bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Transmitting the Teachings of Islam in Contemporary Times
Authors: Fahm AbdulGafar Olawale
Published: August 2019

There is a growing body of literature that recognizes the importance of proper approach to transmission of learning. This is because an effective method teaching always goes a long way in helping to understanding what is being taught. Contemporary discourse on teaching style often stresses either a teacher-centered or student-centered approaches. This chapter takes a critical look at the Prophet Muhammad's methods of teaching Islam to the Companions (Sahaba). This study attempts to understand the intent of these methods used by the Prophet Muhammad and investigates their possible implications. Through historical and descriptive methods examines the primary sources in Islam – the Qur'ān and the life case of the Prophet Muḥammad as presented in his sayings and teachings (Ḥadīth). The study reveals that the prophetic approach, apart from being very effective, is also a very practical method that can be used in our contemporary times and provides a better understanding of the message of Islam and prophetic heritage.
Transformational Islamic Leadership
Authors: Abbas Diwi , Tan Charlene
Published: August 2019

This chapter focuses on transformational Islamic leadership based on a case study of a madrasah in Singapore. The research findings underscore the significance of an Islamic leader in articulating and promoting a shared vision, demonstrating exemplary behavior, working towards group goals, rendering individual support, providing intellectual stimulation, and setting high expectations. A major implication is that Islamic leadership contributes to the existing literature on transformational leadership by highlighting the religious motivation, principles, and values for madrasah leaders.
Development of Curriculum Keaswajaan (Nahdlatul ‘Ulama) in Character Formation
Authors: Ikhwan Afiful , Ju'subaidi Ju'subaidi , Mu'awanah Elfi , Rohmad Ali
Published: August 2019

The curriculum is one component that has a strategic role in the formation of graduate character. Educational institutions have the authority to develop their curriculum in accordance with the development of society (social needs), the world of work (industrial needs), the development of science and profession (professional needs), as well as the specificity and superiority of educational institutions (core character building). The curriculum of college peculiarities developed as a course of personality character forming of learners. The course of keaswajaan (Nahdlatul ‘Ulama / ke-NU-an) is a study material that aims to build a normative framework and Islamic charity according to the vision and mission of each college. This chapter aims to analyze and find the concept of character values in the curriculum of keaswajaan.
Islamic Educational Values in Life-Cycle Rituals
Authors: Manan Abdul
Published: August 2019

This study discusses the series of life cycle rituals the people of Kluet Timur, South Aceh implement. The study focuses on five main rituals—the rituals of pregnancy, giving birth, circumcision, marriage, and death. Islamic educational values contained in each ritual are also described. To collect this data, this qualitative study applied observation and interview methodologies. The values of customary education, Tawheed, health, and correct decision making can be found in the rituals of pregnancy and childbirth. The values of responsibility and health appear in the ritual of circumcision. The people of Kluet Timur develop the values of deliberation, consensus, and togetherness in the ritual of marriage. The values of solidarity and cooperation are reflected in the implementation of the death ritual.
Islamic Education and Islamic Affinities in Precolonial West Africa
Authors: Diallo Ibrahima
Published: August 2019

Evidence shows that in pre-colonial West Africa, Islamic education played a significant role following conversion of West Africans to Islam because of its impact on all spheres of life. With the establishment of theocratic states and communities, Islamic learning centers emerged to spread Islamic education and consolidate the Islamic way of life in West Africa. In this vast region where people of different ethnic, linguistic, and religious backgrounds lived and interacted for trade and commerce, Islamic education fostered Islamic affinities constructed on the universalism of Islam and Islamic injunction to form Muslim brotherhood and create the Ummah.
Understanding Nasheed for Learning Strategy in Islamic Education
Authors: Ajmain Muhammad Talhah , Safar Jimaain , Mohamed Ahmad Kilani , Huda Miftachul
Published: August 2019

Nashid is one of various teaching methods and facilitator (PdPc). Teenagers nowadays are full of interest in entertainment in the form of songs and singing, and a good alternative is to bring them to God. Thus, this paper will be debating nashid as medium of education and missionary, nashid as a method of teaching and facilitating, the effectiveness of the method, and its implementation in teaching and learning. Aspects of creativeness in education are required in the 21st century. Nashid method is able to help students memorize facts and important things, strengthen memory, create high interest, build excitement, improve motivation and concentration, and enhance the confidence level among students. It will bring about a holistic student. However, the selection of the appropriate nashid must be considered to make sure the teaching objectives are achieved. Thus, teachers in Islamic teaching must look at this method as one of the important methods and apply it in their teaching and facilitating process.
Through Harmonization of National Technical Regulations to More Sustainability in Engineering Business
Authors: Krause Julia
Published: August 2019

