MANAGING IT INFRASTRUCTURE FOR INFORMATION SOCIETY DEVELOPMENT. THE ALBANIAN CASE

Information has become an important element without which society cannot achieve its objectives. The term “information society” is increasingly used nowadays, instead of the terms “production” or “consumption society”, because of the importance and necessity of information in today's dynamic environment. Since IT became commercial in the early 1990s, it has diffused rapidly in developed countries but generally slowly in developing ones. The ICT development requires preparation, largely in the form of investment in network infrastructure, skills and regulatory frameworks. So the physical infrastructure of information systems is one of the important components of the information society. The aim of this paper is to identify ICT infrastructure indicator and to find what factors Albania need to take in consideration for managing ICT infrastructure to compare with other countries for building an information society. Many technological changes have brought new developments in IT infrastructure, such as data and digitalization, packet switching and broadband networks, as well as increased role of wireless and Internet. Albania, as a developing country have tried do benefit in maximum from these developments, focusing in the IT infrastructure management as one of the elements for building information society.ICT, physical infrastructure, e-readiness, IT services

Rural poverty in Ecuador : a qualitative assessment

A complement to recent in-depth quantitative analyses of rural poverty in Ecuador, this is a report on the results of the Rural Qualitative Assessment in living conditions in rural communities in all three Ecuador's diverse regions. Using a variety of qualitative techniques, the research aimed to assess what poverty means to marginalized rural families, what kind of survival strategies families use in times of hardship, and what these families believe is needed to alleviate poverty. Several key messages emerge: 1) rural communities with the same characteristics (such as area, soil quality, and ethnic background) are actually very heterogeneous in their command of land resources, definition of well-being, range of economic activities, and recommendations for what is needed to overcome poverty; 2) in times of hardship, families have complemented income for traditional sources with earnings from new activities. In addition to migration, which plays a pivotal role in all communities, piecework and weaving are important to income generation in the Sierra, small businesses are important in the Costa, and increased production of cash crops is important in the Oriente. Families have also reduced expenditures on clothing, fiestas, and food. Spending less on food is alarming as malnutrition rates in rural Ecuador are already very high; and 3) poor rural families express very practical solutions to overcoming poverty. They don't demand sweeping changes. Overwhelmingly, they suggest measures that will make available land and human resources more productive. Almost half the suggestions from poor rural families have to do with infrastructure. Many families also want training courses (both agricultural and nonagricultural).Public Health Promotion,Environmental Economics&Policies,Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Water Conservation,Environmental Economics&Policies,Agricultural Knowledge&Information Systems,Crops&Crop Management Systems,Health Monitoring&Evaluation,Housing&Human Habitats

Agricultural Structures and Mechanization

In our globalized world, the need to produce quality and safe food has increased exponentially in recent decades to meet the growing demands of the world population. This expectation is being met by acting at multiple levels, but mainly through the introduction of new technologies in the agricultural and agri-food sectors. In this context, agricultural, livestock, agro-industrial buildings, and agrarian infrastructure are being built on the basis of a sophisticated design that integrates environmental, landscape, and occupational safety, new construction materials, new facilities, and mechanization with state-of-the-art automatic systems, using calculation models and computer programs. It is necessary to promote research and dissemination of results in the field of mechanization and agricultural structures, specifically with regard to farm building and rural landscape, land and water use and environment, power and machinery, information systems and precision farming, processing and post-harvest technology and logistics, energy and non-food production technology, systems engineering and management, and fruit and vegetable cultivation systems. This Special Issue focuses on the role that mechanization and agricultural structures play in the production of high-quality food and continuously over time. For this reason, it publishes highly interdisciplinary quality studies from disparate research fields including agriculture, engineering design, calculation and modeling, landscaping, environmentalism, and even ergonomics and occupational risk prevention

