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ItemAssessing the prevalence, participants, and predictors of coproduction: The case of Atlanta, Georgia(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2014-11-10) Uzochukwu, Kelechi NmaobiIn municipalities across the globe, traditional forms of governance are being supplemented by collaborative arrangements between governments and their constituencies toward jointly produced public services. Since the late 1970s, this phenomenon known as coproduction has been utilized in efforts to survive severe budget cuts, improve performance, increase accountability, and welcome traditionally silenced voices. However, no study to date has undergone a citywide assessment of coproduction to determine its breadth and depth in a city. Additionally, there is practically no empirical study that examines what citizen characteristics and perceptions are associated with participation in coproduction. The present study represents a first attempt to begin to fill these gaps in the literature. Specifically, this dissertation analyses: (1) How prevalent is coproduction? (2) Who engages in coproduction? and (3)What motivates coproducers? I employ a mixed-method case study of Atlanta, Georgia via its Neighborhood Planning Unit system, using focus groups, citizen questionnaires, census and GIS data, and direct observations. Overall, the coproduction classifications developed in this dissertation enable more systematic research on coproduction. The dissertation findings also contribute to our understanding of (1) how much this service delivery strategy is being utilized in an urban municipality, (2) which forms are most utilized, (3) what triggers participation in each form, and (4) who utilizes coproduction the most – even challenging the longstanding perception that African Americans and low-income groups do not participate in such activities. Lastly, study findings suggest a need to reconceptualize the current theory of coproduction as a public service delivery strategy.
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ItemPerformance management system design and implementation in police agencies: Is following recommended practices worth it?(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2014-09-08) Pasha, Obed Q.Performance management is used as a tool not only to justify government expenses, but also to help public managers in terms of better planning, accountability, resource allocation, goal focusing, and many other benefits (Poister, 2003; Redburn, et al., 2007; Behn, 2003 etc.). As interest in and concerns about performance management systems continue to grow, scholars have increasingly suggested methods to better design and implement these systems in the public sector organizations, with the underlying assumption that they will help public organizations perform better. Using a management model proposed by Meier and O’Toole (1999, 2001), I explored the efficacy of following recommended practices in designing and implementing performance management systems for local police departments in the US. I used the 2012 Uniform Crime Report (UCR) dataset prepared by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and original surveys of the chiefs of various police agencies for this undertaking. I used ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analysis to compare the performance of police agencies (measured in terms of number of crimes per 100,000 people) to the extent to which they follow recommended practices while designing and implementing performance management systems in their respective agencies. The results from this study suggest do not suggest a link between the recommended practices and police performance, as only the practices of using performance information and providing discretion to officers were found to be supporting the hypotheses for only one out of the eight crime categories. These two significant results might be attributed to chance alone. The results, hence, raise questions about the effectiveness of the recommended practices in improving organizational performance. Justification of the use of recommended practices, however, can still be traced to goal-setting theory.
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ItemMethodological challenges of studying social media from the perspective of information manipulation(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2014-07-16) Kollanyi, BenceThe first part of the thesis gives a systematic overview and conceptual analysis of the literature on studying misinformation and disinformation in social media, with a special focus on research projects using large scale data obtained from Twitter and Facebook. The literature review gives a detailed overview of the scope of data collected by the various research projects; the means of accessing the data, which are rooted in the concrete socio-technical arrangement of the various platforms, and the type of analytical tools they apply. Furthermore, it also maps the various theoretical questions behind the research projects. The author of the thesis also gives his own definition of information manipulation and describes a conceptual model of information manipulation in the context of social media. The second part of the thesis applies some of the insights from the literature review to a large Twitter data set collected during the monitoring of African elections. The analysis follows a qualitative approach and focuses on case studies created from specific incidents during the elections. Each of these incidents illustrates a special aspect of the problem of information manipulation in online social media.