This chapter provides readers with specifics of complexity in engineering, delivering, and constructing of industrial plants while working in different countries. Export-oriented companies in mechanical and plant engineering businesses with long supply chains face huge challenges in considering different technical requirements for different types of equipment and for different services and procedures they provide, which lead to time and cost inefficiency. In modern times with different economic, social, and environmental requirements on the one hand and challenges caused by globalization, digitalization, and worldwide climate change; on the other, it is vital to find the ways for more sustainable project management and sustainable business models and to inspire global players to consider sustainability development goals and to become an innovator to drive the others: the suppliers, the clients, and other stakeholders. The first step towards sustainable engineering processes in the globalized world is the harmonization of technical regulations worldwide.
A Hybrid Approach to Detect the Malicious Applications in Android-Based Smartphones Using Deep Learning
Authors: Rajkumar Manokaran Newlin , Kumar Varadhan Venkatesa , Vijayabhasker Ramachandhiran
Published: August 2019

This modern era of technological advancements facilitates the people to possess high-end smart phones with incredible features. With the increase in the number of mobile applications, we are witnessing the humongous increase in the malicious applications. Since most of the Android applications are available open source and used frequently in the smart phones, they are more vulnerable. Statistical and dynamical-based malware detection approaches are available to verify whether the mobile application is a genuine one, but only to a certain extent, as the level of mobile application scanning done by the said approaches are in general routine or a common, pre-specified pattern using the structure of control flow, information flow, API call, etc. A hybrid method based on deep learning methodology is proposed to identify the malicious applications in Android-based smart phones in this chapter, which embeds the possible merits of both the statistical-based malware detection approaches and dynamical-based malware detection approaches and minimizes the demerits of them.
A 3D-Cellular Automata-Based Publicly-Verifiable Threshold Secret Sharing
Authors: Koikara Rosemary , Yoon Eun-Joon , Paul Anand
Published: August 2019

In secret sharing, a secret is distributed between various participants in a manner that an authorized group of participants in the appropriate access structures can recover this secret. However, a dealer might get corrupted by adversaries and may influence this secret sharing or the reconstruction process. Verifiable secret sharing (VSS) overcomes this issue by adding a verifiability protocol to the original secret sharing scheme. This chapter discusses a computationally secure publicly verifiable secret sharing scheme constructed using the three-dimensional cellular automata (3D CA). The initial configuration of the 3D CA is the secret. The following configurations are devised to be the shares distributed among the participants. Update mechanisms and various rules make it hard for an adversary to corrupt or duplicate a share. To make it even more efficient, the authors added a verifiability layer such that a dealer posts a public share and a private share to each shareholder. The NIST test suite has been used to calculate the randomness of the shares.
Big Data Analytics for Intrusion Detection
Authors: Dias Luis Filipe , Correia Miguel
Published: August 2019

Intrusion detection has become a problem of big data, with a semantic gap between vast security data sources and real knowledge about threats. The use of machine learning (ML) algorithms on big data has already been successfully applied in other domains. Hence, this approach is promising for dealing with cyber security's big data problem. Rather than relying on human analysts to create signatures or classify huge volumes of data, ML can be used. ML allows the implementation of advanced algorithms to extract information from data using behavioral analysis or to find hidden correlations. However, the adversarial setting and the dynamism of the cyber threat landscape stand as difficult challenges when applying ML. The next generation security information and event management (SIEM) systems should provide security monitoring with the means for automation, orchestration and real-time contextual threat awareness. However, recent research shows that further work is needed to fulfill these requirements. This chapter presents a survey on recent work on big data analytics for intrusion detection.
A Review of Machine Learning Methods Applied for Handling Zero-Day Attacks in the Cloud Environment
Authors: Swathy Akshaya M.  , Ganapathi Padmavathi
Published: August 2019

Cloud computing is an emerging technological paradigm that provides a flexible, scalable, and reliable infrastructure and services for organizations. Services of cloud computing is based on sharing; thus, it is open for attacker to attack on its security. The main thing that grabs the organizations to adapt the cloud computing technology is cost reduction through optimized and efficient computing, but there are various vulnerabilities and threats in cloud computing that affect its security. Providing security in such a system is a major concern as it uses public network to transmit data to a remote server. Therefore, the biggest problem of cloud computing system is its security. The objective of the chapter is to review Machine learning methods that are applied to handle zero-day attacks in a cloud environment.
Breathing Under Water
Authors: Borges Gabriela Mesquita , Faria Rita
Published: August 2019

