Improving Public Administration Performance through Electronic Government Applications

Electronic Government applications have been the focus of hundreds of local and national government administrations all over the world during the past decade. The emphasis of most of these applications lies in their effort to improve the experience of the user in interacting with public administration services and to minimise waiting times in completing transactions public services and citizens. Early applications were relying mainly on the speed and simplicity of submitting a request by the user while most of the work beyond the web based interaction was carried out as in the era before the introduction of the web based applications. The benefits from such endeavours have been short lived as citizens are looking for real enhancements in they way public administration serves their needs and responds to their requests. The authors argue that for e-government applications to succeed changes would have to be effected in the way public administration organizes itself and how it utilizes information management systems to respond to user / citizen requirements including and addressing the goals of all stakeholders involved. Currently the number of successful applications to that end is quite low when compared to the projects implemented so far. The authors propose steps that would maintain the focus of future implementations in doing so

The Behaviour and Perceptions of On-Line Consumers: Risk, Risk Perception and Trust

The growth and the expansion of the Internet and the World Wide Web continue to impact society in new and amazing ways. The role of economic commerce has not been as dynamic as some predicted, but has still demonstrated remarkable success and tremendous potential. Any failure to meet some of the expectations may be explained in large part by questions and concerns surrounding existing methods of electronic commerce and of the Internet. A key negative perception centres on the security involved in Internet practice and electronic payment systems. Negative perceptions are then compounded and reinforced by massive media exposure of Internet security incidents. Many consumers still lack the necessary trust in on-line merchants and Internet security procedures and continue to use the Web to simply browse. The types of attack individuals face include confidence-trick or actual encounters calculated to extract bank or personal details, computer spyware that opens on accessing the Internet, enticing users with offers of non-existent free gifts while copying confidential files, and programmes that can infiltrate networks, operating within them undetected, ultimately causing them to crash. Social Engineering is one such method used by an attacker to get information. There are two main categories under which all social engineering attempts could be classified, computer or technology-based deception and human based deception. The technology-based approach is to deceive the user into believing that is interacting with the ‘real’ computer system (such as popup window, informing the user that the computer application has had a problem) and get the user to provide confidential information. The human approach is done through deception, by taking advantage of the victim’s ignorance, and the natural human inclination to be helpful and liked. One of the most effective technology-based approach is a scam, called “phishing” as a form of identity theft. This is a technique used to gain personal information for the purposes of identity theft, using fraudulent e-mail messages that appear to come from legitimate businesses. These authentic-looking messages are designed to fool recipients into divulging personal data such as account numbers and passwords, credit card numbers and Social Security numbers. This paper provides an overview of electronic commerce and the impact of risk and trust on on-line shopping consumer behaviour. Due to the growth and potential of on-line shopping and the lack of academic-based research on Internet-related consumer behaviour, there is a tremendous need for impartial, academic investigation into the behaviour and perceptions of on-line consumers

A personalized adaptive e-learning approach based on semantic web technology

Recent developments in semantic web technologies heightened the need for online adaptive learning environment. Adaptive learning is an important research topic in the field of web-based systems as there are no fixed learning paths which are appropriate for all learners. However, most studies in this field have only focused on learning styles and habits of learners. Far too little attention has been paid on understanding the ability of learners. Therefore, it is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore adaptation in the field of e-learning systems. Many researchers are adopting semantic web technologies to find new ways for designing adaptive learning systems based on describing knowledge using ontological models. Ontologies have the potential to design content and learner models required to create adaptive e-learning systems based on various characteristics of learners. The aim of this paper is to present an ontology-based approach to develop adaptive e-learning system based on the design of semantic content, learner and domain models to tailor the teaching process for individual learner’s needs. The proposed new adaptive e-learning has the ability to support personalization based on learner’s ability, learning style, preferences and levels of knowledge. In our approach the ontological user profile is updated based on achieved learner’s abilities

