Balancing compassion, accountability, and causal clarity

Balancing Clarity and Efficiency in Typed Feature Logic Through Delaying

The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the balance between clarity and efficiency in HPSG design, with particular reference to the design decisions made in the English Resource Grammar (LinGO, 1999, ERG). It is argued that a simple generalization of the conventional delay statements used in logic programming is sufficient to restore much of the functionality and concomitant benefit that the...

Balancing Accountability and Privacy Using E-Cash (Extended Abstract)

In an electronic cash (e-cash) system, a user can withdraw coins from the bank, and then spend each coin anonymously and unlinkably. For some applications, it is desirable to set a limit on the dollar amounts of anonymous transactions. For example, governments require that large transactions be reported for tax purposes. In this work, we present the first e-cash system that makes this possible ...

Clarity or Collaboration: Balancing Competing Aims in Bureaucratic Design

Following the Gulf oil spill and US housing meltdown, policymakers revamped the associated administrative infrastructure in an effort to sharpen each agency’s focus, based on the perspective that asking an organization to fulfill competing missions undermines performance. Using a formal model, I demonstrate that priority goal ambiguity introduced when an agency balances multiple roles does have...

Balancing “No Blame” with Accountability in Patient Safety

This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Institute of Medicine’s report To Err Is Human,1 the document that launched the modern patient-safety movement. Although the movement has spawned myriad initiatives, its main theme, drawn from studies of other high-risk industries that have impressive safety records, boils down to this: Most errors are committed by good, hardworking people trying to d...

ALJ Final Orders on Appeal: Balancing Independence with Accountability