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ItemU.S. electricity end-use efficiency: policy innovation and potential assessment(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2014-07-01) Wang, YuElectric end-use efficiency is attracting more and more attentions, but it remains unclear what factors are driving state policy innovations to improve energy efficiency. Controversy also exists over the effectiveness of energy efficiency programs. Several critical problems are facing the policymakers: what factors drive the states taking distinct strategies in policy innovation? Have state policies being able to improve energy efficiency in the past? And, will state policies remain relevant to future efficiency improvements? This dissertation tries to answer these important questions and assumes that policy innovation is relevant to energy efficiency. It first explores the factors that influence the adoption of energy efficiency policies using Internal Determinants models. Results suggest that internal state factors affect policy innovation, including state socioeconomic factors, state fiscal capacity, ideology, and constituent pressure. Policy innovations are found to be correlated with each other. This dissertation also evaluates the impact of policy innovation on energy efficiency by decomposing electricity productivity into activity, structure, and efficiency effects. The findings suggest that financial incentives and building codes have significant impacts on state electricity productivity. Other regulations tend to have mixed effects. In addition, an estimation of the achievable potential of energy efficiency suggests that policies will cost-effectively drive significant electricity savings in the future. Overall, this dissertation offers an in-depth diagnosis of the relationship between policy innovation and energy efficiency. It provides a rigorous statistical analysis covering the most important energy efficiency policies. It represents the first attempt to evaluate policy impact by decomposing electricity productivity. However, the statistical models and energy models are subject to limitations and future research is needed to improve the models.
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ItemSustaining the city: Understanding the role of energy and carbon dioxide emissions in sustainable development in major metropolitan areas(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2014-07-01) Cox, William MatthewTwo areas of sustainable development were investigated to test the importance of economic development and the planning process on energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions outcomes between 2000 and 2010 across all sectors in the 100 largest metropolitan statistical areas in the United States. Following this, a model was developed to evaluate the social benefits and costs of solar photovoltaic programs in the City of Atlanta. Results indicated that some econometric models relating emissions to GDP per-capita are poor descriptors over this decade. Planning process and growth in GDP per-capita are shown to be better indicators of performance, although these are also subject to specific contextual differences between regions, notably through adversarial polycentrism. Existing solar photovoltaic programs are also estimated to provide tens to hundreds of millions in cumulative net benefits to the City of Atlanta, although this is likely only a fraction of the potential. These findings suggest that the management of energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions could be improved through increased participatory planning approaches and through the removal of barriers to realizing cost-effective improvements in energy and carbon performance.
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ItemEmerging technology for the poor: how nanomedicine and public private partnerships are used to address diseases of poverty(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2014-06-19) Woodson, Thomas S.Decreasing the number of people that die from preventable illnesses and reducing poverty and inequality are major public goods that are being addressed from a variety of angles. One way that policy makers and scholars are trying to improve global health is by developing new health technologies that will decrease poverty and inequality. This dissertation investigates whether nanotechnologies for medical applications (nanomedicine) are used to address diseases of poverty (DoP) and the role that public partnerships (PPP) play in nanomedicine research. If scientists are developing nanotechnology based vaccines and medicines for DoP, then I can conclude that the technology is helping to decrease poverty and inequality. There are two parts to my analysis. The first part of my dissertation analyses the landscape of nanomedicine DoP research and then I test how USA medicine sales, disease burden and diseases of poverty correlate with number of nanomedicine publications and patents. I find that there is some nanomedicine research on diseases of poverty, especially for high profile DoP like malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS, but overall there is less R&D on DoPs than non-DoPs. However, I cannot determine if USA medicine sales and disease burden have any relationship to research output. In the second part of my dissertation I examine the role of formal public-private partnerships (PPPs) for developing DoP medicines. Many think the formal health PPPs can overcome the various market failures associated with developing medicines for DoP. I analyze PPP websites and interview PPP managers/scientists about their research portfolios, relationship with nanotechnology, and how PPPs are addressing inequality in health R&D. I find that managers/scientists at PPPs have a variety of opinions about nanotechnology, but the general consensus is that nanotechnology will not be used in the near-term for DoP medicines. PPP managers/scientists believe that the technology is too expensive for DoP medicines and it will take too long to approve nanomedicines. Instead of using nanotechnology most PPPs are in favor of using traditional technologies.
