A Strategy for the Management,Preservation, and Reutilization of Geographical Information Based on the Lifecycle of Geospatial Data: An Assessment and a Proposal Based on Experiences from Spain and Europe

In recent years, there has been a growing recognition of the fact that the proper management of information has to include concern for its preservation and future re-use. This ambition is particularly significant for geospatial data. The primary aim of this article is to define the European and Spanish frameworks for the preservation and reutilization of geographical information, with the ultimate goal of proposing an articulated, lifecycle-based data management model. With this, the intent is to shed some light on a complex, difficult and ever-evolving subject.

The article is divided into two main parts. The first part begins with a conceptual justification for geospatial data management and continues by synthesizing the current normative and technological framework for the preservation and reutilization of geographical information. Within this context, the implementation of Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) in Spain is evaluated. The second part begins with a case study from Spain that aims to identify different agents and flows that influence the lifecycle of geographical data, as well as the strengths and weaknesses found in each stage of the process under examination. Finally, the foregoing ideas are used in order to propose a SDI-related system for the management of geographical information.     

User experience of government documents: A framework for informing design decisions

People still use documents in many everyday government processes. From tax payments to passport requests, citizens have to interact with low-interactivity information artifacts such as reports, maps and datasets, among many others. Despite efforts to improve information delivery in the public sector, effective information usage remains a critical topic of action and research. The user experience of government documents has rarely been assessed, despite them being regularly published and frequently used. Considering this, the two following research questions arise: 1) How can government documents be classified (or grouped) in terms of user experience? 2) How can the user experience of government documents be monitored over time in order to inform design decisions? Working with a public agency in Chile, we develop and test a classification and monitoring framework based on two online surveys (N?=?338 and N?=?298). We then propose a framework for understanding user experience of government documents in these three dimensions: interaction goal, volume of information and ease of understanding. Using a graphical representation to classify user experience provides greater visibility of the current status of information produced by a public organization. Furthermore, by monitoring the user experience of a government document at different times, organizations can understand the effect of their design decisions and improve their service quality by implementing user-centered processes.     

Child and Adolescent Predictors of Personality in Early Adulthood

This study investigated development of the Big Five personality traits from early childhood into adulthood. An initial group of 137 Swedish children were assessed eight times between ages 2 and 29 years. Initial decreases in extraversion leveled off in early adulthood; agreeableness and conscientiousness increased from ages 2 to 29; neuroticism initially increased, leveled off in later childhood and adolescence, and decreased throughout early adulthood; while openness to experience showed an initial increase, then decreased and leveled off in early adulthood. Individual developmental trajectories varied significantly, particularly in relation to gender. Personality traits became increasingly stable, and the fact that childhood scores predicted scores in adulthood indicated that personalities are fairly stable across this portion of the life span.     

Fostering Social and Emotional Skills for Well-Being and Social Progress

Children need a balanced set of cognitive, social and emotional capabilities to adapt to today's demanding, changing and unpredictable world. OECD countries and partner economies recognise the importance on the holistic development of individuals. However, there are big gaps between stakeholders' knowledge, expectations and practices on how to foster such skills. This paper presents evidence on the importance of social and emotional skills; on how policy makers and schools are currently enhancing and monitoring such skills; and, on the existing gaps between knowledge, expectations and practices to mobilise these skills. The paper concludes by pointing ways in which education stakeholders can do more to better develop and mobilise the skills that drive individual's well-being and social progress. The paper draws on findings and frameworks that are being published in a full OECD report entitled ‘Skills for Social Progress: the Power of Social and Emotional Skills’ in the first half of 2015.     

‘Not everything that the bourgeois world created is bad’: aesthetics and politics in women workers' education

In this paper, I look into the papers of Fannia Cohn, an immigrant labour organizer, who served the Education Department of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union (ILGWU) between 1918 and 1962 and became one of its few women vice-presidents. As an internationally recognized figure in the history of workers' education, Cohn left a rich body of labour literature, wherein art is central in the ways she conceptualized, designed and organized women workers' educational programmes and curricula, as well as cultural activities for more than 50 years. For Cohn, however, art and politics were tightly interwoven in what I have called the artpolitics assemblage of women garment workers' life and work. It is entanglements between ethics, aesthetics and politics, considered in the light of the Rancièrian notion of ‘the distribution of the sensible’, that I discuss in this paper.     

Greed and Rapacity in Twilight and Vampire Academy: Kleinian Models of Maturation for Young Adult Readers

Children's Literature in Education - This paper considers the Twilight novels alongside the Vampire Academy books, as young adult readers regularly invoke these series as touchstones...