65,256 research outputs found
The Internet as a Service Channel in the Public Sector : A substitute or complement of traditional service channels?
The Internet has been used as a channel for public service delivery since the mid 1990’s. During the first years of its existence it was believed to be the service channel of the future, making all other channels obsolete. But until now, the telephone and face-to-face contact remain being used more frequently and are rated higher. By comparing various studies that have recently been conducted in a number of countries, this paper suggests that the characteristics of the channel make it a suitable channel for basic transactions and simple information provision, and that the telephone and face-to-face contact remain prevalent for at least ambiguous and complex tasks. Therefore the Internet might be a complementary channel rather than a substitute of traditional channels. Research findings are interpreted by means of Media Richness Theory, the Social Influence model and Channel Expansion Theory
Dwarna : a blockchain solution for dynamic consent in biobanking
Dynamic consent aims to empower research partners and facilitate active participation in the research process. Used within
the context of biobanking, it gives individuals access to information and control to determine how and where their
biospecimens and data should be used. We present Dwarna—a web portal for ‘dynamic consent’ that acts as a hub
connecting the different stakeholders of the Malta Biobank: biobank managers, researchers, research partners, and the
general public. The portal stores research partners’ consent in a blockchain to create an immutable audit trail of research
partners’ consent changes. Dwarna’s structure also presents a solution to the European Union’s General Data Protection
Regulation’s right to erasure—a right that is seemingly incompatible with the blockchain model. Dwarna’s transparent
structure increases trustworthiness in the biobanking process by giving research partners more control over which research
studies they participate in, by facilitating the withdrawal of consent and by making it possible to request that the biospecimen
and associated data are destroyed.peer-reviewe
A Blockchain-based Approach for Data Accountability and Provenance Tracking
The recent approval of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) imposes
new data protection requirements on data controllers and processors with
respect to the processing of European Union (EU) residents' data. These
requirements consist of a single set of rules that have binding legal status
and should be enforced in all EU member states. In light of these requirements,
we propose in this paper the use of a blockchain-based approach to support data
accountability and provenance tracking. Our approach relies on the use of
publicly auditable contracts deployed in a blockchain that increase the
transparency with respect to the access and usage of data. We identify and
discuss three different models for our approach with different granularity and
scalability requirements where contracts can be used to encode data usage
policies and provenance tracking information in a privacy-friendly way. From
these three models we designed, implemented, and evaluated a model where
contracts are deployed by data subjects for each data controller, and a model
where subjects join contracts deployed by data controllers in case they accept
the data handling conditions. Our implementations show in practice the
feasibility and limitations of contracts for the purposes identified in this
paper
Hidden Risks: The Case for Safe and Transparent Checking Accounts
Examines bank practices that put consumers at risk, including lack of information on fees, disproportionate overdraft penalties, and mandatory arbitration or fee-sharing provisions in a legal dispute. Includes a model disclosure box and recommendations
E-democracy: exploring the current stage of e-government
Governments around the world have been pressured to implement e-Government programs in order to improve the government-citizen dialogue. The authors of this article review prior literature on such efforts to find if they lead to increased democratic participation ("e-Democracy") for the affected citizens, with a focus on the key concepts of transparency, openness, and engagement. The authors find that such efforts are a starting point toward e-Democracy, but the journey is far from complete
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