Improving Early Childhood Education: Framing the Options and Imperatives for State Action Policy

Across the nation, early childhood education and care has suffered from poorly organized service delivery systems, inadequate funding, and insufficient attention by the policymakers. The result is a complicated system plagued by competing interests that is in need of reform and alignment. The field's capacity to meet the needs of children and families has been diminished by unresolved governance questions, and improving governance is an important first step toward eliciting stronger program outcomes such as heightened quality and broader access for children. Given parents' growing demand for expanded services and schools' heightened expectations for Kindergarten preparedness, improvement of early childhood service delivery is an imperative that states can no longer choose to ignore.Nationally, the issue of improving access and quality of early childhood education services is gaining momentum. A growing body of research demonstrates the importance of early care and learning experiences for children's cognitive and social development and links quality preschool experiences to higher academic achievement in later years. Further, economists note the importance of early education and care options for improving a region's overall quality of life and prospects for economic development. State leaders are increasingly acknowledging the role of policy in improving the delivery and quality of early education services and are making change in this area a priority. Massachusetts policy makers have begun to demonstrate a commitment to confronting and helping resolve the complex challenges that face the early childhood education system in the state. This brief has been designed as background information for use in the policy dialogue on early childhood education. This brief is the product of a secondary analysis of existing data and research on governance in early childhood services across the nation and within the Commonwealth. The review of research was complemented by interviews with key stakeholders and early childhood education leaders in Massachusetts as well as leaders from other states. The Massachusetts Early Education and Care Council Report, as well as testimony at a legislative task force meeting on early childhood issues also informed this policy brief.In order to provide a range of options for policy makers, we profiled three distinctly different approaches, rather than attempting to determine the "best" systems in existence. The three options that we examined in this brief, include: Creating a state-level public-private partnership as has been accomplished in North Carolina and other states;Establishing a new state agency or board like Georgia's Office of School Readiness; andInstalling an interagency oversight committee that connects the multiple agencies currently managing early education and care services in the state

Current state of e-services in Saudi Arabia: the case of intermediaries in facilitating government services in Madinah city

The government of Madinah has launched ‘Khdamatec’ electronic Offices (e-Offices) concept under their national electronic Government (e-Government) modernisation agenda to facilitate service delivery to citizens and seamless interaction to communicate their needs. By offering e-Offices around the government departments, Madinah government hopes to increase accessibility of e-Government services and make steps forward to electronic age, encourage Medina' citizens to participate and use e-Services and bridging digital divide. However, the empirical findings illustrate that the adoption and diffusion of the e-Office concept and e-Government in the wider context at a lethargic pace. This paper highlights some of the challenges faced by the Madinah city in implementing the e-Office concept and e-Government

Airline Ticket E-Reservation: Adoption Among Malaysians

Sistem tempahan tiket penerbangan telah banyak direvolusikan oleh syarikat-syarikat penerbangan melalui penggunaan Internet dan pengenalan alat-alat mudah alih moden. The air ticket reservation system has been much revolutionized by the airline companies through the usage of the Internet and introduction of modern mobile devices

E-BANKING: A CASE STUDY OF ASKARI COMMERCIAL BANK PAKISTAN

This paper has covered the operational issues related to e-banking as well as customer’s perception on usage of e-banking a case study of Askari Bank, Pakistan. 40 staff members and four customers are selected as sample for this study. Both qualitative and quantitative methods are used to present the results. Descriptive statistics is applied to describe the demographic variables while for operational problems correlation was used. Finally cross case analysis present customers’ perception about e-banking practices. Analysis shows that customer is not ready to adopt new technology that why their satisfaction level with e-banking is low. Internet speed and government policies are not supportive for e-banking in Pakistan. Due to lack of trust on technology and low computer literacy rate, customer hesitates to adopt new technology. : In order to promote IT culture in Pakistan, government has to reduce the internet rate. to promote the benefits of e-banking on media so that more user get facilitated from e-banking services.E-banking, Internet, ATM, Online transaction, E-readiness, Technology Acceptance Models

EGovernance implementation model: Case study of the federal government agencies of Pakistan

Copyright @ 2013 EMCIS.This study examines the eGovernance potential to bring about structural changes in the way in which government agencies operate, interact and communicate internally and externally with its citizens. Public sector needs to adopt eGovernance that is focused on the citizen satisfaction. In many developed countries, the types and quality of public services provided by a Government to its citizens have evolved over time, due to their change in thinking regarding the role of Government, from being a traditional government to that of being a modern service provider. Thus, this study will focus on the complaint management information systems of the selected federal government agencies in Pakistan. Authors were able to derive the implementation model of eGovernance only after doing analysis of all of the data obtained from questionnaires, interviews and observations at the federal government level in Pakistan. Authors found that the overall outcome of the validation process indicated that the model is highly satisfactory to improve the overall eGovernance system to provide modern services to its citizens

Building consumers’ confidence in adopting e-commerce: A Malaysian case

Consumers’ confidence on the online transactions is vital for the continuous growth and development of electronic commerce. In the present study, we experimentally investigate the measures of consumers’ perceived security and privacy over online transactions as well as the perceived trust and reliability of online vendors in order to influence consumers’ overall confidence in e-commerce transactions. On the basis of responses from 163 participants, it is concluded that the major concerns in e-commerce adoption are: security and privacy over online transaction process and trust and reliability of online vendors. In order to be successful in electronic marketplace, the organisations are expected to expend their resources and exert efforts to ensure that consumers’ concerns are adequately addressed.e-commerce; security and privacy; trust; online vendors; consumer behaviour; Malaysia

A User Readiness Model of Social Media for Learning among Polytechnic Students in Nigeria

The adoption of Internet resources for learning continues to grow in the world today. Despite the abundant benefit of utilizing social media due to the growth of web 2.0, an internet resource for communication and interaction, its use has not been fully embraced as a teaching tool in Nigeria. Social media is becoming a prominent communication tool and found to be facilitating teaching and learning activities among students. However, the user readiness of social media in learning by the students has been challenging. Despite the wide acceptance of social media (such as Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp, e.t.c.) amongst Nigerian polytechnic students, they do not utilize it for academic pursuit. This study examined the Use of Social Media among students in Nigerian Polytechnics. The main objective of this study is to find out the user readiness’ factors that influence the use of social media by the students in Nigerian Polytechnic. The evaluation results show that social media is an indispensable Internet platform among Nigerian Polytechnic students

Towards an integrated model for citizen adoption of E-government services in developing countries: A Saudi Arabia case study

This paper considers the challenges that face the widespread adoption of E-government in developing countries, using Saudi Arabian our case study. E-government can be defined based on an existing set of requirements. In this paper we define E-government as a matrix of stakeholders; governments to governments, governments to business and governments to citizens using information and communications technology to deliver and consume services. E-government has been implemented for a considerable time in developed countries. However E-government services still faces many challenges their implemented and general adoption in developing countries. Therefore, this paper presents an integrated model for ascertaining the intention to adopt E-government services and thereby aid governments in accessing what is required to increase adoption

Online grocery retailing in Jordan: Future perspectives

Electronic commerce (e-Commerce) has been considered as the way of conducting business transactions online. The use of e-commerce technologies is widely accepted around the world since it offers organizations many opportunities to improve their performance. However, it is still skeptical that using this technology will come up with positive expectations. This study aimed at identifying the possible benefits and barriers that may affect the Jordanian grocery retailers’ decision to adopt this kind of technologies