chain.

This is one of the first papers to provide in-depth resilience insights through an example of healthcare supply chains during the COVID-19 pandemic.