The current chapter will allow a better understanding of refugee women's situation in global-forced migration. It also offers a comprehensive account of the ways in which refugee women's experiences of violence are shaped by gendered relations and structures. Furthermore, the chapter will analyze the interactions between the gender identity formation of men and women, the context of escape, displacement and asylum seeking, and the experience or manifestation of gender-based violence against refugee women. Finally, it also intends to illustrate how structural and symbolic violence and power relations cooperate to shape experiences of violence for refugee women and how it can influence and perpetuate interpersonal violence. In this sense, several studies are presented that demonstrate, on one hand, how gender relations are affected by escape, displacement, and asylum, and how they can create different practices of structural and symbolic violence; and, on the other hand, draw attention to the current lack of gender-specific analysis of the problem of asylum and refugees.
Conflict, Human Displacement, and Integration
Authors: Gurer Cuneyt , Akgul Arif
Published: August 2019

International and regional conflicts have been the most significant source of forced displacement and mass migration for decades. In a globalized world, human displacement reached its highest numbers and conflict became the number one reason for people to leave their home countries. This chapter analyzes the relationship between conflict and human displacement in a globalized context and demonstrates different stages of displacement. Each stage is connected with relevant levels of analysis (international, state, society, and individual) and the chapter argues that refugees become subjects of different risks at international, state, and societal levels during and after the displacement process. At each level, the nature of vulnerability changes and refugees are mostly affected by several external conditions, of which they have very limited control. By looking at the human (forced) displacement as a phenomenon from global to regional than local will help us to understand how the displacement process itself increases the vulnerability of displaced groups and individuals.
Honor-Related Violence in the Netherlands
Authors: Janssen Janine
Published: August 2019

What has the Dutch police learned about violence in the name of the family honor over the years? In the first paragraph, authors will deal with the question: What is violence in the name of the family honor? And what has the Dutch police done to curb this particular form of violence? The second paragraph addresses the question: What tools do the Dutch police have for dealing with this form of violence and helping vulnerable groups in society? The most important lesson that the Dutch Police have learned is that this form of violence has many faces. It might be a threat or have a lethal outcome. Next to that, ancient honor codes are capable of tapping into modern times: offenses against the honor of the family do not only take place in ‘real life' so to speak, but also online. In the early days in The Netherlands, violence in the name of family honor was often associated with migrants of Turkish decent, but nowadays the police also see cases in other communities.
Security and Privacy Challenges in Big Data
Authors: Singh Dharmpal , Nath Ira , Singh Pawan Kumar
Published: August 2019

Big data refers to enormous amount of information which may be in planned and unplanned form. The huge capacity of data creates impracticable situation to handle with conventional database and traditional software skills. Thousands of servers are needed for its processing purpose. Big data gathers and examines huge capacity of data from various resources to determine exceptional novel awareness and recognizing the technical and commercial circumstances. However, big data discloses the endeavor to several data safety threats. Various challenges are there to maintain the privacy and security in big data. Protection of confidential and susceptible data from attackers is a vital issue. Therefore, the goal of this chapter is to discuss how to maintain security in big data to keep your organization robust, operational, flexible, and high performance, preserving its digital transformation and obtaining the complete benefit of big data, which is safe and secure.
Cloud-Centric Blockchain Public Key Infrastructure for Big Data Applications
Authors: Khieu Brian Tuan , Moh Melody
Published: August 2019

A cloud-based public key infrastructure (PKI) utilizing blockchain technology is proposed. Big data ecosystems have scalable and resilient needs that current PKI cannot satisfy. Enhancements include using blockchains to establish persistent access to certificate data and certificate revocation lists, decoupling of data from certificate authority, and hosting it on a cloud provider to tap into its traffic security measures. Instead of holding data within the transaction data fields, certificate data and status were embedded into smart contracts. The tests revealed a significant performance increase over that of both traditional and the version that stored data within blocks. The proposed method reduced the mining data size, and lowered the mining time to 6.6% of the time used for the block data storage method. Also, the mining gas cost per certificate was consequently cut by 87%. In summary, completely decoupling the certificate authority portion of a PKI and storing certificate data inside smart contracts yields a sizable performance boost while decreasing the attack surface.
Nature-Inspired Techniques for Data Security in Big Data
Authors: Sekhar S. R. Mani , Siddesh G. M.  , Anand Shaswat , Laxmi D.
Published: August 2019

