Social science sites of the week

Future for Women on boards: Milestone or Millstone?
Annual report from FTSE and Cranfield University. It examines the percentage of women on top company management boards. It follows on from the Davies report which recommended greater female participation. Other good sources for data on women and management include:
the 30% club which is seeking 30% representation on boards.
It also has some interesting international comparisons on its website.The Fawcett society has published reports on women in the workplace. The ILO also produces regular gender audits. Look at their website for statistics and reports.

In the news this week Slovak elections.
Czech and Slovak Digital Parliamentary LibraryThis is aiming to create an online library of Debates, Bills, Resolutions, Materials of committees From 1848 onwards. Encompassing these bodies. Austrian Constituent Imperial Diet 1848-1849 (Wien, Kromeriz) Diet of the Czech Kingdom 1861-1913; National Assembly of the Czechoslovak Republic and the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic 1918-1968, Diet of the Slovak Republic 1939-1945, Slovak National Council 1944-1960, Czech National Council 1969-1992, Resolutions of the presidium of the Slovak National Council 1970-1987, Federal Assembly of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic and the Czechoslovak Federal Republic (Chamber of the People and Chamber of Nations) 1969-1992, Parliament of the Czech Republic (Chamber of Deputies and Senate) 1993-2003, National Council of the Slovak Republic 1993-2003
See materials online (Czech only).

Eurypedia
New online encyclopaedia on Education systems in Europe from Eurydice
See more statistics on education in Europe from the main Eurydice website. Covers 38 countries. It also has over 5,000 thematic articles
e.g. see entry for educational mobility schemes.
Tools section has a glossary of terms, bibliographies to guide further readings. And national legislationIf you are interested in Education data you might also like to try the free OECD education at a glance materials Note these primarily cover only OECD members.
UNESCO education reports. You can also download statistics from their website. They are particularly good at covering gender and education and education in developing regions under the Education for all programme.

National Archives – launch 100th anniversary Titanic website.
It enables free searching of crew lists and victims’ names, images of artefacts, timelines of events and podcasts discussing the social history and lives of those onbard.
Also from the Archives, plans to launch a new online community. Find out more and register your interest from the link given on this newsletter.

Worldwide e-government rankings.
Just released by the United Nations Division for Public Administration and Development Management worldwide rankings of e-government delivery worldwide.
View tables on rankings in certain regions.It also considers such factors as barriers, bridging the digital divide, and relationship between broadband access and uptake of online services from citizens.

Times Higher Education world university reputation rankings released. See the full listing here.
read how it was done. Examine the methodology Note the Times also has a world university ranking with a different methodology see here.
There are also QS University rankings. Again these use another methodology, explained on the website. They include rankings by subject area.
Certain newspapers also produce their own guides to UK universities for potential students. See the Guardian. Times Business school rankings.

Homeless Hotspots.
Controversial use of new technology
from advertising agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BBH) in USA. Instead of the homeless selling the Big issue they equipped 13 homeless people with 4G mifi devices in Austin, Texas and got them to sell Wi-Fi access. Their locations were marked on Google maps.
See the announcement from the company

New ethics.gov website launched this month.
See the blog for details of the remit and background.
It makes transparent 7 forms of datasets.: White House visitor records, Office of Government Ethics travel reports, Lobbying Disclosure Act data, Department of Justice Foreign Agents Registration Act data, Federal Election Commission individual contribution reports, Federal Election Commission candidate reports, and Federal Election Commission committee reports
Another excellent site for tracing this type of data on political finance is materials produced by lobbying group the Sunlight Foundation.
See their projects

Data Publica: le portail français des données et de l’open data
Get free open access statistical data from French government and other sources(Site largely in French)
See this presentation for an explanation.
Site maintained by Data Publica not official French government, but using public sources and presenting in interesting ways. They have produced this data visualization set for journalists. See the datasets. See spreadsheets of popular baby names in Paris. Twitter popularity of French presidential candidates.

USA electionsCenter for Women and Politics Rutgers University.
Great starting point for finding academic information on Gender and the presidential elections.
The 2012 project is aiming to increase female political participation. It includes:
2012 Women’s Election Tracker which is following the progress of women through this election cycle –.it has state by state statistics for women in Congress and state legislatures, Open seats created by retirements and term limits, Links to the latest information about women who have filed and won primaries in 2012
Also available are fact sheets on women’s involvement in presidential elections and historical statistics on voting patterns and voter turnout.
Useful example of a user education site is the long established vote411From the League of Women Voters. Look at the online voters’ guide to compare candidates’ positions in individual states/ races.