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This chapter expounds on the role of PIOs. It starts by reviewing the decisions and instructions of the CIC and the government, before moving on to a list of the various duties and responsibilities of PIOs. Various procedures are then examined, including those for the transfer of application, the disposal of an information request, and the limits for the information supply. One section concentrates on the additional fee for seeking information, while another section is focused on the assistance that is available to a PIO. The chapter also talks about the penalties and disciplinary action a PIO can face in case of complaints. A list of the different documents that should be maintained by PIOs is included. These documents are used to help the public authority collect data and submit these to the Information Commission.

This chapter provides an overview of the RTI Act, 2005 and addresses several questions. These questions pertain to eligibility, the kind of information that is exempted from disclosure, the type of information that can be given, and the ways one can request for information. It also discusses the timeframe within which one should get information, as well as the various steps that should be taken in case information is denied. It shows the ways a citizen can use the Act effectively, and then studies the role of the Public Information Officer. Several success stories from urban and rural areas in India are included. The chapter also includes examples of the application forms that a citizen can use to request for information.

This chapter looks at the guidelines for public authorities and their respective obligations under the RTI Act, 2005. It presents important decisions of the Central Information Commission (CIC) and instructions of the Indian government. It states that Public Information Officers (PIOs) help in making the right of information a reality, especially for the Indian citizens who are requesting for information. The specific duties of these PIOs as stated in the Act are identified. It then discusses the actual arrangement of the public authorities under the law. The Act also states that in case of a default, the PIOs are held liable for a penalty. This chapter ends by stressing the need for all the officials of a public authority to have intensive knowledge of the provisions of the Act.

Information is intrinsic to governing and, by extension, to public policy. Policy-related information defines relationships between the state and its citizens. Through public policies, governments seek to understand and influence the environment in which they operate. Information technologies and social media have extended and complicated these relationships in ways that have proved difficult for policy studies to absorb. This chapter suggests a way forward. Two streams of reconsideration are explored: information within public policy, and information as an object of public policy. The first stream brings together key concepts in policy analysis, and scopes the importance of informational processes within policy systems. Reconsidering in the second sense helps to identify shifts in the relationship between information and public policy as a field of action. Both perspectives help us to draw conclusions about the relationship between public policy and the state. Throughout, this discussion is linked with the general framework of the systems thinking developed in Chapter Two. The chapter concludes with some suggestions as to how an informational perspective can be used to advance research agendas in relation to accountability and forms of governance.

This chapter examines whether recent advances in the theory of repeated games, as exemplified by the so-called folk theorem and related models, address the shortcomings of the self-interest based models in explaining human cooperation. It first provides an overview of folk theorems and their account of evolutionary dynamics before discussing the folk theorem with either imperfect public information or private information. It then considers evolutionarily irrelevant equilibrium as well as the link between social norms and the notion of correlated equilibrium. While the insight that repeated interactions provide opportunities for cooperative individuals to discipline defectors is correct, the chapter argues that none of the game-theoretic models mentioned above is successful. Except under implausible conditions, the cooperative outcomes identified by these models are neither accessible nor persistent, and are thus labeled evolutionarily irrelevant Nash equilibria.

The chapter explains the concept of a Public Sector Information Exchange (PSIE). It then presents a detailed case study of a supply-chain PSIE model: the Australian CrimTrac program that was established to streamline information sharing among Australian police organizations. The chapter then explores the potential for an exchange PSIE model to be implemented in a US public sector agency in the environmental domain. Economic, legal and technical challenges to an exchange-model PSIE are outlined in detail. A case study of the deNovis project shows how semantic interoperability challenges could be overcome.

This chapter discusses both behavioural changes and consumer responses to public health information, and consumer perceptions of risk and benefit associated with specific food choices. These are illustrated using case studies in the following sections.

This chapter focuses on the education, information, and mobilization of the public after the 9/11 attacks. It addresses the constructive public response, devising public-communication strategies, providing practical information, educating the public to use health services wisely, activating civil-society organizations, and utilizing volunteers. The chapter concludes that the wide range of positive public responses to the consequences of terrorist attacks in 2001 indicates that health and safety professionals need to reassess their assumptions about the public's capacity to respond constructively after a terrorist attack.

