E-government Challenges Faced by Selected District Municipalities in South Africa and Rwanda

Published ArticleThe use of Information Communication Technology (ICT) in the different spheres of government is being seen as a way of widening access to government information and services in developed countries. However, e-government development remains at a very low level in the local sphere of government in both South Africa and in Rwanda. This article addresses the issues of ICT use in the local sphere of government and focuses specifically on the constraints in the successful use of ICT for delivering and utilising online government information and services. This article reflects upon the lessons learned from a comparative case study undertaken in the two district municipalities of Lejweleputswa and Fezile Dabi in South Africa and the two district municipalities of Kicukiro and Kamonyi in Rwanda. To determine and compare the challenges faced in the utilisation of e-government by the four selected district municipalities both in South Africa and Rwanda, two types of respondents have been targeted. The simple random sampling method was used to select 400 respondents who were ordinary citizens living in the townships, while the judgemental sampling method was used to select 40 interviewees who are officials in district municipalities. This article identifies a number of constraining factors surrounding practical use of online government information and services, namely ICT illiteracy; lack or limited access to modern ICT devices due to low income, lack or limited access to ICT infrastructures; low level of general literacy among citizens, English illiteracy and lack of awareness of available e-government services. To address the identified constraining factors, policies aimed at enhancing access for all to quality education (primary, secondary and tertiary); policies aimed at improving access for all to ICT infrastructure and electricity; policies aimed at enhancing ICT literacy among citizens as well as local government officials, policies aimed at producing low-cost modern ICT devices to enable the vast majority of citizens to have access; and policies aimed at improving GDP per capita; are crucial

E-government Challenges Faced by Selected District Municipalities in South Africa and Rwanda

Published ArticleThe use of Information Communication Technology (ICT) in the different spheres of government is being seen as a way of widening access to government information and services in developed countries. However, e-government development remains at a very low level in the local sphere of government in both South Africa and in Rwanda. This article addresses the issues of ICT use in the local sphere of government and focuses specifically on the constraints in the successful use of ICT for delivering and utilising online government information and services. This article reflects upon the lessons learned from a comparative case study undertaken in the two district municipalities of Lejweleputswa and Fezile Dabi in South Africa and the two district municipalities of Kicukiro and Kamonyi in Rwanda. To determine and compare the challenges faced in the utilisation of e-government by the four selected district municipalities both in South Africa and Rwanda, two types of respondents have been targeted. The simple random sampling method was used to select 400 respondents who were ordinary citizens living in the townships, while the judgemental sampling method was used to select 40 interviewees who are officials in district municipalities. This article identifies a number of constraining factors surrounding practical use of online government information and services, namely ICT illiteracy; lack or limited access to modern ICT devices due to low income, lack or limited access to ICT infrastructures; low level of general literacy among citizens, English illiteracy and lack of awareness of available e-government services. To address the identified constraining factors, policies aimed at enhancing access for all to quality education (primary, secondary and tertiary); policies aimed at improving access for all to ICT infrastructure and electricity; policies aimed at enhancing ICT literacy among citizens as well as local government officials, policies aimed at producing low-cost modern ICT devices to enable the vast majority of citizens to have access; and policies aimed at improving GDP per capita; are crucial

Gone but Not Lost: Implications for Estimating HIV Care Outcomes When Loss to Clinic Is Not Loss to Care

Background: In some time-to-event analyses, it is unclear whether loss to follow up should be treated as a censoring event or competing event. Such ambiguity is particularly common in HIV research that uses routinely collected clinical data to report the timing of key milestones along the HIV care continuum. In this setting, loss to follow up may be viewed as a censoring event, under the assumption that patients who are "lost" from a study clinic immediately enroll in care elsewhere, or a competing event, under the assumption that people "lost" are out of care all together. Methods: We illustrate an approach to address this ambiguity when estimating the 2-year risk of antiretroviral treatment initiation among 19,506 people living with HIV who enrolled in the IeDEA Central Africa cohort between 2006 and 2017, along with published estimates from tracing studies in Africa. We also assessed the finite sample properties of the proposed approach using simulation experiments. Results: The estimated 2-year risk of treatment initiation was 69% if patients were censored at loss to follow up or 59% if losses to follow up were treated as competing events. Using the proposed approach, we estimated that the 2-year risk of antiretroviral therapy initiation was 62% (95% confidence interval: 61, 62). The proposed approach had little bias and appropriate confidence interval coverage under scenarios examined in the simulation experiments. Conclusions: The proposed approach relaxes the assumptions inherent in treating loss to follow up as a censoring or competing event in clinical HIV cohort studies

