The implications for social services departments of the information task in the social care market
The new information task faced by social services departments (SSDs) implementing the 1990 community care policy is huge. This paper notes the breadth and complexity of the early guidance on the subject and then examines the nature of the task and the issues it raised in a shire county. Three aspects are delineated: mapping needs, mapping the market and monitoring expenditure. We found that the county experienced a culture shift in order to accommodate the new requirements, but had difficulty in timing the introduction of its information and information technology (IT) software systems. Change associated with one aspect of implementation had important knock-on effects in others. We highlight the danger of procedures becoming system-driven and of staff being overwhelmed by the call for information. We note that by the end of 1994 (the end of the research period) the county was facing what we have termed ‘second wave’ challenges. We conclude that implementing community care requires an indefinite investment in people and systems and that the process challenges are in danger of diverting attention away from user and carer experiences and from outcomes.
Introduction: Exploiting IT in Public Administration: Towards the Information Polity?
This introduction to the theme issue on Towards the Information Polity? Public Administration in the information age presents the case for the systematic academic investigation of the changing relationships which characterize the ‘information polity’. This perspective on the information polity focuses on the significance of new kinds of informational resources and flows in government, and their interaction with broad directions of reform in contemporary public administration, including the new public management. It is argued that, whereas the literature of business strategy has emphasized the economic logic by which ‘informatization’ encourages organizational transformation, the articles in this issue demonstrate the importance of wider cultural, organizational and political factors to understanding processes of informatization and the changing nature of the emergent ‘information polity’.
Fault Diagnosis and CAN Bus/Ethernet Redundancy Design of a Monitoring and Control System
The ship monitoring system is used to monitor and control the working status of various equipment on the ship. The navigational safety of the ship is affected directly by the stable working of the monitoring system. In this paper, a ship monitoring system with fault-type judgment function and bus redundancy is designed to improve system reliability and reduce fault checking cost. A redundant Ethernet/CAN bus communication network is constructed in the system, which connects multiple simulation nodes. The simulation node can simulate the faults that may occur during the communication process and feeds back the fault information to the host computer. The host computer will analyze and display the corresponding fault type on the user interface with the feedback information is received. The system reconfigures the network route autonomously when the simulation node has a communication fault. Routing of fault nodes can be switched to redundant routing, and the load balancing of the communication network can be maintained. Through experimental tests, the system can accurately locate faults and achieve fast switching of redundant routes between buses. Hence, the reliability of data transmission is improved.