The progress of eGovernment(eGov) initiatives involves focused and contextual practices that address the requirements and concerns of multiple involved stakeholders. This article investigates the ...state of the practice in eGovernment challenges, assessing some eGovernment projects delivered by ten areas world over, and propose a taxonomy for eGovernment challenges. The taxonomy comprises of three (level-1) dimensions: economic, technological, and social challenges, and sixteen (level-2) dimensions: legal/regulatory, institutional/operational/environmental, political, financial, quality, process, structural, organizational, development, technical, managerial, contextual, policy & training, data & information, stakeholder, and other issues and challenges. The proposed taxonomy contributes to assistance in guiding the concerns by classifying a range of eGovernment challenges, providing how the challenges occur, to whom does it affect. Moreover, the study discusses the usage settings of the taxonomy by Government professionals, vendor organizations, researchers and IT staff. Furthermore, the researchers can also use this taxonomy for further development of the field. Such identification of a list of critical government challenges can also be beneficial to IT professionals in planning and executing the eGovernment projects.
During the Covid-19 Pandemic, the term “Online Dispute Resolution” has become a buzzword to indicate dispute resolution procedures that variously employ Information and Communication Technology. ...Against this backdrop, doubts arise regarding the function and degree of involvement of technology necessary to label certain dispute resolution processes as ODR. Scholars and regulators across the world have provided several definitions of ODR so as to include a wide range of dispute resolution procedures. While examining different doctrinal orientations and approaches of international ODR institutions, this contribution will propose a definition of ODR, outline a theoretical framework for the systemic study of ODR processes, and identify areas of interest for future research.
The study was conducted as a case study to enhance pre-service science teachers’ readiness for integration, inquiry-based learning (IBL), the use of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), ...and the application of real-life examples during their teacher training courses. The objective of the research was to explore pre-service science teachers’ perceptions of integrated teaching, inquiry learning, and the use of ICT in science education, drawing on their experiences in teacher training. It also aimed to examine potential differences in their viewpoints and the evolution of their perceptions over time. A questionnaire was developed to gather insights from 50 pre-service science teachers regarding their views on the integration of science subjects before and after their 2-year teacher training courses. The collected data were analyzed using a qualitative approach with the QCAmap software, followed by a quantitative analysis utilizing the Microsoft Excel software. The findings revealed significant variances in perceptions among pre-service teachers based on the number of science subjects they studied during their training. Those who studied two or more subjects placed greater emphasis on the value of integration, IBL, ICT use, and real-life examples in science education, and exhibited more significant changes in their views throughout the 2 years of teacher training. Furthermore, the study found that nearly half of the pre-service teachers did not view IBL in science classes as crucial, and only about a quarter recognized the importance of ICT utilization.
Terraces and lynchets are ubiquitous worldwide and can provide increasingly important Ecosystem Services (ESs), which may be able to mitigate aspects of climate change. They are also a major cause of ...non-linearity between climate and erosion rates in agricultural systems as noted from alluvial and colluvial studies. New research in the ‘critical zone’ has shown that we must now treat soil production as an ecologically sensitive variable with implications for soil carbon sequestration. In this review and synthesis paper we present a modified classification of agricultural terraces, review the theoretical background of both terraces and lynchets, and show how new techniques are transforming the study of these widespread and often ancient anthropogenic landforms. The problems of dating terraces and the time-consuming nature of costly surveys have held back the geomorphological and geoarchaeological study of terraces until now. The suite of techniques now available, and reviewed here, includes Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) - Structure from Motion (SfM) photogrammetry, Airborne and Terrestrial Laser Scanning (ALS-TLS); optically stimulated luminescence (OSL and pOSL), portable X-ray fluorescence (pXRF), Fourier-transform infra-red analysis (FTIR), phytoliths from plants, and potentially environmental DNA. Three process-related geomorphological questions arise from using this suite of methods; a) can they provide both a chronology of formation and use history, b) can we identify the sources of all the soil components? c) Can terrace soil formation and ecosystem services be modelled at the slope to catchment scale? The answers to these questions can also inform the management of the large areas of abandoned and under-used terraces that are resulting from both the economics of farming and rural population changes. Where possible, examples are drawn from a recently started ERC project (TerrACE; ERC-2018-2023; https://www.terrace.no/) that is working at over 15 sites in Europe ranging from Norway to Greece.
•Agricultural terraces have been neglected by due to a lack of appropriate techniques and models•Late Holocene too short for soil formation implying terraces include redistributed saprolite•soil formation decreases with increasing soil depth but processes needs to be more fully understood•terracing increases SOC stock but stability and response to climate are less well understood•Preliminary data suggests that terrace soils are carbon sinks rather than carbon sources•high resolution SfM and TLS DEMs allows the application of distributed erosion and nutrient models
Work-related use of information and communication technologies after hours (W_ICTs) has significant impacts on both organizations and individuals. However, limited research has explored the ...detrimental effects of W_ICTs behavior on work-family conflict. To fill this gap, based upon the job demands-resources (JD-R) model and daily diary design with a multilevel model method, we collected 76 employees who completed a 5-day investigation, resulting in 380 observations. Our study found that engaging in W_ICTs behavior positively influenced employees’ own work role overload, which led to an increase in work-family conflict. Furthermore, we found that the positive relationship between work role overload and work-family conflict is stronger when employees’ job autonomy is at lower levels. Our findings provide strong support for the proposed moderated mediation model and extend our understanding of W_ICTs behaviors consequences.
