Aidan Kane is doing some amazing things with the dynamic presentation of economic data on his blog.
See here for a moving scatter plot of US inflation and unemployment (once downloaded, press play to start). And here for an evolving population pyramid for Ireland based on CSO data. Check out the blog itself for explanations of what you are seeing.
In yesterday’s speech the Taoiseach said:
Restructuring of Departments and agencies inevitably entails disruption and costs but I am satisfied that with the changes I am making, the benefits will outweigh the cost…
Costs, of course, include changes to name-plates, stationery, web-sites and so on, as well as the HR dimension of moving staff around. Benefits are more problematic. The UK National Audit Office has recently reported on Reorganising Central Government and concluded that the UK government has averaged £200M a year over the last few years on reorganisations of government departments and other units, but with scant evidence that such expenditures are justified. They state:
Central government bodies are weak at identifying and securing the benefits they hope to gain from reorganisation.
The NAO makes a number of proposals for more systematic evaluation before reorganisations take place, the establishment of a central team ‘with oversight and advance warning of all government reorganisations’ and better parliamentary scrutiny. There is, of course, a problem with such analysis in that reorganisations of the kind announced by the Irish Government yesterday are chiefly driven by political concerns. They are significant as much for what they symbolise as for what they may achieve by way of enhancing governmental capacity for action.
The heads of UCD and Trinity reflect on the findings of the Innovation Taskforce is today’s Irish Times. I think they provide a timely clarification on the rationale for supporting university research. The idea that the purpose of research is to generate discrete technologies that can be commercialised by Irish firms has gained surprising currency. While this idea does get some empirical support from the literature on localised knowledge spillovers, it is too weak a foundation to support a costly investment programme. A more encompassing rationale includes the role of research—and particularly the integration of teaching and research—in ensuring the broad innovation capabilities of Irish graduates. Brady and Hegarty sum up this broader human capital rationale well:
Last week Karl Whelan was elected as a member of the Royal irish Academy. This is one of the highest honours which can be conferred on an Irish academic and I think all readers of this blog will agree that it is richly deserved. Well done, Karl.
The Department of Foreign Affairs recently released a report on the progress toward meeting some of the goals set out in last year’s Farmleigh summit. I have to confess to a degree of unease about a process that doesn’t permit people to debate and scrutinise ideas in full open view. I am pretty sure that the vast majority of the people who attended and spoke are big enough and bold enough to have withstood an IrishEconomy type treatment for their ideas and I don’t see why it wasn’t simply podcast. As it was, the event was mostly held in private for a group of selected invitees. The progress report for what was discussed is linked below. Some of the ideas include a National Diaspora bond and an overseas graduate programme. Other paragraphs suggest that Farmleigh may have been influential in shaping budgetary policy, which is something that doesn’t sound very plausible. In general, I can’t disguise a degree of scepticism about such approaches but, having said that, some very influential and succesful people attended and gave their views so debating this document seems a good use of a thread.