John Hudson

An interesting social policy making development in the USA: a judge has ordered a $5.6bn annual increase in school spending in New York and ordered an additional $9.6bn be provided to improve school facilities in the state after a pressure group claimed rights to a decent education were being undermined by a lack of funding.

A potentially useful illustration of the unintended impacts of institutions on policy outcomes perhaps?

The E-Government Unit says that 75% of government services are now online and forecasts that 96% will be by the end of 2005. Full details in the Cabinet Office’s Autumn Performance Report and accompanying press release.

Over the years I have often wanted to read SOCITM publications - especially their annual survey - but they almost always have crazy prices… £300 for 66 pages this one! Even the summary isn’t available to non-members..
This is a shame, as it looks like there is some interesting stuff in there judging by the press release.
It reckons Local Authority IT spending has increased by 25% to nearly £2.5 billion p.a., due mainly to e-government roll out. This, they argue, ‘is in complete contrast with other non-government sectors where spending is at best flat’.

A bit quiet recently due to combined forces of comment spammers killing my blog and the extra hours I’ve been putting in to pull together the launch issue of the Social Policy Association’s revamped newsletter - Policy World - which I have taken over editing. The launch issue is now online.