Presents an overview of statutory and non-statutory data-protection provisions currently governing the processing of personal data in Canada's private sector, including federal and provincial legislation and efforts at self-regulation through voluntary codes of practice. Considers a more comprehensive system of regulation, contemporary policy…

The global dimension of the Internet requires new approaches to formulating policy infrastructures. Commerce must invest in the development of policy infrastructures and governments must support these new approaches; an effective balance between commercial needs and social requirements is necessary in order to achieve universal access. The…

Increasingly, lawmakers are treating proprietary institutions like traditional colleges. Only six years ago, the for-profit trade schools were battling to avoid being thrown out of federal student aid programs. As reauthorization of the Higher Education Act approaches, signs suggest the schools may be treated as members of the higher education…

Describes the libraries at the Lindesmith Center, a drug-policy-reform research institute, and discusses plans for library expansion. The traditional library includes books, government and other organization reports, periodicals, and vertical files; the virtual library contains full text documents that are available on the Lindesmith Web site.…

Describes the structure and operations of a computer simulation model used in Papua New Guinea, developed with technical assistance from UNESCO. Notes that model establishes baseline data on student enrollments, teacher posts, and costs of education, and can be used to simulate policies under consideration and provide output on student flows,…

Examines the current and future projections for the federal budget and the two processes affecting fiscal policy: authorization/appropriation measures and budget resolution/reconciliation. Knowledge of the federal budget process shows social-work students how fiscal constraints have been used as weapons against social-welfare programs, and allows…

Investigates characteristics of participative decision making in schools implementing the School Management Initiative by using a three-dimensional model and both quantitative and qualitative methods. Reveals a deprivation state in decision making regarding issues of managerial and technical domains, but a positive attitude among teachers toward…

Discussion of strategic planning in libraries focuses on a five-step process based on academic libraries. Highlights include a situational and environmental analysis; development of organizational direction, including vision, mission, and objectives; formulation of the strategic plan; implementation; and control, feedback, and evaluation. (LRW)

The model currently guiding educational policy development--constructing crises and crafting solutions--has a long, unproductive history. To shrug off American education's perpetual crisis mode, educators should expand their descriptive vocabularies, apply the "so what" test, adopt demonstrably effective solutions, eschew a crisis…

Examines effects on higher education in the U.K. of recommendations in the Dearing Report (Report of the National Committee of Inquiry into Higher Education) a year after publication, suggesting that while the report effectively analyzed higher education's financial needs, its recommendations have been only partially implemented. The Report's…

Throughout the nation, increased state appropriations to public colleges are common; at least seven states are giving double-digit percentage increases. Lawmakers are linking funding to state goals and demanding greater accountability, and governors are willing to veto expenditures they consider excessive. Other funding issues include tuition cuts…

Urges that discussion of the future of intelligence testing differentiates the evolution of theory and research from trends in clinical (school-based) practice. States that school-based assessments will not be valued because they are efficient, mandated, or empirically linked to theories of cognition but because they are functionally and fairly…

Points out some of the library media center policies that have changed because of technology. Highlights include the following: standards-based policies, legal issues, key American Library Association policies from the 1998 Information Power guidelines, suggestions for creating policies, and adoption of policies by the appropriate governing body.…

Considers a case of corporate involvement in education by tracing an employability-skills profile from its development by a corporate-sponsored group through local implementation. Shows the processes and strategies adopted by business leaders, and critiques the discourse of employability skills by indicating what is left out or obscured. (DSK)

Interviews with 45 key informants involved in development of Britain's National Vocational Qualifications attributed failure to achieve better implementation to institutional constraints: political imperative to manage high youth unemployment, inadequate accountability and supervision, lack of mechanisms to compel implementation, and weakness of…