[ecrea] call for papers on "Evaluating and Assessing social policies"

Call for Paper Proposals *(extended to July 25, 2012)*

Is it working? Evaluating and assessing broadband policy

A by-invitation experts' workshop
New America Foundation

September 19-21, 2012


With broadband becoming the central means for providing information 
services in the 21st century, policymakers struggle with choosing the 
best model to ensure universal access, adoption and usage. Broadband 
policy choices range from massive government investment to total 
deregulation and everything in between including various combinations of 
regulatory regimes, limited government investment and public-private 
partnerships. Debates regarding the right path to follow often tend to 
reflect ideological convictions or stakeholder interests. It is thus 
requisite to provide analytic scholarly input into the debate, delivered 
through the evaluation and assessment of broadband deployment policies 
that have been adopted in recent years.

The Institute for Information Policy at Penn State University and the 
New America Foundation are pleased to announce this call for paper 
proposals discussing the assessment and evaluation of broadband policies 
and their implementation. Proposals based on new research data and 
analysis are especially welcome.

Authors of the selected papers will be invited to present and discuss 
them during a three day by-invitation-only experts workshop designed to 
bring together up to a dozen American and international experts to be 
held at the New America Foundation in Washington, DC between September 
19 - 21, 2012. This workshop is part of a series of events focused on 
"Making Policy Research Accessible," organized by the IIP, with the 
support of the Ford Foundation and the Media Democracy Fund. For 
programs of previous workshops see: 
https://blogs.comm.psu.edu/iip/?page_id=24). Presenters at the workshop 
will be invited to submit their completed papers for review by the 
Journal of Information Policy (www.jip-online.org 
<http://www.jip-online.org/>).


Topics of papers may include, but are not limited to issues such as:

· Methodologies for the assessment of broadband projects

· Case studies of assessment of broadband policy implementations

· Assessment and evaluation of specific BTOP projects and of the BTOP 
process

· Assessment and evaluation of state-level broadband policy implementations

· Case studies of other public and private broadband initiatives

· Theory of policy evaluation and its application to broadband

· The opportunity costs of delayed reforms and regulations

· Impacts of the rate of progress of broadband policy

· Comparative studies of broadband policies and their implementation

· Proposals for a meaningful set of metrics for broadband evaluation

· Identification of a uniform set of indicators for successful broadband 
policies

· Evaluation of broadband training and capacity-building programs and 
activities

· Evaluation of broadband programs for historically unserved or 
underserved communities

· Assessment of broadband initiatives directed at community and civil 
society institutions


Abstracts of up to 500 words and a short bio of the author(s) should be 
submitted to (pennstateiip /at/ psu.edu) <mailto:(pennstateiip /at/ psu.edu)> by July 
25, 2012. Please write IIPNAFIIWWS: YOUR NAME in the subject line. 
Accepted presenters will be notified by July 31, 2012.