Citizens at the Center: A New Approach to Civic Engagement

Offers specific recommendations for giving citizens the tools they need to identify problems and develop solutions in their communities -- and warns against top-down solutions that require people to "plug into" existing programs or campaigns

Gaining assurance in a voter-verifiable voting system

The literature on e-voting systems has many examples of discussion of the correctness of the computer and communication algorithms of such systems, as well as discussions of their vulnerabilities. However, a gap in the literature concerns the practical need (before adoption of a specific e-voting system) for a complete case demonstrating that the system as a whole has sufficiently high probability of exhibiting the desired properties when in use in an actual election. This paper discusses the problem of producing such a case, with reference to a specific system: a version of the Prêt à Voter scheme for voter-verifiable e-voting. We show a possible organisation of a case in terms of four main requirements – accuracy, privacy, termination and ‘trustedness’– and show some of the detailed organisation that such a case should have, the diverse kinds of evidence that needs to be gathered and some of the interesting difficulties that arise

From Value Protection to Value Creation: Rethinking Corporate Governance Standards for Firm Innovation

A company’s pro-innovation needs are often met by the exploitation of its resources, widely defined. The resource-based theory of the firm provides immense empirical insights into how a firm’s corporate governance factors can contribute to promoting innovation. However, these implications may conflict with the prevailing standards of corporate governance imposed on many securities markets for listed companies, which have developed based on theoretical models supporting a shareholder-centered and agency-based theory of the firm. Although prevailing corporate governance standards can to an extent support firm innovation, tensions are created in some circumstances where companies pit their corporate governance compliance against resource-based needs that promote innovation. In the present context of steady internationalization and convergence in corporate governance standards in global securities markets towards a shareholder-centered agency-based model, we argue that there is a need to provide some room for accommodating the resource-based needs for companies in relation to promoting innovation. We explore a number of options and suggest that the most practicable option would be the development of recognized exceptions that deviate from prevailing corporate governance standards. We further suggest as to how an exceptions-based regime can be implemented in the U.K. and U.S., comparing the rules-based regime in the U.S. with the principles-based regime in the U.K

HCI in e-Government and e-Democracy

This chapter introduces the application of HCI design processes and design principles in e-government and e-democracy. We elaborate on HCI design processes and six HCI design principles in the context of e-government and e-democracy, including citizen-centered design, usability, accessibility, access to information, transaction efficiency, and security and privacy. Then, we present two cases to demonstrate the value of applying the HCI processes and design principles in developing and deploying e-government and e-democracy. Finally, we highlight the challenges faced by e-government and e-democracy as well as the future trends. In conclusion, HCI can help the success of e-government and e-democracy and their future growth

A Puff of Steem: Security Analysis of Decentralized Content Curation

Decentralized content curation is the process through which uploaded posts are ranked and filtered based exclusively on users\u27 feedback. Platforms such as the blockchain-based Steemit employ this type of curation while providing monetary incentives to promote the visibility of high quality posts according to the perception of the participants. Despite the wide adoption of the platform very little is known regarding its performance and resilience characteristics. In this work, we provide a formal model for decentralized content curation that identifies salient complexity and game-theoretic measures of performance and resilience to selfish participants. Armed with our model, we provide a first analysis of Steemit identifying the conditions under which the system can be expected to correctly converge to curation while we demonstrate its susceptibility to selfish participant behaviour. We validate our theoretical results with system simulations in various scenarios

Scope for rotavirus vaccination in India: revisiting the scientific evidence.

Rotavirus vaccines have been developed to prevent deaths resulting from severe diarrhea of rotavirus origin. The use of vaccines as an intervention at scale to prevent and control the burden of rotavirus diarrhea is supported by the argument that prevailing public health measures such as hygiene and sanitation, breast feeding and use of ORS have failed to prevent severe dehydration resulting from diarrhea. The article reviews the existing evidence on the rationale of using rotavirus vaccine as against the feasibility of scaling it up in developing countries like India. The vaccines currently available may not cover the strains circulating in Indian population. The diversity of Rotavirus infection in the country is tremendous and since the safety, immunogenicity and efficacy data has not been collected for India, there is first a need to conduct studies to measure the extent of protection and cross-protection provided by the available vaccines for local strains, before venturing into Rotavirus vaccination program. The potential benefits of immunization have to be first vetted against the risks involved by the policymakers and other stakeholders

Power, Responsibility, and Accountability: Re-Thinking the Legitimacy of Institutions for Climate Finance

Offers lessons from current mechanisms to finance climate mitigation and adaptation and considerations for legitimacy in new ones: the capacity to determine outcomes, the exercise of power as intended, and standards and systems to ensure accountability