Mobiiliasiointipalveluiden käyttäjäkeskeinen suunnittelu Namibiassa: Mobiilin henkilökorttihaun ja tunnistautumisen prototypointi

The average e-government implementation level in Africa remains low. While many African governments have created e-government strategies and informational government websites, much attention has not yet been paid to implementing socially inclusive and accessible services. Especially in Namibia, where a digital divide is prevalent and income inequality rates are high, creating equal opportunities to access government services is important in order to combat the divide. Offering services on mobile platforms, gathering an understanding of citizens' needs, and designing intuitive user interfaces have been suggested as courses of action for Namibia. It seems that Namibian e-government initiatives would benefit from user-centred design. The aim of this thesis is to explore the opportunities of mobile platforms for delivering citizen-centric e-government services to Namibian citizens, and how a combination of design science and user-centred design might support the creation of such \textit{m-government} services. The subject is approached through a practical design challenge: creating prototypes for two mobile services related to identification (a service for online ID applications, and for digital authentication of individuals). According to the results, mobile platforms hold a multitude of opportunities related to making existing government services more efficient and approachable, and related to the young, urban Namibians' proficiency in mobile use and overall positive perceptions of offering identification services on mobile platforms. For rural communities, m-government services could help reduce the amount of travel related to interacting with the government, but internet coverage remains an issue. The results also indicate that using prototypes can facilitate cross-cultural co-creation of knowledge by helping to establish a mutual understanding of concepts between parties.Sähköisten asiointipalveluiden keskimääräinen taso Afrikassa on yhä matalalla. Vaikka valtionjohto monissa Afrikan maissa on luonut strategioita sähköisten asiointipalveluiden kehittämiseksi ja verkkosivuja tiedotusta varten, paljoakaan huomiota ei ole vielä kiinnitetty sosiaalisesti inklusiivisten ja saavutettavien palveluiden kehittämiseen. Varsinkin Namibiassa, jossa digitaalinen kuilu eri ryhmien välillä on syvä ja tuloerot suuria, on tärkeää luoda asiointipalveluiden käytölle yhtäläiset mahdollisuudet erojen pienentämiseksi. Menettelytavoiksi Namibiassa on ehdotettu palveluiden tarjoamista mobiilialustoilla, tiedonkeruuta kansalaisten tarpeista sekä käyttöliittymien suunnittelua intuitiivisiksi. Vaikuttaa siltä, että projektit voisivat hyötyä käyttäjäkeskeisestä suunnittelusta. Tämän diplomityön tavoitteena on tutkia mobiilialustojen mahdollisuuksia kansalaiskeskeisten sähköisten asiointipalveluiden tarjoamiseksi Namibian kansalaisille, sekä tietojärjestelmätutkimuksen ja käyttäjäkeskeisen suunnittelun yhdistelmän mahdollisuuksia tukea tällaisten mobiiliasiointipalveluiden suunnittelua. Aihetta lähestytään käytännön suunnitteluhaasteen kautta: työssä kehitetään kaksi prototyyppiä henkilöllisyyteen liittyvistä palveluista (yksi sähköistä henkilökorttihakua varten, toinen sähköistä tunnistautumista varten). Tulosten mukaan mobiilialustat tarjoavat monenlaisia mahdollisuuksia nykyisten asiointipalveluiden tehostamiseksi ja kehittämiseksi lähestyttävämmiksi. Mobiilialustojen käyttö on lupaavaa myös siinä mielessä, että nuoret, kaupungeissa asuvat namibialaiset ovat kyvykkäitä mobiilikäyttäjiä ja heidän suhtautumisensa henkilöllisyyteen liittyvien palveluiden tarjoamiseen mobiilialustoilla oli yleisesti ottaen positiivista. Maaseudulla asuvien yhteisöjen osalta mobiiliasiointipalvelut voisivat vähentää julkisten palveluiden käyttöön liittyvää matkustusta, mutta internet-yhteyden saatavuus seuduilla on yhä heikkoa. Tulokset viittaavat myös siihen, että prototyyppien käyttö voi fasilitoida kulttuurienvälistä tiedon yhteisluomista helpottamalla yhteisen konseptuaalisen ymmärryksen syntymistä eri osapuolten välille