Chapter eight offers practical advise for implementing a Public Sector Information Exchange (PSIE) in the US and elsewhere. It includes important insights for politicians, public sector officials, technologists, and citizens to enable the implementation of PSIE. The chapter concludes with the observation that the success of information sharing initiatives ultimately depends on the motivation of the people who are tasked with their implementation.

This chapter contains an in-depth definition of the aforementioned resource-based approach to public policy resources, which is usually used for analysing the institutional conditions for sustainable resource use in connection with the postulate of sustainable development. It exploits the concept of institutional resource regimes (IRR) rooted in constitutional and civil law, which is illustrated by the analysis of the governance of the resource ‘public documentary information’ (big data) conducted by Olgiati Pelet.

Effective public health communication requires comprehensive outreach and a well-defined department brand to penetrate through a cluttered mass media world. Becoming a trusted source during times of a public health crisis cannot be achieved on the day of an event. Relationship building with traditional and non-traditional social media sources is essential and this chapter provides insights on how one of the largest public health jurisdictions in the United States has accomplished this goal.

This chapter discusses the means for informing the public about the claims process, for example by publishing statistics on the caseload and/or texts of the awards. An Editors' Commentary and separate Annotations show how each of these Mass Claims Processes has handled the matter.

America's entry into war on April 2, 1917, turned Mencken's life upside down. As a German-American now writing for the New York Evening Mail, he became the target of super-patriots. George Creel launched the Espionage Act, containing some of the broadest and most restrictive sanctions against civil liberties and free speech that the country ever witnessed. As a German-American who felt separated from American society, Mencken began to gain insight on another group he had derided years earlier: African-Americans. Together with James Weldon Johnson, they urged black Americans to start writing realistically about racial issues, including lynching. Mencken also met Philip Goodman, and wrote A Book of Prefaces and Damn a Book of Calumny, both of which attacked American literature and conformity head on.

This chapter examines the ways in which public health information is communicated to the public and evaluates public health educational initiatives. It argues that the information concerning the relationship between smoking and lung cancer can convey the wrong messages. It discusses health promotion in relation to smoking and highlights the difficulties and dilemmas of health messages even where epidemiological evidence is strong. It contends that health education should be judged by the success with which it leads to people holding accurate beliefs.

This chapter suggests a new design approach developed specifically for PIM systems. It argues that PIM is unique in that the person who curates the information is the same person who later retrieves it. The user-subjective approach takes advantage of this unique feature and suggests that PIM systems should make systematic use of subjective (user-dependent) attributes. The approach identifies three specific subjective attributes – the importance of the information item to the user, the project to which it belongs, and the context in which the item is used, and suggests three design principles, one for each subjective attribute.

This chapter deals with types of surveillance data. Such data are honeycombed with attributes and tacit expectations that can be systematically compared. What are the major kinds of data that surveillance may gather? How do the characteristics of these data affect explanation, evaluation, manners, policy and law? When we speak of surveillance, just what is “it” that is surveilled? What cultural expectations and attitudes accompany different kinds of data? A central argument of the book is that understanding and evaluating surveillance require attention to the setting but the kind of data (visual, auditory, text etc.) may be independent of this. The chapter identifies four basic types by combining dimensions of personal-impersonal and private-public. It also identifies ten types of information that can be connected to the person (e.g., temporal, behavioral, beliefs) and a series of analytic attributes that may cut through these such as intimate, personal, sensitive and unique and or core identification.

This chapter explores the long history of visual stereotypes of African Americans from the print era through the celluloid images rooted in the minstrel tradition. It also recognizes the tremendous influence of mass media on American culture and public opinion, particularly during war. Beginning in World War I, governments on both sides of the conflict used the medium of film to recruit, train, and influence soldiers and citizens.

This chapter, by Lee Grieveson, explores the U.S. state’s use of cinema and its regulation of media and communication during World War I and in its immediate aftermath. It examines, in particular, the establishment and functioning of the Committee on Public Information (CPI) and state orchestration of new forms of war funding. It explores also the legal regulation of communication and media encoded in the Espionage and Sedition Acts of 1917 and 1918, overwhelmingly targeted at socialist and pacifist opposition to the war. The latter parts of the chapter consider the structural influence of this conjuncture on subsequent uses of cinema and media and the regulation of dissidence.