Background
Delivery arrangements include changes in who receives care and when, who provides care, the working conditions of those who provide care, coordination of care amongst different providers, ...where care is provided, the use of information and communication technology to deliver care, and quality and safety systems. How services are delivered can have impacts on the effectiveness, efficiency and equity of health systems. This broad overview of the findings of systematic reviews can help policymakers and other stakeholders identify strategies for addressing problems and improve the delivery of services.
Objectives
To provide an overview of the available evidence from up‐to‐date systematic reviews about the effects of delivery arrangements for health systems in low‐income countries. Secondary objectives include identifying needs and priorities for future evaluations and systematic reviews on delivery arrangements and informing refinements of the framework for delivery arrangements outlined in the review.
Methods
We searched Health Systems Evidence in November 2010 and PDQ‐Evidence up to 17 December 2016 for systematic reviews. We did not apply any date, language or publication status limitations in the searches. We included well‐conducted systematic reviews of studies that assessed the effects of delivery arrangements on patient outcomes (health and health behaviours), the quality or utilisation of healthcare services, resource use, healthcare provider outcomes (such as sick leave), or social outcomes (such as poverty or employment) and that were published after April 2005. We excluded reviews with limitations important enough to compromise the reliability of the findings. Two overview authors independently screened reviews, extracted data, and assessed the certainty of evidence using GRADE. We prepared SUPPORT Summaries for eligible reviews, including key messages, 'Summary of findings' tables (using GRADE to assess the certainty of the evidence), and assessments of the relevance of findings to low‐income countries.
Main results
We identified 7272 systematic reviews and included 51 of them in this overview. We judged 6 of the 51 reviews to have important methodological limitations and the other 45 to have only minor limitations. We grouped delivery arrangements into eight categories. Some reviews provided more than one comparison and were in more than one category. Across these categories, the following intervention were effective; that is, they have desirable effects on at least one outcome with moderate‐ or high‐certainty evidence and no moderate‐ or high‐certainty evidence of undesirable effects.
Who receives care and when: queuing strategies and antenatal care to groups of mothers.
Who provides care: lay health workers for caring for people with hypertension, lay health workers to deliver care for mothers and children or infectious diseases, lay health workers to deliver community‐based neonatal care packages, midlevel health professionals for abortion care, social support to pregnant women at risk, midwife‐led care for childbearing women, non‐specialist providers in mental health and neurology, and physician‐nurse substitution.
Coordination of care: hospital clinical pathways, case management for people living with HIV and AIDS, interactive communication between primary care doctors and specialists, hospital discharge planning, adding a service to an existing service and integrating delivery models, referral from primary to secondary care, physician‐led versus nurse‐led triage in emergency departments, and team midwifery.
Where care is provided: high‐volume institutions, home‐based care (with or without multidisciplinary team) for people living with HIV and AIDS, home‐based management of malaria, home care for children with acute physical conditions, community‐based interventions for childhood diarrhoea and pneumonia, out‐of‐facility HIV and reproductive health services for youth, and decentralised HIV care.
Information and communication technology: mobile phone messaging for patients with long‐term illnesses, mobile phone messaging reminders for attendance at healthcare appointments, mobile phone messaging to promote adherence to antiretroviral therapy, women carrying their own case notes in pregnancy, interventions to improve childhood vaccination.
Quality and safety systems: decision support with clinical information systems for people living with HIV/AIDS.
Complex interventions (cutting across delivery categories and other health system arrangements): emergency obstetric referral interventions.
Authors' conclusions
A wide range of strategies have been evaluated for improving delivery arrangements in low‐income countries, using sound systematic review methods in both Cochrane and non‐Cochrane reviews. These reviews have assessed a range of outcomes. Most of the available evidence focuses on who provides care, where care is provided and coordination of care. For all the main categories of delivery arrangements, we identified gaps in primary research related to uncertainty about the applicability of the evidence to low‐income countries, low‐ or very low‐certainty evidence or a lack of studies.
In recent years, Korea’s Information and Communication Technology (ICT) industry has grown rapidly. The prosperity of the ICT industry has brought growing recognition that rising productivity and ...innovative performance have made major contributions to ensuring competitive advantage in international markets. In this context, recent studies stress the importance of external knowledge for improving both innovative performance and productivity. This paper empirically investigates the effects of firms’ external knowledge search behavior on their productivity as well as their innovative performance in the Korean ICT manufacturing sector. Based on firm-level data from the Science and Technology Policy Institute (STEPI), this study indicates that incremental innovation and productivity are both related to external knowledge search.
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