Independents and Electoral Advantage

Question: Discuss about the Independents and Electoral Advantage. Answer: Introduction The proposal investigates the case of pork-barrelling used by DSS department while taking funding decisions in Australia. Because of the political bias, distribution of funds to electorates becomes uneven. A DSS system using computer software systems would have to potential to eliminate the bias and instead make funding recommendations based on transparent criteria. The paper is presented in two parts. In the first part, the need development and implementation of DSS system is identified and explained. It includes the details of problem and suggests solutions. In the next section, components of proposed DSS system are identified. The section also explores various software options available for development. Department of Social Service is a state owned body in Australia that is responsible for distributing funds for commonwealth electoral divisions. Because of the instances of the department showing bias towards candidates providing electoral advantages, the integrity of the department has been questioned. The claims have been made that DSS involved their own MPs, voter advantage seats and those coalitions marginal seats, and regional seats providing voting advantage(Denemark, 2014). A set of data on DSS Payments by Commonwealth Electoral Division was downloaded from the official website to verify the claim of pork-barrelling practice by DSS. It was found that over 16% of the funds in 2015 were only distributed to 5 regions that included Lingiari, Leichhardt, Durack, Parkes, and Kennedy while 145 other candidates received remaining funds. These 5 electoral candidates received 16% of the total funds allotted while remaining 145 candidates got remaining percentage of funds. This analysis shows that there is a bias in decision making and thus, if a DSS system would provide a potential to eliminate this bias by making the system transparent and not basing decisions on preferences of individuals (Falguera, et al., 2014). The proposed DSS system would include formation of a database of details of electoral candidates in the real time. This data would be analyzed and modelled to calculate appropriate funding figure for each electoral candidates. The recommended funding figures would then be presented to the decision makers of DSS through a used friendly interface. The proposal analyses the case of department of social service for proposed development of DSs system and comes up with a prototype for the same. The solution would be explained by identifying its functions, components, and design units. A design would be developed based on this exploration for DSS. This prototype can further be tested before an actual development of DSS takes place. Analysis and Design Department of Social Science gathers a large amount of data about electoral candidates on the basis of which decisions on funding can be taken. To be able to take the right decision, specific criteria have to be set and used for analysis that results into a statistical model for allotment of funds. A model based DSs system can thus be used for the development of data model. The system users would include the decision makers in the department and the staff members. The staff would be responsible for storing the data into the system and running the analytics queries while the resulting output of the analysis would be presented in visual format to the decision makers. This system would have to develop two types of interfaces one of which would be used by the staff including data analysts and administrators while the visual interface would be used by the managers taking decision. Managers would analyse the recommended fund values and would take appropriate decisions for fund allotment for electoral candidates (ARIAV GINZBERG, 1985). The decision structure of the DSS system would be semi-structures allowing some criteria to make automatic decisions on funding requirements but the expert views would also add to these criteria and contribute to the final decision on funding. A Model-based Decision Support System would be developed with following components(Power Sharda, 2007): Data management:The data on the options for funding, candidate details, demographics, payment types, duration, postcodes, and more such data would be stored and managed by a data management system. Model management:A statistical model would be used for analysing the data and coming up with the distribution of the funds for electoral candidates. Decisions for distribution can be taken on the basis of objectives, options and uncertainty of variables. User interface management:Multiple user interfaces developed for administrators and decision makers would be managed such that the results of the data analysis would be visually presented to user(Druzdzel Flynn, 2002). There can be several software available to consider for the development of the DSS system such as Microsoft Excel Solver, Microsoft Access, SAS, Tableau and so on. Excel has already been used by the company but the analysis is performed by the managers manually and thus, addition of bias could be very easy. SAS is data analytics software that can be suggested here for development of DSS system for the department for it provides a huge number of features and benefits like community support, rich visualization, big data capabilities and predictive analytics. Conclusions: This paper proposed development and implementation of Decision Support System for the Department of Social Services of Australia. The department was responsible for taking decisions on funding electoral candidate on some tactical criterias. However, in practice the entity was found to be guilty of showing bias towards some beneficial political candidates as was verified from the data. Thus, introduction of DSS system is expected to make things transparent and eliminating the bias with the use of computer modelling for calculation of funding figures for electoral candidates. The paper presented various DSS components of the solution and suggested SAS software for development. References ARIAV, G. GINZBERG, M. J., 1985. DSS DESIGN: A SYSTEMIC VIEW OF DECISION SUPPORT , s.l.: ACME. Denemark, D., 2014. Partisan Pork-Barrel, Independents and Electoral Advantage: Australia's Regional Partnerships Program in 2004. Australian Journal of Politics and History, 60(4), p. 564579. Druzdzel, M. J. Flynn, R. R., 2002. Decision Support Systems, s.l.: University of Pittsburgh. Falguera, E., Jones, S. Ohman, M., 2014. Funding of Political Parties and Election Campaigns, s.l.: IDEA. Power, D. J. Sharda, R., 2007. Model-driven decision support systems: Concepts and research directions. Decision Support Systems, Volume 43, p. 1044 1061.