M-Commerce Implementation in Nigeria: Trends and Issues

Nigeria was described as the fastest growing telecoms nation in Africa and the third in the World. The country had experienced a phenomenal growth from a teledensity of 0.49 in 2000 to 25.22 in 2007. This trend has brought about a monumental development in the major sectors of the economy, such as banking, telecoms and commerce in general. This paper presents the level of adoption of ICT in the banking sector and investigates the prospects of m-Commerce in Nigeria based on strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis. Findings revealed that all banks in Nigeria offer e-Banking services and about 52% of the offer some forms of m-Banking services. The banks and the telecoms operators have enormous potentials and opportunities for m-Commerce but the level of patronage, quality of cell phones, lack of basic infrastructure and security issues pose a major threat to its wide scale implementation

Pendekatan konstruktif dalam inovasi pengajaran dan pembelajaran Bahasa Melayu di Kolej Vokasional

Pendekatan konstruktif adalah pendekatan pengajaran dan pembelajaran yang berpusatkan pelajar manakala inovasi pengajaran pula dikaitkan dengan kaedah pengajaran yang terbaru demi mengukuhkan pemahaman pelajar. Pembelajaran berasaskan pendekatan konstruktif merupakan elemen yang penting dan perlu difahami oleh guru-guru bagi memantapkan proses pengajaran dan pembelajaran sesuai dengan peredaran masa dan menjayakan proses tranformasi pendidikan negara. Objektif kajian ini dijalankan untuk mengenal pasti pemahaman guru-guru bahasa Melayu berkaitan inovasi, mengenal pasti perbezaan yang wujud antara guru lelaki dan guru perempuan dalam mengamalkan inovasi, pengkaji juga melihat adakah wujud perbezaan antara guru baru dan guru yang sudah berpengalaman dalam aspek mengaplikasikan inovasi serta mengenal pasti kekangan-kekangan yang dialami oleh para guru untuk mengaplikasikan inovasi di sekolah. Seramai 63 orang guru bahasa Melayu dari lapan buah kolej vokasional telah dipilih sebagai responden dalam kajian ini. Data dianalisis menggunakan perisian Winsteps 3.69.1.11 dengan pendekatan Model Pengukuran Rasch. Hasil analisis menunjukkan bahawa guru�guru bahasa Melayu memahami kepentingan inovasi dalam pengajaran dan pembelajaran. Hasil kajian juga menunjukkan guru-guru perempuan lebih banyak menerapkan unsur inovasi dalam pengajaran berbanding guru lelaki. Walaupun begitu, aspek pengalaman tidak menunjukkan perbezaan dari segi pengamalan inovasi sama ada guru baru ataupun guru yang sudah berpengalaman. Pengkaji juga mengenal pasti beberapa kekangan yang dialami oleh guru-guru untuk mengamalkan inovasi ini. Sebagai langkah untuk menangani masalah berkenaan, beberapa cadangan telah dikemukakan oleh pengkaji bagi memastikan guru-guru dapat merealisasikan proses pengajaran berkesan dengan penerapan inovasi mengikut model pendekatan konstruktif. Pengkaji berharap, kajian ini dapat dijadikan sebagai satu panduan kepada pelaksana kurikulum bagi memastikan budaya inovasi sentiasa menjadi amalan dalam kalangan guru demi mengangkat profesionalisme guru di Malaysia

Public Service Delivery: Role of Information and Communication Technology in Improving Governance and Development Impact

The focus of this paper is on improving governance through the use of information and communication technology (ICT) in the delivery of services to the poor, i.e., improving efficiency, accountability, and transparency, and reducing bribery. A number of papers recognize the potential benefits but they also point out that it has not been easy to harness this potential. This paper presents an analysis of effective case studies from developing countries where the benefits have reached a large number of poor citizens. It also identifies the critical success factors for wide-scale deployment. The paper includes cases on the use of ICTs in the management of delivery of public services in health, education, and provision of subsidized food. Cases on electronic delivery of government services, such as providing certificates and licenses to rural populations, which in turn provide entitlements to the poor for subsidized food, fertilizer, and health services are also included. ICT-enabled provision of information to enhance rural income is also covered

