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

Maintaining Contour Trees of Dynamic Terrains

We consider maintaining the contour tree $\mathbb{T}$ of a piecewise-linear triangulation $\mathbb{M}$ that is the graph of a time varying height function $h: \mathbb{R}^2 \rightarrow \mathbb{R}$. We carefully describe the combinatorial change in $\mathbb{T}$ that happen as $h$ varies over time and how these changes relate to topological changes in $\mathbb{M}$. We present a kinetic data structure that maintains the contour tree of $h$ over time. Our data structure maintains certificates that fail only when $h(v)=h(u)$ for two adjacent vertices $v$ and $u$ in $\mathbb{M}$, or when two saddle vertices lie on the same contour of $\mathbb{M}$. A certificate failure is handled in $O(\log(n))$ time. We also show how our data structure can be extended to handle a set of general update operations on $\mathbb{M}$ and how it can be applied to maintain topological persistence pairs of time varying functions

Safe certificate-based maneuvers for teams of quadrotors using differential flatness

Safety Barrier Certificates that ensure collision-free maneuvers for teams of differential flatness-based quadrotors are presented in this paper. Synthesized with control barrier functions, the certificates are used to modify the nominal trajectory in a minimally invasive way to avoid collisions. The proposed collision avoidance strategy complements existing flight control and planning algorithms by providing trajectory modifications with provable safety guarantees. The effectiveness of this strategy is supported both by the theoretical results and experimental validation on a team of five quadrotors

A preliminary report on the Rural Neighbourhood Development Project in Tuen Mun and Yuen Long : implementation and achievement

With funding support from the Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, the Asia-Pacific Institute of Ageing Studies (APIAS) of Lingnan University collaborated with Tuen Tsz Wai San Hing Tsuen Tsing Chuen Wai Rural Community Service Centre of Yan Oi Tong and Ngau Tam Mei Community Development Project of the Salvation Army to launch the first batch of professional support team-led (PST) district-based programme: Jockey Club Age-friendly City Project – Rural Neighbourhood Development Project (the programme) in April 2018. The programme provided training to residents in Tuen Mun and Yuen Long rural areas to be Rural Befrienders, they were well-equipped with skills to regularly visit older persons residing in nearby areas, raise awareness among the older persons about home safety and fall prevention, and foster connection between the older persons and Rural Befrienders as well as their neighbourship by establishing a support network in rural areas. The programme also invited an occupational therapist to do home assessments and make changes to the older persons’ living environment in order to achieve the long-term goal of ageing in place. Ageing in place is considered to be a critical global approach to caring for older persons. The framework promotes an agenda that support older persons to live in a familiar environment and enjoy added autonomy, which is beneficial to their physical and mental health. Hong Kong Government has also embraced the concept of ageing in place in the elderly care policy. Accordingly, the government recently initiated different programmes for Community Care and Support Services to facilitate ageing in place by engaging older persons in their communities. However, the current social environment can barely keep pace with the needs of the rapidly ageing population. According to the results of the Jockey Club Age-friendly City Project baseline assessment conducted in Tuen Mun and Yuen Long Districts, older persons in rural Hong Kong tend to be overly disadvantaged as regards community support services when compared with those in urban areas, leaving many of them with no choice but to settle in elderly homes once having mobility decline. Given this context, the programme generated social capital by consolidating the mutual support network in rural neighbourhoods in Tuen Mun and Yuen Long Districts, in response to the needs of older persons. The programme lasted for over 10 months, and more than 50 trained Rural Befrienders participated in volunteer service with over 100 elderly beneficiaries. The programme enhanced public awareness of the living conditions of older persons in the rural communities through public education activities, such as street exhibitions and the production of Age-friendly City Teaching Kit. Study Funded ByThe Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust(Part of the Jockey Club Age-friendly City Project) Contributors of ReportKa Ho MOKWai Tak SZECheuk Man LEUNGZhuoyi WENPadmore Adusei AMOAHChak Kwan CHANLai Wah L

Duality for mixed-integer convex minimization

We extend in two ways the standard Karush–Kuhn–Tucker optimality conditions to problems with a convex objective, convex functional constraints, and the extra requirement that some of the variables must be integral. While the standard Karush–Kuhn–Tucker conditions involve separating hyperplanes, our extension is based on mixed-integer-free polyhedra. Our optimality conditions allow us to define an exact dual of our original mixed-integer convex problem

Popularity versus Similarity in Growing Networks

Popularity is attractive -- this is the formula underlying preferential attachment, a popular explanation for the emergence of scaling in growing networks. If new connections are made preferentially to more popular nodes, then the resulting distribution of the number of connections that nodes have follows power laws observed in many real networks. Preferential attachment has been directly validated for some real networks, including the Internet. Preferential attachment can also be a consequence of different underlying processes based on node fitness, ranking, optimization, random walks, or duplication. Here we show that popularity is just one dimension of attractiveness. Another dimension is similarity. We develop a framework where new connections, instead of preferring popular nodes, optimize certain trade-offs between popularity and similarity. The framework admits a geometric interpretation, in which popularity preference emerges from local optimization. As opposed to preferential attachment, the optimization framework accurately describes large-scale evolution of technological (Internet), social (web of trust), and biological (E.coli metabolic) networks, predicting the probability of new links in them with a remarkable precision. The developed framework can thus be used for predicting new links in evolving networks, and provides a different perspective on preferential attachment as an emergent phenomenon