Utilization of sugarcane by-products : appropriate and inappropriate technologies in Mauritius

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre- DSC:D44319/83 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Study of Income Maintenance Policy Formation in Selected Underdeveloped Countries

This is a comparative case study of income maintenance policy formation involving six economically underdeveloped countries, i.e. Bolivia, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Ghana, Mauritius, Thailand and the United Arab Republic (now Egypt). The major questions raised are: what are the types of income maintenance programs in the selected countries?; are there specific factors associated with the adoption of those programs? If so, what are they?; and what are the conditions, if any, under which certain factors may become active in association with the program types? In this study, the income maintenance program was defined as a body of statutory measures designed to help assure a minimum income for selected or all sectors of population through direct transfers of cash or benefit-in-kind. The specific program components examined were food subsidies, public education, public health, demogrants, modified negative tax and public assistance in the non-occupational sector and social insurance, provident fund, corporative profit-sharing and subsidized commissary in the occupational sector. For the purpose of cross-national analysis, four basic program types determined by the level of pertinent expenditures, the number and type of components involved, population coverage and the relative balance between occupational and non-occupational components were delineated and employed. In addition to exploring the substantive questions, this study attempted to formulate a conceptual model which may be useful for future studies in terms of defining the problem, generating hypotheses and comparing the findings of one study with those of another. The basic problem of the study relates to theories of choice in the social field. The selection criteria of the study settings were: the level of economy as represented by per capita income (US $137-157 and US$209-211 brackets), the income maintenance program variation and data availability. This study covers various historical junctures of the post World War II period, usually coinciding with the life span of one government in each country. In one country only (Mauritius) a period of nearly 20 years was covered because the evolvement of the income maintenance program in that country took that long. Of existing theories and hypotheses of public policy, the study findings generally support a political one, particularly those involving the political self-interest theory of Anthony Downs, Theodore Riker, Daniel Ellsberg and others. This, however, does not rule out the secondary or conditional significance of non-political factors such as needs, resources, economic context, demography, technical assistance, socio-cultural and institutional factors and external factors. The overall concept of income maintenance policy determination emerging from the study findings as a whole is represented by a systems model distinguished by politico-kinetic dynamics among all the underlying factors. In this model, the policy-making environment is envisaged as a kinetic field in which the movements of and the relationships between all underlying factors of income maintenance policies are controlled by a shifting balance of forces among political factors, such as pressure group influence, power requisites of political leadership, the leadership orientation and commitment, ideology, and so on. These political factors are conceived to change not only in their relative strengths but also in their aims or directions, and thus cause modifications in the income maintenance program. With the changes in the controlling factors and their relationships, the non-political factors are regarded to change also in terms of their relative strengths and dispositions in relation to the political factors as well as in relation to one another, thus undergoing changes in their powers of influence upon the program. The pattern of inter-factor relationships represented in the model is regarded to hold at any given moment in time as well as over a period of time. The conceptual model that best embodies the above dynamics among the underlying factors may appropriately be termed a politico-kinetic paradigm

An assessment of some prominent issues relating to community development in the Sparks Estate Sydenham Community

This was a 'group area' for 'Coloured' people at the time of writing, a spatially defined residential neighbourhood, with a shortage of residential accomodation and substantial social problems. This study is motivated by the need for St Philomena's a children's home to have a comprehensive study of the surrounding community, with the purpose of providing the children in the home with social access to normal community life, and of serving as a focus of meaningful social and spiritual life for the surrounding and broader community. The reports generated are intended as documents for use by the community itself in its own ongoing attempts to deal with problems and difficulties.It will hopefully form the basis for a community programme to be evolved within a community context, with the research-based information and suggestions merely servicing the community endeavour.Miserior (German Bishops' Fund