Beef Cattle Production Systems, Marketing and Constraints in Ethiopia

This review studies the beef cattle production systems, marketing and constraints with the aim of delivering summarized and the most important information for the producers. The agricultural  sector  plays  an  important  role  in  the  overall  development  of  the  economy  of Ethiopia.  The  sector plays a major role in the national economy and it is the  source  of  income  and  employment  for  the  rural  population. The annual contribution of ruminants to meat production in Ethiopia is estimated at over 3.2 million tones, representing over 72% of the total meat production. Cattle meat accounts for over 70% of the total red meat production and over 50% of the total meat output in Sub-Saharan Africa. Currently in Ethiopia there are 409,869 beef cattle and last year 69,830 beef cattle were slaughtered for consumption and export purpose. There are different beef cattle production systems in Ethiopia. The most common ones are traditional, by-product based fatting and Hararghe fattening system. In Ethiopia, Farmers that live in rural area sell livestock and livestock products to cover household cash expenses and to purchase crop inputs to their families. Live animals are marketed through traditional marketing routes developed over the years which were based on visual assumption on body condition of animals. Livestock pass from primary markets (collection centers) to secondary and tertiary markets to reach the consumer. Cross-border exports are also common in the southeastern, southern and northwestern parts of the country. Marketing of livestock products such as milk, meat, butter, egg, hide and skin is also important to households. In Ethiopia the existing livestock and their products marketing system are generally under developed. The low level of facilities is not conducive to efficient marketing. Transportation is on-hoof, which leads to considerable weight loss of animals as well as physical injuries and health. Trucking is very limited and used only during holidays and festivals to move finished cattle and small stock to city centers and exportable animals to ports. The major bottleneck for beef cattle production in Ethiopian farmers was feed shortage, diseases and parasites, drought, shortage of grazing land, market access, veterinary services, extension services and other infrastructure. Depending on this review; producers improve beef production system through improved feeding and health management systems, producer connect their production system with market orientation and also farmer make their beef production by using young cattle to get high income from the customer. Keywords: beef cattle, marketing, production, constraints, Ethiopi

Opportunities for private sector participation in agricultural water development and management

Irrigation management / Private sector / Public sector / Public policy / Private investment / Participatory management / Privatization / Financing / Farmers / Households / Water harvesting / Africa South of Sahara

Infrastructure coverage of the ural federal district regions: assessment metodology and diagnostic results

The article examines the infrastructure as one of the essential elements in the economic system. The authors consider the development stages of this concept in the scientific community and provide the opinions of a number of researchers as to the role and place of the infrastructure in the economic system. The article provides a brief genesis of approaches to describing the infrastructure and conferring its functions on individual branches. The authors emphasize the higher importance of infrastructure coverage with the economy transition to machine production. Two key methodological approaches are identified to describe the substance and content of the infrastructure: industrial and functional. The authors offer their methodology of assessing the infrastructure coverage of regional-level territories. The methodology is based on identifying a combination of specific indicators the values of which can be used to evaluate the development level of individual infrastructure elements. The indicative analysis being the basis of the methodological apparatus helps make a judgment of any phenomenon by comparing the current observed values with the previously adopted threshold levels. Such comparison makes it possible to classify the observations by the «norm—pre-crisis—crisis» scale. An essential advantage of this method is the possibility of standardizing the indicators, or, in other words, bringing them to one comparable conditional value. Thus, you can get estimates for individual blocks of indicators and a complex assessment for the whole set in general. The authors have identified four main infrastructure elements: transport, communications, public utility services and healthcare. The methodology includes 21 indicators all together. The test estimates based on the authors’ methodology revealed the defects in the development of the Ural regions` infrastructure. The article provides a brief analysis of the obtained data with identifying individual indicators and areas.The research has been supported by the Russian Science Foundation (Project № 14-18-00574)

The impact of enterprise application integration on information system lifecycles

Information systems (IS) have become the organisational fabric for intra-and inter-organisational collaboration in business. As a result, there is mounting pressure from customers and suppliers for a direct move away from disparate systems operating in parallel towards a more common shared architecture. In part, this has been achieved through the emergence of new technology that is being packaged into a portfolio of technologies known as enterprise application integration (EAI). Its emergence however, is presenting investment decision-makers charged with the evaluation of IS with an interesting challenge. The integration of IS in-line with the needs of the business is extending their identity and lifecycle, making it difficult to evaluate the full impact of the system as it has no definitive start and/or end. Indeed, the argument presented in this paper is that traditional life cycle models are changing as a result of technologies that support their integration with other systems. In this paper, the need for a better understanding of EAI and its impact on IS lifecycles are discussed and a classification framework proposed.Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Grant Ref: (GR/R08025) and Australian Research Council (DP0344682)