Examination of Cyber-criminal Behaviour

Cybercrime is the world’s biggest growth industry and is now costing an estimated €180 billion loss to organisations and individuals, every year. The creation of ‘virtual identities’ gives a greater anonymity to the activities of organised criminals. Today our commonwealth is protected by firewalls rather than firepower. This is an issue of global importance as new technology has provided a world of opportunity for criminals. As a consequence law enforcement agencies all over the world are struggling to cope. Therefore, today’s top priority is to use computer technology to fight computer crime

Evaluation of tools for protection of interest against hacking and cracking

The internet considered a tool that effectively ensures communication globally has been hindered by hackers and crackers continuously. In so doing, a multitude of network facilitated tools such as firewalls, virtual private networks (VPN) and a variety of antivirus software packages has been enabled for dealing with such predicaments. However, more often than not these facilitated tools are marketed as perfect solutions to the ever culminating problems such as loss of data and privacy in networked and world wide intercommunications. We provide a forum for addressing these perceived problems in this paper

Vulnerability considerations for power line communication's supervisory control and data acquisition

Due to the increasing importance of communication networking, the power line (PL) channel has been considered as a good candidate for the communication medium. Power line communications (PLC) term stands for the technologies for the data communication over the electrical power supply network. The PL channels were not designed to transmit high speed data; therefore, they exhibit hostile medium for communication signal transmission. There are many factors such as noises, attenuation, distance, etc. affecting the quality of the transmission over PL channels. This paper presents PL model in the first sections of the work. Then it covers the security assessment of the PL system in the supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) context

Burden of disease scenarios for 204 countries and territories, 2022–2050: a forecasting analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2021