The impact of e-services on firm internationalization

The aim of this work is to give a new perspective on services that can be delivered online and to identify the one that have more chances to be easily exported. Technological advancements in the actual knowledge and information society and the increasing dissemination of the Internet in daily lives offer new opportunities and challenges for companies and cannot be ignored or postponed. Furthermore, the increasing importance of services’ sector, not only in developed countries but also on developing ones, justifies that countries and companies closely follow the transformations that are occurring in the international competitive context. Therefore, it is of utmost importance the adaptation of countries and companies to new technologies and the promotion of new means of communication, especially the Internet and its new functionalities, as a delivery channel for their services. To achieve this work main objective, actual theoretical context on e-services is analyzed, seeking a definition for the concept, as well as previous literature about internationalization of services that can be delivered on a virtual environment. Nevertheless, the focus is on the review of literature on services’ classification topic in order to theoretically support the framework developed to identify the different types of e-services that can be found in the Internet and that will be used to conclude about which type of e-services are easier exported. This study contributes to the current literature by extending research on e-services classification and their contribution for the internationalization of companies.Este trabalho procura apresentar uma nova visão dos serviços que podem ser entregues online, identificando que tipo de serviço terá maior propensão para a internacionalizar. Os avanços tecnológicos na atual sociedade de conhecimento e informação e a crescente relevância da Internet no quotidiano, quer em termos sociais quer a nível corporativo, oferecem novas oportunidades e trazem novos desafios aos quais as empresas não devem ficar indiferentes. Além disso, a crescente importância dos serviços, não só nos países desenvolvidos mas também naqueles em desenvolvimento, justifica que países e empresas sigam de perto as alterações no contexto competitivo internacional. Neste sentido, é essencial que países e empresas se adaptem às novas tecnologias e aproveitem o potencial dos novos meios de comunicação, em especial a Internet, como canal de divulgação e distribuição dos seus serviços. Com vista a atingir o objetivo proposto, é realizada uma análise ao atual contexto teórico dos e-services, procurando uma definição para este conceito, e da literatura existente no âmbito da internacionalização de serviços que possam ser entregues através de plataformas online. De seguida, uma revisão de literatura sobre o tópico da classificação de serviços é realizada, de forma a suportar teoricamente o quadro conceptual desenvolvido para identificar os diferentes tipos de e-services presentes na Internet e que permitirá tirar conclusões acerca do tipo que terá mais facilidade de ser exportado. Este trabalho contribui para a atual literatura, uma vez que alarga a investigação acerca da tipologia de e-services e como os mesmos podem ser utilizados para expandir o negócio das empresas a nível internacional

Protecting the human rights of sexual minorities in contemporary Africa

This collection of essays, Protecting the human rights of sexual minorities in contemporary Africa, contains papers that were first presented at a colloquium on sexual minority rights in Africa, which took place at the Centre for Human Rights, University of Pretoria, in December 2014. This event was made possible with the generous support of the Government of the Kingdom of Norway, through its Embassy in South Africa. These papers were subsequently peer-reviewed and reworked. Viewing homosexuality through a legal and rights-based prism, this volume brings together fourteen essays focusing on various aspects of homosexuality, covering a wide rage of countries from across the continent. The situation in nine countries (Botswana, Cameroon, Kenya, Mauritius, Mozambique, Nigeria, South Africa, Uganda and Zimbabwe) is reviewed; while other contributions are more regional in their perspective. This makes this publication one of the most comprehensive collections of African voices on this topic. For too long African voices have been silent on the fledgling discourse on sexual minorities. This volume seeks to amend this shortcoming. The editors and authors and contributors are not only African, but also, with a few exceptions, graduates of the Centre’s Master’s programme in Human Rights and Democratisation in Africa. The publisher is an African-based publisher, the Pretoria University Law Press (PULP), based at the Centre for Human Rights

Telugu ethnic identity in Mauritius.