Inspired computing is based on biomimcry of natural occurrences. It is a discipline in which problems are solved using computer models which derive their abstractions from real-world living organisms and their social behavior. It is a branch of machine learning that is very closely related to artificial intelligence. This form of computing can be effectively used for data security, feature extraction, etc. It can easily be integrated with different areas such as big data, IoT, cloud computing, edge computing, and fog computing for data security. The chapter discusses some of the most popular biologically-inspired computation algorithms which can be used to create secured framework for data security in big data like ant colony optimization, artificial bee colony, bacterial foraging optimization to name a few. Explanation of these algorithms and scope of its application are given. Furthermore, case studies are presented to help the reader understand the application of these techniques for security in big data.
Enhance Data Security and Privacy in Cloud
Authors: Amellal Hicham , Meslouhi Abdelmajid , El Allati Abderahim , El Haddadi Annas
Published: August 2019

With the advancement of communication and information technology, the internet has become used as a platform for computing and not only a way of communications networks. Accordingly, the large spread of cloud computing led to the emergence of different privacy implications and data security complexities. In order to enhance data security in the cloud, the authors propose in this chapter the use of an encryption box, which includes different cryptosystems. In fact, this step gives the user the opportunities to encrypt data with an unknown algorithm and makes a private key before the storage of data in the host company servers. Moreover, to manage the encryption database, the authors propose a quantum approach in search based on Grover's algorithm.
Leveraging Fog Computing and Deep Learning for Building a Secure Individual Health-Based Decision Support System to Evade Air Pollution
Authors: Chitra P.  , Abirami S.
Published: August 2019

Globalization has led to critical influence of air pollution on individual health status. Insights to the menace of air pollution on individual's health can be achieved through a decision support system, built based on air pollution status and individual's health status. The wearable internet of things (wIoT) devices along with the air pollution monitoring sensors can gather a wide range of data to understand the effect of air pollution on individual's health. The high-level feature extraction capability of deep learning can extract productive patterns from these data to predict the future air quality index (AQI) values along with their amount of risks in every individual. The chapter aims to develop a secure decision support system that analyzes the events adversity by calculating the temporal health index (THI) of the individual and the effective air quality index (AQI) of the location. The proposed architecture utilizes fog paradigm to offload security functions by adopting deep learning algorithms to detect the malicious network traffic patterns from the benign ones.
Incentives for Inclusive E-Government
Authors: Bernhard Irene
Published: August 2019

In this chapter, the focus is on incentives for inclusive e-government. Five case studies of the implementation of contact centers in Swedish municipalities are described and discussed. The research methods used are mainly qualitative interviews with different categories of municipal personnel and with citizens. The main conclusion is that the implementation seems to contribute to increased accessibility of municipal services, even for those citizens who might have problems using Internet services. The study indicates a development towards increased equal treatment of citizens and a contribution to reducing problems related to the “digital divide.” Municipal services became more adapted to citizens' needs by using citizen-centric methods during the development process and in the daily work of the contact centers. The implementation of municipal contact centers can thus be seen as indicating incentives for local e-democracy and a step towards inclusive e-government, although there is still a need to go further in this direction.
Importance of Stakeholders Identification in Information Distribution Chain Management for Public Value Detection in Public Initiatives
Authors: Fernandes da Anunciação Pedro , Garcia Bruno , Fonseca Gleyson
Published: August 2019

The generation of public value by public organizations for citizens, in diverse social and economical topics, has been an object of analysis and strong debates in social sciences and administration and management sciences. New paradigms arisen recently, looking to satisfy economical and social agents' needs, but they hardly combat the lack of efficiency and mainly efficacy perception people have on public initiatives. The concept of public value can be defined as something that improves the life conditions for a community and whose benefits are appreciated by that community. Defining what is valuable for society, and considering this definition to establish the goals and the extent of a public initiative, is one of the toughest challenges in public administration. The results for a specific public initiative must the needs and expectations of society and, at the same time, observe the laws and regulations, and follow the experts' advice. The outcomes and expected value are conditioned by the capability to access information and by the way this information is transmitted to stakeholders. In this article, we propose a questionnaire to identify and map key stakeholders for a specific public initiative, in order to identify and understand the potential interested individuals and groups. This helps public officers to identify the best way to share information with those interested, and to evaluate the generation of public value. By using this questionnaire we were able to identify the key stakeholders for an exports encouragement program in a medium-size city in Brazil, whose vision must be considered to create public value for this public program.
Digitalizing Police Requirements
Authors: Gascó-Hernández Mila
Published: August 2019

