Performance indicators for the road sector
Seeing the trend for public accountability of road administrations and noting the many reform efforts undertaken in transport sectors around the world, the OECD established a Scientific Expert Group on Performance Indicators for the Road Sector in 1996 to provide its member countries a framework for assessing road administrations' performance. The results of the Expert Group's work is presented in this paper.Fifteen indispensable, forty primary, and thirty-five secondary indicators are proposed to portray the road sector from different perspectives. They are designed to be changed in response to human needs and technological development and supplemented by country specific indicators. In keeping with this approach and in support of one of the maxims of the Expert Group that 'useful performance indicators are those which are used', an application in the form of a Field Test is now in progress by an OECD task force.The Performance Indicators proposed are grounded in a mental model adopted by the Expert Group. This model is management by results model, and is useful as a theoretical tool in the many highly fluid contexts in which restructuring is moving forward. In the model, the products and services are judged by standards or criteria; outcomes – derivatives of products and services through user interface – are judged relative to objectives and user satisfaction. The achievement of objectives, however, is not proposed as the only or even primary basis of evaluation. The situation is more abstract and complex. Therefore, the various uses of Performance Indicators – including the opportunities to assist road administrations in becoming learning organizations – are given much emphasis in the paper. The views and conclusions in the paper are those of the author and should not be attributed to the World Bank or its affiliated organizations.
Experiential Incrementalism: On the Theory and Technique
to Implement Transport Plans and Policies
The paper describes an approach to the vexing problem of transport planning and policy. It deals jointly with three questions, which in today's practice are addressed separately: How are hypotheses about transport problems and alternatives to their solution developed? How can a good plan or policy be identified? What is the process of implementing a transport plan or policy? In doing this the paper has the ambitious objective of proposing a new model and process for transport planning and policy. It is applicable in developed and developing countries and is not restricted to the transport sector. The paper builds on, and is a reinterpretation of two cornerstone transport planning and decision-making models – the CATS (Chicago Area Transportation Study) Planning and DesignModel and Braybrooke and Lindblom's Disjointed Incrementalism. It advances a technique of experiential incrementalism (termed polisanalysis) to develop and implement plans and policies. It proposes that problems should be diagnosed by observation and continuous data collection; that their continuous analysis, finding the “cure”, and implementation take place through the method of experiential incrementalism. In this method interventions are grounded on the theories of neoinstitutional economics and psychoanalysis and derived using contact function, explained in the paper, which renders the method scientific replicability. Experiential incrementalism can employ a wider array of options in planning and policy than is presently thought possible. Like other scientific methods, its application requires rigorous training.
Britain and the Problem of International Disarmament: 1919-1934
Acknowledgements 1. Introduction 2. The Concept and Context of Disarmament, 1919-1934 3. The Human Element 4. The Lloyd George Coalition Government, 1918-1922 5. The Conservative Governments, 1922-1923, and the First Labour Government, 1924 6. The Conservative Government, 1924-1929 7. The Labour Government, 1929-1931 8. The National Government, 1931-1934 9. Conclusion Bibliography