The thesis deals with different aspects of ethnicity in the multi-racial society of Mauritius. It considers the significance of ethnic identity for the sub-groups of the Indian community, both in a village situation and at the global social level in the country. Further, it attempts to elucidate the ways in which ethnic identity can he used as a resource, which each group can consciously manipulate in order to obtain specific privileges in the wider social context. Part One of the thesis deals with the village situation. Two adjacent villages are compared and the different configurations of ethnicity in each are identified and related to specific economic and social conditions in the villages as well as to the make-up of the groups themselves. It is suggested that there is a correlation between the bounded, restrictive context of the 'plantation-village' - which one of the village closely approximates - and a less overt configuration of ethnic differentiation; whereas in the other village studied, a more open-ended social and economic situation, creating avenues of social mobility and economic entrepreneurship, allows overt ethnic rivalries and separation to emerge. It is not however solely a matter of context, but also one of content that allows ethnic identity to assume different guises in the society. Identity seems to spring from a deeply imbedded notion of substance, akin to the idea of 'genus' and blood, which is an immutable part of the individual's social and psychological personality. Part Two of the thesis focuses on one group of Mauritian society, the Telugu-speaking group, which is defined as a regional and linguistic sub-group of the Indian community, but which adheres to a more distinctly ethnic selfdefinition. In a substantial sense, the group's identity hinges on institutional features of kinship and marriage. In fact, kinship as a real order of relation and as a symbolical link is the underlying fabric that holds the group together and gives it a sense of its own identity. In order to validate its identity vis-a-vis other, more cogently organised groups, however, it has to use other parameters of identity. This is done by emphasising its distinctiveness in terms of religion, language and cultural norms, which represent overt, surface boundaries demarcating the group's specificity. This is seen in terms of a structuralisation of ethnicity, or ethnicisation, whereby the group's substantial identity is translated into a consciously manipulative one. In this way, ethnicity as an order of being becomes transformed into ethnicity as a resource in the plural society

Labour policy in a monocrop economy : the case of Mauritius

Under the pressure of the population explosion amconstitutional changes, social and economic conditions in Mauritius went through a process of rapid change after the Second World War. The introduction of universal suffrage unseated the white plantocracy and brought to power the representatives of the urban and rural working classes. This led to fundamen~ changes in the Government social and economic policy. In 1963, Government fixed the wages and conditions of employment of agricultural and non-agricultural workers in the sugar industry. The first chapter describes the structure of the industry and the organisation of cane production on sugar estates. We study the pattern of land owPership characterised by the high concentration of cane land on millers' estates. The distribution of land will influence the rate of production and the allocation of resources inside the industry and the demand for and supply of labour on estates. In the second chapter we study the Island's social system and its influence on Government labour policy. The forces which led to the Government intervention in the labour market originated in the social structure of the Mauritius plantation economy with its rigid divisions. This accounts for the underdevelopment of industrial relations which prompted direct Government intervention in labour matters. The third chapter concentrates on the impact of Government regulations on the level of wages in the economy. The first part focusses on the importance of the sugar industry as a wage leader. We then study the effect of Government policy on the structure of wages and finally its influence on the distribution of employment. The analysis of the macro-economic structure forms an essential part of the work. The fourth chapter comprises a detailed quantitative description of the structure of the Island economy, which provides a convenient framework for the study of the effects of wage increases on the Government finances and the Balance of Payments. The fifth chapter is divided into two parts. In the first part we analyse the labour conditions on millers' estates through an investigation of the conditions of demand for and supply of labour. The second part provides an estimate of the marginal productivity of field labour during the crop and intercrop by means of production functions fitted to 1965 and 1973 data, in order to assess the effect of Government labour policy on the productivity of labour on estates

Australia\u27s health 2002 : the eighth biennial report of the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare

Australia\u27s Health 2002 is the eighth biennial health report of the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. It is the nation\u27s authoritative source of information on patterns of health and illness, determinants of health, the supply and use of health services, and health service costs and performance. Australia\u27s Health 2002 is an essential reference and information resource for all Australians with an interest in health