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ItemWhy U.S. states became leaders in climate and energy policy: innovation through competition in federalism(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2014-05-13) Deitchman, Benjamin HarrisThe competitive federalist system facilitated state leadership and the diffusion of innovative policies that addressed climate change and energy issues in the absence of comprehensive federal action at the start of the twenty-first century. In a competitive federalist system state governments and their politicians challenge one another horizontally and the federal government vertically for legislative credit and functional authority on relevant policy issues. What drove state-level climate and clean energy leadership from 2001 to 2012? This dissertation develops three competitive federalism-based hypotheses for analysis: (H1) A national, bipartisan network of ambitious, entrepreneurial governors drove climate and clean energy policy innovation from 2001 to 2012; (H2) the State Energy Program Recovery Act resources reduced the policy adoption gap between early enactors and laggards in clean energy financing and regulation; (H3) and justification for climate and clean energy activities in the states shifted from environmental to economic rationales from 2001 to 2012 (Figure ES1). While competitive federalism theory has centered on both fiscal and ideological considerations driving innovation in the policy environment, the experience of climate change policymaking and clean energy actions at the state level during the period under consideration reveals a clear partisan divide in policymaking within this domain.
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ItemA cross country investigation of social enterprise innovation: a multilevel modelling approach(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2014-04-08) Monroe-White, Thema K.This dissertation presents a multilevel model of national-level factors and their impact on the organizational-level characteristics of social enterprises and their innovations. This study builds on the foundations of two theoretical frameworks: the national systems of innovation, which recognizes economic competitiveness to be a product of several interrelated institutions (e.g. financial, educational, cultural, historical) and where organizational-level innovation drives country level competitiveness; and the comparative social enterprise framework, which contends that national-level institutions (e.g., economic competitiveness, models of civil society) drive the size and shape of the social enterprise sector of a country. Data for this study were collected from multiple secondary global datasets representing 54 countries across seven world regions. Research questions and hypotheses are examined using ordinal and logistic hierarchical generalized linear modeling, two analytical techniques capable of explaining variation at one level (i.e., organizations) as a consequence of factors at another level of analysis (i.e., countries) for non-normally distributed dependent variables. Findings indicate that economic competitiveness, welfare spending, culture and quality of life significantly impact the odds of a business being a social enterprise. Fewer significant relationships were found social enterprise innovations. Conclusions and policy implications are discussed in light of data limitations and the current state of the field.
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ItemIs targeted testing for latent tuberculosis infection cost-effective: the experience of Tennessee(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2014-04-07) Ferroussier-Davis, OdilePreventative interventions often demand that resources be consumed in the present in exchange for future benefits. Understanding these trade-offs, in a context of resource constraints, is essential for policy makers. Cost-effectiveness analysis is one tool to inform decision-making. Targeted testing and treatment (TTT) for latent tuberculosis infection (LTBI) consists in identifying people at high risk for LTBI for preventive treatment to decrease the risk that they will develop active tuberculosis disease (ATBD). The state of Tennessee began conducting TTT statewide in 2001. This study uses a decision tree to evaluate the cost and outcomes of TTT for LTBI in Tennessee, compared to passive ATBD case finding (PACF). Key event probabilities were obtained from the Tennessee TTT program and from the literature. Outcomes are measured in terms of Quality Adjusted Life Years (QALY). The cost-effectiveness threshold was set at $100,000/QALY saved. One-way sensitivity analyses around factors related to study design (exclusion of patient costs, secondary transmission, discount rate and analytical horizon), the program’s environment (prevalence of LTBI and drug resistance, ATBD treatment costs) and program performance (program maturity, treatment initiation and completion rate, testing in low-risk group, test characteristics, screening costs) were conducted, as was probabilistic sensitivity analysis (PSA) which takes into account the uncertainty in multiple parameters simultaneously. The base case, with a 25-year time horizon and 3% discount rate, shows that TTT prevents 47 ATBD cases, and saves 31 QALYs per 100,000 patients screened for LTBI at a societal cost of $12,579 (2011 US$) per QALY saved. Sensitivity analyses identified value thresholds that would trigger a change in preferred policy. PSA shows that the likelihood that TTT would be cost-effective is low. Decision makers interested in implementing TTT should carefully assess the characteristics of the local TB epidemic and expected program performance to determine whether TTT is preferable over PACF from a cost-effectiveness viewpoint.
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ItemFY2015 Federal Budget Update(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2014-04-03) Knotts, RobertWith the release of President Obama's 2015 budget, the federal appropriations process is in full swing. In an effort to update the campus community on Georgia Tech's federal legislative priorities, Mr. Robert Knotts, Director of Federal Relations at Georgia Tech, will provide an overview of the budget and discuss how it could impact the Georgia Tech community. Robert will discuss Georgia Tech's appropriations requests and answer any relevant questions about the federal budget and its implications for Tech.