In the last one or two years, the growing demand for an open state has sped up the adoption of ICT aimed at improving access to justice, making the judiciary more transparent, increasing cooperation between legal authorities, and strengthening the justice system itself. Of particular importance are interoperability initiatives since they guarantee collaboration as well as the harmonic and cohesive functioning of different existing systems, processes, and applications that, in the justice field, are many as a result of the big variety of actors that are involved: judicial institutions but, also, different public administrations, such as those responsible of police forces, and law professionals. The chapter describes and analyzes GRP (Gestió de Requeriments Policials), a project that allows for the exchange of information between the Department of Justice and the Department of the Interior in the framework of the Autonomous Government of Catalonia (Spain).
Opportunities and Challenges of Policy Informatics
Authors: Puron-Cid Gabriel , Gil-Garcia J. Ramon , Luna-Reyes Luis F.
Published: August 2019

Contemporary societies face complex problems that challenge the sustainability of their social and economic systems. Such problems may require joint efforts from the public and private sectors as well as from the society at large in order to find innovative solutions. In addition, the open government movement constitutes a revitalized wave of access to data to promote innovation through transparency, participation and collaboration. This paper argues that currently there is an opportunity to combine emergent information technologies, new analytical methods, and open data in order to develop innovative solutions to some of the pressing problems in modern societies. Therefore, the objective is to propose a conceptual model to better understand policy innovations based on three pillars: data, information technologies, and analytical methods and techniques. The potential benefits generated from the creation of organizations with advanced analytical capabilities within governments, universities, and non-governmental organizations are numerous and the expected positive impacts on society are significant. However, this paper also discusses some important political, organizational, and technical challenges.
The Satisfaction of the Citizens With the Place and the Impact of This Evaluation on Local Government Management
Authors: Nigro Héctor Oscar , Císaro Sandra Elizabeth González
Published: August 2019

Sometimes, the satisfaction of the citizens with the city in which they live is high, but local and municipal governments do not get much credit for it. It is important for local and municipal authorities to understand what they can control and what they cannot. Then, they can focus on the most important factors that can affect citizens. A causal model based on partial least squares structural equation will be proposed. The Citizen Satisfaction Index (CSI) model developed by Zenker, Petersen, and Aholt (2013) is taken as reference. This model discusses that overall satisfaction with a place is mainly described by four different basic factors: Urbanity and Diversity, Nature and Recreation, Job Opportunities and Cost-efficiency. The aim of this work was the presentation of our model of Citizen Satisfaction with local Government Management and the comparison between our results and the Duffy et al. (2010) model.
Public Financial Information Management for Benefits Maximization
Authors: Lu Yaotai
Published: August 2019

Information management is an essential part in the public budgetary process. This paper analyzes the theoretical basis, tools, and consequences of information management throughout a budget cycle. Budgeters and decision makers need necessary financial data related to all types of revenues and expenditures, economic conditions, and agency needs, among other factors. From an organization theory perspective, budget agencies face a great number of uncertainties and constraints throughout each phase of a budget cycle. Using appropriate budgeting techniques and approaches, they collect, analyze, and use necessary information to make rational budgetary decisions regarding revenue raising and resource distribution. They intend to attain such goals and objectives as cutting inefficient expenditure, achieving more output and outcome with less input, and attaining oriented societal consequences. Extensive efforts in budget reforms have resulted in considerable productivity in government administration, but at a low level. Continuous efforts are needed for further improvement of performance.
Subnational Governance Model from the Integration of Online Media and Social Networks
Authors: Serna Ciro Alfonso , Pineda Abraham Allec Londoño , Rojas Oscar Alonso Vélez
Published: August 2019

This chapter presents a subnational model of governance in the city of Medellin, Colombia, based on the integration of information generated by citizens in an online news center, that may lead to the basis for government action through a collective and participatory approach to problem-solving. For this purpose, the online news center was chosen based on their interactivity characteristics. A population of 388 news items were selected resulting in a representative sample of 180 news items, chosen according to the highest scores obtained on the expansion/depth characteristics and serialization A joint analysis of news and comments identified the problems that citizens consider as priority for solutions to finally provide a governance model based on the results obtained.
Social Media Use in the Public Sector
Authors: Ayanso Anteneh , Moyers Darryl
Published: August 2019

With advances in the Internet and its associated technologies, more and more governments and their public service agencies are embracing social media as a key channel of communication and service provision. These easy-to-use applications encourage the public to actively participate and share constructive ideas in various government initiatives. At the same time, social media helps governments to actively engage with the public and monitor their existing services for continuous improvements. In this chapter, the authors explore the application of social media in the public sector and review how it has evolved over time and what lies ahead for the future. To this end, the authors explore existing and emerging platforms and tools that can be used in various public sector settings. The chapter also reviews social media best practices and initiatives in similar settings. Finally, it examines the critical challenges the public sector faces in integrating social media in its processes and services.
Usability in Local E-Government
Authors: Yildiz Mete , Ocak Nihan , Yildirim Caglar , Cagiltay Kursat , Babaoglu Cenay
Published: August 2019