Viral Load Status Before Switching to Dolutegravir-Containing Antiretroviral Therapy and Associations With Human Immunodeficiency Virus Treatment Outcomes in Sub-Saharan Africa

Background: Dolutegravir is being rolled out globally as part of preferred antiretroviral therapy (ART) regimens, including among treatment-experienced patients. The role of viral load (VL) testing before switching patients already on ART to a dolutegravir-containing regimen is less clear in real-world settings. Methods: We included patients from the International epidemiology Databases to Evaluate AIDS consortium who switched from a nevirapine- or efavirenz-containing regimen to one with dolutegravir. We used multivariable cause-specific hazards regression to estimate the association of the most recent VL test in the 12 months before switching with subsequent outcomes. Results: We included 36 393 patients at 37 sites in 5 countries (Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda) who switched to dolutegravir from July 2017 through February 2020, with a median follow-up of approximately 11 months. Compared with those who switched with a VL <200 copies/mL, patients without a recent VL test or with a preswitch VL ≥1000 copies/mL had significantly increased hazards of an incident VL ≥1000 copies/mL (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR], 2.89; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.99-4.19 and aHR, 6.60; 95% CI, 4.36-9.99, respectively) and pulmonary tuberculosis or a World Health Organization clinical stage 4 event (aHR, 4.78; 95% CI, 2.77-8.24 and aHR, 13.97; 95% CI, 6.62-29.50, respectively). Conclusions: A VL test before switching to dolutegravir may help identify patients who need additional clinical monitoring and/or adherence support. Further surveillance of patients who switched to dolutegravir with an unknown or unsuppressed VL is needed

Two-Dimensional Directional Wavelets and the Scale-Angle Representation

The two-dimensional continuous wavelet transform (CWT), derived from a square integrable representation of the similitude group of IR 2 , is characterized by a rotation parameter, in addition to the usual translations and dilations. This enables it to detect edges and directions in images, provided a directional wavelet is used. First we review the general properties of the 2D CWT and describe several classes of wavelets, including the directional ones. Then we turn to the problem of wavelet calibration. We show, in particular, how the reproducing kernel may be used for defining and evaluating the scale and angle resolving power of a wavelet. Finally we illustrate the usefulness of the scale-angle representation of the CWT on the problem of disentangling a train of damped plane waves. UCL--IPT--95--03 May 1995 3 Supported by ONR (Office of Naval Research), Grant Nr.N0014-93-10561 and by ARPA (Advanced Research Project Agency), Grant Nr.MDA 972-93-1-0013 1. Introduction The wavele..

More quantum centrifugal effect in rotating frame

The behaviour of quantum systems in non-inertial frames is revisited from the point of view of affine coherent state (ACS) quantization. We restrict our approach to the one-particle dynamics confined in a rotating plane about a fixed axis. This plane is considered as punctured due to the existence of the rotation center, which is viewed as a singularity. The corresponding phase space is the affine group of the plane and the ACS quantization enables us to quantize the system by respecting the affine symmetry of the true phase space. Our formulation predicts the appearance of an additional quantum centrifugal term, besides the usual angular-momentum one, which prevents the particle to reach the singular rotation center. Moreover it helps us to understand why two different non-inertial Schrödinger equations are obtained in previous works. The validity of our equation can be confirmed experimentally by observing the harmonic oscillator bound states and the critical angular velocity for their existence