The Value of User-Visible Internet Cryptography

Cryptographic mechanisms are used in a wide range of applications, including email clients, web browsers, document and asset management systems, where typical users are not cryptography experts. A number of empirical studies have demonstrated that explicit, user-visible cryptographic mechanisms are not widely used by non-expert users, and as a result arguments have been made that cryptographic mechanisms need to be better hidden or embedded in end-user processes and tools. Other mechanisms, such as HTTPS, have cryptography built-in and only become visible to the user when a dialogue appears due to a (potential) problem. This paper surveys deployed and potential technologies in use, examines the social and legal context of broad classes of users, and from there, assesses the value and issues for those users

Tracking monetary-fiscal interactions across time and space

The long-term fiscal outlook of most high-income countries is grim. Should independent central bankers be afraid of an unpleasant monetarist arithmetic, i.e., fiscal imbalances spilling over to monetary policy and jeopardizing price stability? To provide some insights, this paper tracks the interactions between fiscal and monetary policies in the data since 1980 for Australia, Canada, Japan, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In doing so it uses a combination of time-varying parameter vector autoregression with sign, magnitude, and contemporaneous restrictions identification. Unlike conventional approaches, this can capture changes in monetary and fiscal behavior that are gradual and differ across the two policies. Our results show that in the United States the degree of monetary policy accommodation of fiscal shocks (debt-financed government spending) increased gradually between the late 1980s and the 2008 crisis, i.e., over the whole tenure of Chairman Greenspan. In contrast, it seems to have decreased over this period in the United Kingdom, Australia, Switzerland, and Canada. Our benchmark analysis and several robustness checks show that legislating numerical inflation targets may account for some of the country differences, presumably because they may shift the strategic power from fiscal to monetary policy. We conclude by considering the implications of our results for the long-term likelihood of an unpleasant monetarist arithmetic in the six countries.Web of Science14322716

Enterprise application reuse: Semantic discovery of business grid services

Web services have emerged as a prominent paradigm for the development of distributed software systems as they provide the potential for software to be modularized in a way that functionality can be described, discovered and deployed in a platform independent manner over a network (e.g., intranets, extranets and the Internet). This paper examines an extension of this paradigm to encompass ‘Grid Services’, which enables software capabilities to be recast with an operational focus and support a heterogeneous mix of business software and data, termed a Business Grid - "the grid of semantic services". The current industrial representation of services is predominantly syntactic however, lacking the fundamental semantic underpinnings required to fulfill the goals of any semantically-oriented Grid. Consequently, the use of semantic technology in support of business software heterogeneity is investigated as a likely tool to support a diverse and distributed software inventory and user. Service discovery architecture is therefore developed that is (a) distributed in form, (2) supports distributed service knowledge and (3) automatically extends service knowledge (as greater descriptive precision is inferred from the operating application system). This discovery engine is used to execute several real-word scenarios in order to develop and test a framework for engineering such grid service knowledge. The examples presented comprise software components taken from a group of Investment Banking systems. Resulting from the research is a framework for engineering servic

Phishing – the threat of internet banking

The attractiveness of Internet banking, the dynamics and the integration with e-business is still growing. The current use of electronic banking is defined by cyberspace and abused in the form of cyber terrorism as well. Therefore it is in the interest of all banks to focus on minimizing the real attacks. This article analyzes and compares the current possibilities against so-called phishing and identifies the area of the safe use of Internet banking in terms of the current potential threats in this area

THE ELECTRONIC SIGNATURE (E-SIGN) IN THE INFORMATION SOCIETY

This paper deals with the legislative and technical aspects, concerning the electronic signature and examples regarding the implementation of the e-sign software security solutions in the information society. One of the major problems the IT developers for complex systems have to deal with, is to provide the security of data and the information administered by these systems, as well as to certify their authentication by the electronic signature. The certification procedures and the encryption algorithms, used for the electronic signature are needed in today’s information society.e-sign, software security, information security, Decision Support System(DSS)