Social media use is on the rise throughout the world. Influenced by this trend, governments of all levels and sizes are establishing their social media (like Facebook) presence due to the communication and interaction capabilities that such a presence brings. This study examines and explains the social media presence of Turkish local governments from a usability perspective. Usability studies provide governments with important empirical data about the citizens'/users' view/perception of the efficiency, effectiveness and satisfaction of web-based content. Consequently, there is a need for usability testing of government social media services. The analysis of local government social media sites through scientific usability methods, such as expert review, guidelines and eye-tracking, reveals the strengths and weaknesses of government social media services in terms of usability. The study concludes with specific recommendations for improvement of government social media presence, which are applicable, to a great extent, to governments of all levels and sizes in Turkey and elsewhere.
Local Government and Governance in Mexico
Authors: Porras-Sanchez Francisco Javier
Published: August 2019

After the 1983 constitutional amendment, which devolved public services to local governments, Mexican municipalities have been studied extensively. Much of this literature has focused on the consolidation of local policy sectors, professionalisation, and administrative innovation. These matters share a concern on self-government, traditionally considered as the constitutional ideal for the municipality. More recent developments, however, have focused on the growth of citizens' and inter-organisational networks, and over its influence in the production of horizontal interactions amongst local actors. Although the evidence suggests that these networks are mostly subordinated to governability objectives, a certain shift from government to governance can be argued. This chapter proposes that both approaches, the traditional government one and the governance one, are necessary in order to understand the multiplicity of municipal conditions in Mexico. This is especially relevant for generating differentiated accounts of local governance with a reach beyond the usual legal definitions.
E-Government and Transformation of Service Delivery in Malaysia
Authors: Siddiquee Noore Alam , Mohamed Mohd. Zin
Published: August 2019

Since the 1990s e-government has been a leading feature of public sector reform in Malaysia. As elsewhere around the world, at the core Malaysia's e-government agenda is the desire to reinvent governance and service delivery so as to realize national developmental goals. Variety of e-initiatives undertaken and implemented over the past decades has improved the nation's e-profile and readiness. These programs have also brought about profound changes to the mode of service delivery and the nature of interactions between the government and citizens and other stakeholders. The paper demonstrates the current trends in e-government by focusing on some most recent initiatives and their roles in modifying governance and service delivery systems thereby producing benefits of efficiency, improved access and convenience, among others. It argues that while Malaysia has made significant inroads in e-services and is ahead of most developing countries, yet progress remains unsatisfactory when compared with regional and world leaders. The paper sheds lights on current impediments of e-government in Malaysia and their implications.
Transparency as a Determinant of Local Financial Condition
Authors: Cuadrado-Ballesteros Beatriz , Mordán Noemi , Frías-Aceituno José Valeriano
Published: August 2019

This study is an attempt to understand the importance of the broadcasting of information about the financial health of local governments. For this, a sample comprising the 110 most important Spanish cities has been used, for the period 2008–2010. Results show that transparency about local governments' actions improves their financial condition. If citizens know this information, the uncertainty over how the resources are used by leaders decreases, encouraging them to carry out efficient governance.
Rethinking the Fact-Value Split
Authors: Smith R. Scott
Published: August 2019

Multicultural, western societies are quite secular, and the secular-sacred divide has been shaped by the fact-value split. But, the fact-value split also influences many other cultures, including in Latin and South America and East Asia. On it, science yields knowledge, but religion and ethics yield opinions and values. Closely related is the public-private split: governments should act on public reasons (ones based on science), and not private ones (ones based on religious and ethical views). Such science is methodologically naturalistic, bracketing anything supernatural or non-physical. This science usually presupposes ontological naturalism: what exists is natural, or physical. But, the author will contend the fact-value split is mistaken; on naturalism, humans cannot have knowledge. At best, people only have interpretations, even in science. However, the author also will argue that people can have moral and religious knowledge. If so, there will be many practical implications for public policy and religious practice.
Consumer Adoption of E-Government in South Africa
Authors: Shambare Richard
Published: August 2019