Background: Future trends in disease burden and drivers of health are of great interest to policy makers and the public at large. This information can be used for policy and long-term health investment, planning, and prioritisation. We have expanded and improved upon previous forecasts produced as part of the Global Burden of Diseases, Injuries, and Risk Factors Study (GBD) and provide a reference forecast (the most likely future), and alternative scenarios assessing disease burden trajectories if selected sets of risk factors were eliminated from current levels by 2050. Methods: Using forecasts of major drivers of health such as the Socio-demographic Index (SDI; a composite measure of lag-distributed income per capita, mean years of education, and total fertility under 25 years of age) and the full set of risk factor exposures captured by GBD, we provide cause-specific forecasts of mortality, years of life lost (YLLs), years lived with disability (YLDs), and disability-adjusted life-years (DALYs) by age and sex from 2022 to 2050 for 204 countries and territories, 21 GBD regions, seven super-regions, and the world. All analyses were done at the cause-specific level so that only risk factors deemed causal by the GBD comparative risk assessment influenced future trajectories of mortality for each disease. Cause-specific mortality was modelled using mixed-effects models with SDI and time as the main covariates, and the combined impact of causal risk factors as an offset in the model. At the all-cause mortality level, we captured unexplained variation by modelling residuals with an autoregressive integrated moving average model with drift attenuation. These all-cause forecasts constrained the cause-specific forecasts at successively deeper levels of the GBD cause hierarchy using cascading mortality models, thus ensuring a robust estimate of cause-specific mortality. For non-fatal measures (eg, low back pain), incidence and prevalence were forecasted from mixed-effects models with SDI as the main covariate, and YLDs were computed from the resulting prevalence forecasts and average disability weights from GBD. Alternative future scenarios were constructed by replacing appropriate reference trajectories for risk factors with hypothetical trajectories of gradual elimination of risk factor exposure from current levels to 2050. The scenarios were constructed from various sets of risk factors: environmental risks (Safer Environment scenario), risks associated with communicable, maternal, neonatal, and nutritional diseases (CMNNs; Improved Childhood Nutrition and Vaccination scenario), risks associated with major non-communicable diseases (NCDs; Improved Behavioural and Metabolic Risks scenario), and the combined effects of these three scenarios. Using the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways climate scenarios SSP2-4.5 as reference and SSP1-1.9 as an optimistic alternative in the Safer Environment scenario, we accounted for climate change impact on health by using the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change temperature forecasts and published trajectories of ambient air pollution for the same two scenarios. Life expectancy and healthy life expectancy were computed using standard methods. The forecasting framework includes computing the age-sex-specific future population for each location and separately for each scenario. 95% uncertainty intervals (UIs) for each individual future estimate were derived from the 2·5th and 97·5th percentiles of distributions generated from propagating 500 draws through the multistage computational pipeline. Findings: In the reference scenario forecast, global and super-regional life expectancy increased from 2022 to 2050, but improvement was at a slower pace than in the three decades preceding the COVID-19 pandemic (beginning in 2020). Gains in future life expectancy were forecasted to be greatest in super-regions with comparatively low life expectancies (such as sub-Saharan Africa) compared with super-regions with higher life expectancies (such as the high-income super-region), leading to a trend towards convergence in life expectancy across locations between now and 2050. At the super-region level, forecasted healthy life expectancy patterns were similar to those of life expectancies. Forecasts for the reference scenario found that health will improve in the coming decades, with all-cause age-standardised DALY rates decreasing in every GBD super-region. The total DALY burden measured in counts, however, will increase in every super-region, largely a function of population ageing and growth. We also forecasted that both DALY counts and age-standardised DALY rates will continue to shift from CMNNs to NCDs, with the most pronounced shifts occurring in sub-Saharan Africa (60·1% [95% UI 56·8–63·1] of DALYs were from CMNNs in 2022 compared with 35·8% [31·0–45·0] in 2050) and south Asia (31·7% [29·2–34·1] to 15·5% [13·7–17·5]). This shift is reflected in the leading global causes of DALYs, with the top four causes in 2050 being ischaemic heart disease, stroke, diabetes, and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, compared with 2022, with ischaemic heart disease, neonatal disorders, stroke, and lower respiratory infections at the top. The global proportion of DALYs due to YLDs likewise increased from 33·8% (27·4–40·3) to 41·1% (33·9–48·1) from 2022 to 2050, demonstrating an important shift in overall disease burden towards morbidity and away from premature death. The largest shift of this kind was forecasted for sub-Saharan Africa, from 20·1% (15·6–25·3) of DALYs due to YLDs in 2022 to 35·6% (26·5–43·0) in 2050. In the assessment of alternative future scenarios, the combined effects of the scenarios (Safer Environment, Improved Childhood Nutrition and Vaccination, and Improved Behavioural and Metabolic Risks scenarios) demonstrated an important decrease in the global burden of DALYs in 2050 of 15·4% (13·5–17·5) compared with the reference scenario, with decreases across super-regions ranging from 10·4% (9·7–11·3) in the high-income super-region to 23·9% (20·7–27·3) in north Africa and the Middle East. The Safer Environment scenario had its largest decrease in sub-Saharan Africa (5·2% [3·5–6·8]), the Improved Behavioural and Metabolic Risks scenario in north Africa and the Middle East (23·2% [20·2–26·5]), and the Improved Nutrition and Vaccination scenario in sub-Saharan Africa (2·0% [–0·6 to 3·6]). Interpretation: Globally, life expectancy and age-standardised disease burden were forecasted to improve between 2022 and 2050, with the majority of the burden continuing to shift from CMNNs to NCDs. That said, continued progress on reducing the CMNN disease burden will be dependent on maintaining investment in and policy emphasis on CMNN disease prevention and treatment. Mostly due to growth and ageing of populations, the number of deaths and DALYs due to all causes combined will generally increase. By constructing alternative future scenarios wherein certain risk exposures are eliminated by 2050, we have shown that opportunities exist to substantially improve health outcomes in the future through concerted efforts to prevent exposure to well established risk factors and to expand access to key health interventions