Leveraging Big Data and 21st century technology to renew cities and citizenship in America The Responsive City is a guide to civic engagement and governance in the digital age that will help leaders link important breakthroughs in technology and data analytics with age-old lessons of small-group community input to create more agile, competitive, and economically resilient cities. Featuring vivid case studies highlighting the work of pioneers in New York, Boston, Chicago and more, the book provides a compelling model for the future of governance. The book will help mayors, chief technology officers, city administrators, agency directors, civic groups and nonprofit leaders break out of current paradigms to collectively address civic problems. The Responsive City is the culmination of research originating from the Data-Smart City Solutions initiative, an ongoing project at Harvard Kennedy School working to catalyze adoption of data projects on the city level. The book is co-authored by Professor Stephen Goldsmith, director of Data-Smart City Solutions at Harvard Kennedy School, and Professor Susan Crawford, co-director of Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg penned the book’s foreword. Based on the authors’ experiences and extensive research, The Responsive City explores topics including: Building trust in the public sector and fostering a sustained, collective voice among communities; Using data-smart governance to preempt and predict problems while improving quality of life; Creating efficiencies and saving taxpayer money with digital tools; and Spearheading these new approaches to government with innovative leadership.

This book focuses on the changing role of judges in courts, tribunals, and other forums across a variety of jurisdictions. With contributions by international experts in judicial administration and senior judicial figures, it provides a unique comparative perspective on the role of modern judges in a rapidly evolving environment and the pressures of effective judicial administration. The chapters are sourced from a Collaborative Research Network focused on innovations in judging, and sponsored by the international Law and Society Association. The book provides essential insights and perspectives for judges, judicial officers, and administrators, allowing them to respond to the challenges of the twenty-first century. It is also a valuable resource for legal practitioners and judicial experts, shedding light on the role of the modern judge and the strategies they employ.

What is the relationship today between museums, galleries and learning? The Responsive Museum interrogates the thinking, policies and practices that underpin the educational role of the museum. It unravels the complex relationship of museums with their publics, and discusses today's challenges and the debates that have resulted. The highly experienced team of writers, including museum educators and directors, share their different experiences and views, and review recent research and examples of best practice. They analyse the implications of audience development and broadening public access, particularly in relation to special groups, minority communities and disabled people, and for individual self-development and different learning styles; they explore issues of public accountability and funding; discuss the merits of different evaluation tools and methodologies for measuring audience impact and needs; and assess the role of architects, designers and artists in shaping the visitor experience. The latter part of this book reviews practical management and staffing issues, and training and skills needs for the future. This book is for students, museum staff, especially those involved in education and interpretation, and senior management and policy-makers. This is a much-needed review of the relationship between museums and galleries and their users. It also offers a wealth of information and expertise to guide future strategy and practice.

This critique of modern academia is also a proposal for making campuses more effective -- that is, better at meeting the clients' or customers' needs. The author addresses the problems that many academic institutions have today in clinging to the practices and organization of the past. By outlining the many problems in organization that colleges and universities face today, the author hopes to reveal workable solutions.

As the American workforce has changed in recent years to accommodate an increasing number of working parents, the workplace itself must also adapt. Sheila Kamerman and Alfred Kahn, two of the most respected authorities on work and the American family, explore in this study the ways in which the workplace has responded to social change. They examine innovations in the workplace as well as enduring concerns--fringe benefits, day care and other services, and employers' policies at the workplace. And, they assess employers' adequacy in assisting parents of young children to manage simultaneously their work and family roles. In doing so, Kamerman and Kahn separate over-optimistic "wish lists" from reality, and mere claims of certain effects from observed results. They also look at some critical benefits and services in detail, delineating which are useful and practical. The authors consider whether a workplace-based pattern of provision will meet everyone's needs and, if not, what alternatives are possible. While endorsing a serious role for employers, they stress that government must also take a role in respect to families of working parents.

For almost two decades, Community Practice has been a definitive text for social workers, community practitioners, and students eager to help individuals contribute to and use community resources or work to change oppressive community structures. In this third edition, a wealth of new charts and cases spotlight the linkages between theoretical orientations and practical skills, with an enhanced emphasis on the inherently political nature of social work and community practice. Boxes, examples, and exercises illustrate the range of skills and strategies available to savvy community practitioners in the 21st century, including networking, marketing and staging, political advocacy, and leveraging information and communication technologies. Other features include: - New material on community practice ethics, critical practice skills, community assessment and assets inventory and mapping, social problem analysis, and applying community ractice skills to casework practice - Consideration of post-9/11 community challenges - Discussion on the changing ethnic composition of America and what this means for practitioners - An exploration of a vastly changed political landscape following the election of President Obama, the Great Recession, the rise of the Tea Party, and the increasing political and corporate use of pseudo-grassroots endeavors - A completely revamped instructor's manual available online at www.oup.com/us/communitypractice This fully revised classic text provides a comprehensive and integrated overview of the community theory and skills fundamental to all areas of social work practice. Broad in scope and intensive in analysis, it is suitable for undergraduate as well as graduate study. Community Practice offers students and practitioners the tools necessary to promote the welfare of individuals and communities by tapping into the ecological foundations of community and social work practice.

Brings together seventeen essays on the dynamics of social change published in a wide array of journals over the course of Amitai Etzioni's long and distinguished career. Applying sociological methods of study to seemingly disparate disciplines from ethics to economics, politics to genetics, Etzioni uncovers important interrelationships between these fields.

Evaluators have always worked in diverse communities, and the programs they evaluate are designed to address often intractable socio-political and economic issues. Evaluations that explicitly aim to be more responsive to culture and cultural context are, however, a more recent phenomenon. In this book, Jill Anne Chouinard and Fiona Cram utilize a conceptual framework that foregrounds culture in social inquiry, and then uses that framework to analyze empirical studies across three distinct cultural domains of evaluation practice (Western, Indigenous and international development). Culturally Responsive Approaches to Evaluation provide a comparative analysis of these studies and discuss lessons drawn from them in order to help evaluators extend their current thinking and practice. They conclude with an agenda for future research.

While conventional assessments of the national quality of life focus on the economic and material dimensions of our society, A Fragile Social Fabric? expands that evaluation to include the social covenant of rights and obligations. The authors examine two sides of the social covenant: what Canadians expect from their society – fairness, recognition for their contribution to society, trust that others will not take advantage of them, and a sense of belonging – and what is expected from them – a sense of indebtedness to society that reflects an appreciation of how they have benefited as members of their society, a sense of obligation to help others, and a willingness to contribute to the functioning of the community and society. Based on this analysis, the authors identify a number of steps that can be taken to strengthen the Canadian social fabric.This study is especially pertinent today given the pervasive market culture that is eroding the civic culture underlying the social covenants in contemporary Western societies. It goes beyond conventional assessments that focus on economic and material dimensions of our society.