This chapter examines South African consumers' patterns of adoption of electronic governance systems. Three elements related to e-government adoption are examined. Firstly, the development of e-government in South Africa is explored. Secondly, the chapter investigates the barriers constraining the public's utilisation of e-gov. Thirdly, suggestions on how e-government initiatives could be better aligned to the Principles of Batho Pele, or people-centred governance, are proffered. To achieve the first objective, an extensive review of the literature encapsulating e-government, South African public services, information communication technologies and commerce is conducted. To achieve the second objective, a survey of 349 consumers from two South African provinces was conducted to explore barriers associated with e-gov adoption. Findings show that although the Batho Pele Principles are pronounced in public sector organisations' missions, their implementation within e-gov still remains a challenge. A plethora of challenges were observed to retard e-government adoption.
A Comparison of Resource Equalization Processes for Subnational Rural Governance and Development
Authors: Jackson Tony , Nel Etienne , Connelly Sean
Published: August 2019

This chapter examines issues of resource equalization for subnational rural governance and development in case studies of England, Scotland, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The aim is to consider the extent to which each case study has provided the pre-requisites for adopting the “new rural paradigm” identified by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development for governance and development of rural communities. Neither federal nor unitary forms of governance in the case studies satisfactorily meet these requirements. The only case study that approaches the paradigm is Scotland, where recent devolution of governance has strengthened long-standing adherence to territorial-based regional development policies.
Introduction to Faith in State Legislatures
Authors: Drenner Karla
Published: August 2019

This chapter introduces the complex history of the relationships among faith, politics and culture in state legislatures. Each of these concepts is explored by organizing them into three themes: separation, demography and polarization. The direction and content of public policies across the United State are influenced by these elements contributing to either the support or opposition to social change. State legislators are on the front line of these ideological divides. These variations by region contribute to the increase in single party control and have generated pronounced policy differences.
The Awareness of Mentality in Public Administration as the Key for the Management of Its Complexity
Authors: Pečarič Mirko
Published: August 2019

Public objectives are mostly pursued within public administration, which despite its apparent Weberian rationality works mainly evolutionarily – by imitating processes or things that prove to be effective in other areas. The present complexity cannot be grasped by endless enumeration of objective factors. Individual and personal characteristics that cannot be controlled only by the law can be a different starting point. Research should be moved to a higher level where they could be controlled and implemented through values if their basic human properties could be known that operate also within public administration. The situational and human complexity is so great that it can only be tamed step by step, through non-stop adjustments, using a central perspective on situations from the highest management. “Entering into the unknown fully prepared for changes” will be the motto of the public administration of the future.
Achievable or Ambitious?
Authors: Nam Taewoo
Published: August 2019

Government 3.0 emerged as a new paradigm of the government workings in Korea. The previous administration's (2013–2017) strong pledge for public sector reform through the Government 3.0 initiative envisions a transparent, competent, and service-oriented government. The paper, with comparison of the Government 3.0 initiative with Government 2.0 as a precedent paradigm and national initiatives of other countries, discusses what kind of challenges the initiative faces and how the government could overcome the challenges. Government 3.0 seems like a policy package of diverse programs. Novel is how the policy package is labeled rather than what the substance is. The initiative delivers normative messages to public employees. Prioritizing quantitative transparency may cause such a side effect as extra tasks of public employees and failure in guaranteeing information security and accuracy. Since a policy package differs and varies with the administration and political parties, what the initiative sheds light on may not last long after the presidential term.
Application of Complex Event Processing Techniques to Big Data Related to Healthcare
Authors: Mohamedali Fehmida , Oussena Samia
Published: August 2019

Healthcare is a growth area for event processing applications. Computers and information systems have been used for collecting patient data in health care for over fifty years. However, progress towards a unified health care delivery system in the UK has been slow. Big Data, the Internet of Things (IoT) and Complex Event Processing (CEP) have the potential not only to deal with treatment areas of healthcare domain but also to redefine healthcare services. This study is intended to provide a broad overview of where in the health sector, the application of CEP is most used, the data sources that contribute to it and the types of event processing languages and techniques implemented. By systematic review of existing literature on the application of CEP techniques in Healthcare, a number of use cases have been identified to provide a detailed analysis of the most common used case(s), common data sources in use and highlight CEP query language types and techniques that have been considered.
Hierarchy Similarity Analyser
Authors: Bhartiya Shalini , Mehrotra Deepti , Girdhar Anup
Published: August 2019

Health professionals need an access to various dimensions of Electronic Health Records (EHR). Depending on technical constraints, each organization defines its own access control schema exhibiting heterogeneity in organizational rules and policies. Achieving interoperability between such schemas often result in contradictory rules thereby exposing data to undue disclosures. Permitting interoperable sharing of EHRs and simultaneously restricting unauthorized access is the major objective of this paper. An Extensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML)-based framework, Hierarchy Similarity Analyser (HSA), is proposed which fine-grains access control policies of disparate healthcare organizations to achieve interoperable and secured sharing of EHR under set authorizations. The proposed framework is implemented and verified using automated Access Control Policy Testing (ACPT) tool developed by NIST. Experimental results identify the users receive secured and restricted access as per their authorizations and role hierarchy in the organization.
Adoption of ICT in Implementing Primary Health Care
Authors: Faruq Quazi Omar , Tatnall Arthur
Published: August 2019

