Sponsoring a race to the top : the case for results-based intergovernmental finance for merit goods

Intergovernmental finance is a significant source of sub-national finance in most countries. In both industrial and developing countries, formula based"manna from heaven"general purpose transfers dominate but co-exist with highly intrusive micro-managed"command and control"specific purpose transfers. Both these types of transfers undermine political and fiscal accountability. Reforms to bring in design elements that incorporate incentives for results-based accountability are resisted by both donors and recipients alike. This is because the donors perceive such reforms as attempts at chipping away at their powers and recipients fear such programs will be intrusive. This paper presents conceptual and practical underpinnings of grant designs that could further simplicity, objectivity, and local autonomy objectives while furthering citizen-centric results-based accountability. The paper further highlights a few notable recent initiatives in both industrial and developing countries that embrace such directions for reform. The paper concludes that results-based intergovernmental finance offers significant potential to minimize tradeoffs between local autonomy and accountability while furthering access to merit goods.Banks&Banking Reform,Tertiary Education,Public Sector Economics,Public Sector Expenditure Policy,Access to Finance

Removing Barriers and Increasing Access to Advanced Placement

Advanced Placement allows students to demonstrate college readiness while in high school and potentially earn credit or placement toward higher education degrees. However, barriers can prevent students from accessing this advanced coursework and impede student learning, limit university options, and impact career prospects. Shifting teacher mindsets to an access-centered approach offers a viable solution to removing barriers. Leading faculty to change practices in the AP program at Birchwood (a pseudonym) requires reculturing an established culture of curriculum. Three leadership approaches serve this plan: the ethical highlights these problems of access, the authentic serves to build relations with school leaders, department heads, curriculum chairs, and AP faculty, and the instructional guides teachers’ curriculum planning, instruction, and assessment. Social Cognitive Theory underpins this change process with its two concepts: triadic reciprocal causation and self-efficacy beliefs. Reculturing requires changing teachers’ behaviours and their internal competencies, which change the environment in this reciprocal relationship. Changing self-efficacy beliefs in teachers is achieved through verbal persuasion, vicarious experience, personal mastery, and emotional state. This three-year implementation plan follows a recursive process through the Change Path Model’s awakening, mobilization, acceleration, and institutionalization phases including developing the collective efficacy of an AP leadership team in year one, building AP teacher capacity for change in year two, and changing teacher practices in year three. Monitoring and evaluation frameworks track progress and judge effectiveness. Next steps close out this plan with future considerations including a focus on social justice and equitable access

An Integrated Framework for the Methodological Assurance of Security and Privacy in the Development and Operation of MultiCloud Applications

x, 169 p.This Thesis studies research questions about how to design multiCloud applications taking into account security and privacy requirements to protect the system from potential risks and about how to decide which security and privacy protections to include in the system. In addition, solutions are needed to overcome the difficulties in assuring security and privacy properties defined at design time still hold all along the system life-cycle, from development to operation.In this Thesis an innovative DevOps integrated methodology and framework are presented, which help to rationalise and systematise security and privacy analyses in multiCloud to enable an informed decision-process for risk-cost balanced selection of the protections of the system components and the protections to request from Cloud Service Providers used. The focus of the work is on the Development phase of the analysis and creation of multiCloud applications.The main contributions of this Thesis for multiCloud applications are four: i) The integrated DevOps methodology for security and privacy assurance; and its integrating parts: ii) a security and privacy requirements modelling language, iii) a continuous risk assessment methodology and its complementary risk-based optimisation of defences, and iv) a Security and Privacy Service Level AgreementComposition method.The integrated DevOps methodology and its integrating Development methods have been validated in the case study of a real multiCloud application in the eHealth domain. The validation confirmed the feasibility and benefits of the solution with regards to the rationalisation and systematisation of security and privacy assurance in multiCloud systems

AI and blockchain adoption in corporate governance

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonPurpose The purpose of this doctoral thesis sets out to explore and elaborate on the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain adoption in corporate governance from ethical perspectives. Positioned within the corporate governance domain, this study adopts an explicit business perspective to study corporate governance change with emerging AI and blockchain technological tools in general and focuses on the ethical use of technologies specifically. As such, this empirical investigation aims to help organizations understand the ethical benefits and ethical dilemmas of using AI and blockchain in businesses and draw plans on how to govern these technologies ethically for the benefit of the business and society. Design/Methodology/Approach: This study adopts specific techniques and a pragmatic, step-by-step netnography approach to investigate online traces from social media sites and extends these online explorations with online semi-structured interviews. The research design of this investigation follows step-by-step procedures that are methodologically sound to ensure rigor in this investigation to enhance the trustworthiness of this study. In total, this research collects an abundance of data: 34 LinkedIn Posts with Comments; 12 Webinars; 22 YouTube Videos; 19 Videos; 10 Podcasts, and 17 semi-structured interview videos. The video, audio, and interview data have been transcribed into textual data total of 453065 words for thematic analysis using NVivo software. Enough time has been allocated to the iterative process of data collection and data analysis. The analysis moves back and forth to the point when theoretical saturation is achieved. The data structure extracts from data in this study illustrate the analytic claims that match the analysis and data together, to ensure a good fit between described method and reported analysis are consistent. Findings: This study develops a thematic framework that constitutes the corporate governance transformation with the ethical use of AI and blockchain technology. This framework provides a holistic understanding of why corporate governance needs to change, especially with the emergence of blockchain and AI technologies, what changes will corporate governance encounter, and how corporate governance can imperatively respond to the ethical use of these technologies. Specifically, it explicitly provides comprehensive understanding of the ethical benefits and ethical concerns of using AI and blockchain technologies in corporate governance, and reveals how companies can govern the use of these technologies ethically. In general terms, the findings of this study support the notion of corporate governance change to transform business models and processes to leverage the new capabilities of AI and blockchain technologies, to priories creativity, speed, and accountability, to replace the old business model, to foster agile or collaborative governance to deal with uncertainty, agility, adaptiveness, and cooperation in the digital world, to foster a network and platform strategies to drive success. This study goes beyond the extant corporate governance scholarship to assess the technological impact to capture values for companies in ethical ways to sustain future growth. Additionally, the notion of corporate governance is further specified and significantly expanded by this study to assess the adoption of AI and blockchain as new corporate governance tools or mechanisms, to enhance ethical benefits when used properly, and mitigate ethical dilemmas with proper checks and balances, safeguards in place, to help organizations stay relevant in this digital transformation and be ethical and sustainable. This study empirically corroborates that in theory, the use of blockchain and AI can enhance ethical practice by detecting fraud and anomaly activities, due to the unique capabilities of blockchain and AI technologies. Further, this research adds depth and specificity by identifying the ethical concerns of using blockchain and AI in corporate governance. The study empirically reveals the ethical concerns of privacy issues, unethical use of data, job transformation and replacement, and algorithm bias that companies will encounter when they use these technologies. In addition, the findings of this study suggest how companies can ethically govern the use of these technologies in socially responsible ways as they transform digitally. Originality/Value: The emergent thematic framework is constructed from the empirical and analytical procedures specifically and purposely designed for this study. This study makes theoretical contributions to knowledge and enriches the extant works of literature, and also provides practical contributions to the ethical use of disruptive technologies, future workforce, and regulations. However, the study was conducted within certain theoretical, methodological, empirical, and pragmatic conditions, which might constitute particular limitations and constraints. Therefore, the last section of this thesis elucidates and suggests the directions for future research

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