For a new technology to be put into use, a decision must be made to adopt it or at least some aspects of it. This article discusses the introduction and use of information and communication technologies in primary healthcare and investigates reasons for adoption, or non-adoption, or these technologies. In particular, the article looks at use of ICT by medical general practitioners, eHealth and the Virtual Doctor Program. The context is adoption of healthcare technologies in the Australian environment, and Information Translation is used as a lens to investigate this.
General Practitioners' Adoption and Use of ICT
Authors: Faruq Quazi Omar
Published: August 2019

The influence of ICT in General Practice varied from a solo practice to a GP specialist of a primary healthcare team. Different factors influence the GP to use ICT. After 2nd World War the national legislative requirement influenced more to adopt ICT, of which most important is the Medicare or Medicaid payment and also the richness of the environment (measured by network readiness index). Shift to group practice or corporate level practice requires ICT support to handle automated actions (i.e. completing repetitive jobs, answering frequently asked questions by webpage). Role of telecommunication and IT service providers, and that of entrepreneurs for information management are also discussed. While discussing the challenges in implementing ICT in future model of GP service it focuses on the slow usage of computer and other IT products by doctors, as noted in the past decades.
Recent Advances in Minimally-Obtrusive Monitoring of People's Health
Authors: Mali Amol D.
Published: August 2019

Monitoring people's health is useful for enhancing the care provided to them by others or self-management of health. This article is a survey of the latest research on monitoring parameters indicating a person's current health or having potential to affect the person's health in future, using various physical sensors. These sensors include accelerometers, gyroscopes, electromyography sensors, fiber optic sensors, textile electrodes, thermistors, infrared sensors, force sensors, and photo diodes. The health parameters monitored include heart rate, respiration rate, weight, body mass index, calories burnt, pressure distribution, diet, blood pressure, blood glucose, oxygen saturation, posture, duration of sleep, quality of sleep, hand movement, body temperature, skin conductance, exposure to ultraviolet light, adherence to medication-intake schedule, gait characteristics, and steps taken. The population monitored includes elderly people, miners, stroke survivors, osteoarthritis patients, people suffering from anorexia nervosa, obese people, people with Parkinson's disease, people having panic attacks, and wheelchair users.
Design of WSN in Real Time Application of Health Monitoring System
Authors: Sethi Srinivas , Sahoo Ramesh K.
Published: August 2019

Health monitoring is emerging topic in recent era for safety and healthy public life in remote place. In health monitoring system, sensor devices have major role to collect data, communication and analysis the data for real time applications, such as automation of old-age home, industry, ICU, etc. It can measure different parameters of the body through different physiological body sensors. The body sensors can be used to sense the data from the body and send to the remote system for analysis. The condition of the health of a body can be analyzed and monitor remotely by using concept of body sensors in health monitoring system through different communication media, such as WiFi, ZigBee, etc. The parameter values of body can be transmitted to remote data centre with reliability, simplicity, low power, low bandwidth and low cost, in lightweight wireless networks. This may be used in real time application like; emotion and stress analysis, psychological study, physiological study, health condition, etc.
Nonlinear Ultrasonics for Early Damage Detection
Authors: Munoz Rafael , Rus Guillermo , Bochud Nicolas , Barnard Daniel J. , Melchor Juan , Ruano Juan Chiachío , Chiachío Manuel , Cantero Sergio , Callejas Antonio M. , Peralta Laura M. , Bond Leonard J.
Published: August 2019

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) is an emerging discipline that aims at improving the management of the life cycle of industrial components. The scope of this chapter is to present the integration of nonlinear ultrasonics with the Bayesian inverse problem as an appropriate tool to estimate the updated health state of a component taking into account the associated uncertainties. This updated information can be further used by prognostics algorithms to estimate the future damage stages. Nonlinear ultrasonics allows an early detection of damage moving forward the achievement of reliable predictions, while the inverse problem emerges as a rigorous method to extract the slight signature of early damage inside the experimental signals using theoretical models. The Bayesian version of the inverse problem allows measuring the underlying uncertainties, improving the prediction process. This chapter presents the fundamentals of nonlinear ultrasonics, their practical application for SHM, and the Bayesian inverse problem as a method to unveil damage and manage uncertainty.