mGovernment Services and Adoption: Current Research and Future Direction

Part 5: Research in ProgressInternational audienceWith the unprecedented growth of mobile technologies, governments of both developed and developing countries have started adopting mobile services in the form of m-government. While the vendors and practitioners are heavily engaged in this transformation, the scholarly world is lagging to keep pace with the progress and to provide clear theoretical guidance for successful adoption. This paper takes a stock of scholarly publications on m-government adoption since the year 2000 and reports findings and future directions based on meta-analysis of secondary data. The articles were classified into research themes, delivery mode, theory and methods. The paper identifies the dearth of scholarly work and calls for more in-depth work to make important contribution in this area

Repositioning of the global epicentre of non-optimal cholesterol

High blood cholesterol is typically considered a feature of wealthy western countries1,2. However, dietary and behavioural determinants of blood cholesterol are changing rapidly throughout the world3 and countries are using lipid-lowering medications at varying rates. These changes can have distinct effects on the levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol and non-HDL cholesterol, which have different effects on human health4,5. However, the trends of HDL and non-HDL cholesterol levels over time have not been previously reported in a global analysis. Here we pooled 1,127 population-based studies that measured blood lipids in 102.6 million individuals aged 18 years and older to estimate trends from 1980 to 2018 in mean total, non-HDL and HDL cholesterol levels for 200 countries. Globally, there was little change in total or non-HDL cholesterol from 1980 to 2018. This was a net effect of increases in low- and middle-income countries, especially in east and southeast Asia, and decreases in high-income western countries, especially those in northwestern Europe, and in central and eastern Europe. As a result, countries with the highest level of non-HDL cholesterol—which is a marker of cardiovascular risk—changed from those in western Europe such as Belgium, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Malta in 1980 to those in Asia and the Pacific, such as Tokelau, Malaysia, The Philippines and Thailand. In 2017, high non-HDL cholesterol was responsible for an estimated 3.9 million (95% credible interval 3.7 million–4.2 million) worldwide deaths, half of which occurred in east, southeast and south Asia. The global repositioning of lipid-related risk, with non-optimal cholesterol shifting from a distinct feature of high-income countries in northwestern Europe, north America and Australasia to one that affects countries in east and southeast Asia and Oceania should motivate the use of population-based policies and personal interventions to improve nutrition and enhance access to treatment throughout the world.</p

Repositioning of the global epicentre of non-optimal cholesterol

High blood cholesterol is typically considered a feature of wealthy western countries1,2. However, dietary and behavioural determinants of blood cholesterol are changing rapidly throughout the world3 and countries are using lipid-lowering medications at varying rates. These changes can have distinct effects on the levels of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol and non-HDL cholesterol, which have different effects on human health4,5. However, the trends of HDL and non-HDL cholesterol levels over time have not been previously reported in a global analysis. Here we pooled 1,127 population-based studies that measured blood lipids in 102.6 million individuals aged 18 years and older to estimate trends from 1980 to 2018 in mean total, non-HDL and HDL cholesterol levels for 200 countries. Globally, there was little change in total or non-HDL cholesterol from 1980 to 2018. This was a net effect of increases in low- and middle-income countries, especially in east and southeast Asia, and decreases in high-income western countries, especially those in northwestern Europe, and in central and eastern Europe. As a result, countries with the highest level of non-HDL cholesterol�which is a marker of cardiovascular risk�changed from those in western Europe such as Belgium, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland and Malta in 1980 to those in Asia and the Pacific, such as Tokelau, Malaysia, The Philippines and Thailand. In 2017, high non-HDL cholesterol was responsible for an estimated 3.9 million (95 credible interval 3.7 million�4.2 million) worldwide deaths, half of which occurred in east, southeast and south Asia. The global repositioning of lipid-related risk, with non-optimal cholesterol shifting from a distinct feature of high-income countries in northwestern Europe, north America and Australasia to one that affects countries in east and southeast Asia and Oceania should motivate the use of population-based policies and personal interventions to improve nutrition and enhance access to treatment throughout the world. © 2020, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited

A century of trends in adult human height

Being taller is associated with enhanced longevity, and higher education and earnings. We reanalysed 1472 population-based studies, with measurement of height on more than 18.6 million participants to estimate mean height for people born between 1896 and 1996 in 200 countries. The largest gain in adult height over the past century has occurred in South Korean women and Iranian men, who became 20.2 cm (95% credible interval 17.5-22.7) and 16.5 cm (13.3-19.7) taller, respectively. In contrast, there was little change in adult height in some sub-Saharan African countries and in South Asia over the century of analysis. The tallest people over these 100 years are men born in the Netherlands in the last quarter of 20th century, whose average heights surpassed 182.5 cm, and the shortest were women born in Guatemala in 1896 (140.3 cm; 135.8-144.8). The height differential between the tallest and shortest populations was 19-20 cm a century ago, and has remained the same for women and increased for men a century later despite substantial changes in the ranking of countries

Rising rural body-mass index is the main driver of the global obesity epidemic in adults

Body-mass index (BMI) has increased steadily in most countries in parallel with a rise in the proportion of the population who live in cities 1,2 . This has led to a widely reported view that urbanization is one of the most important drivers of the global rise in obesity 3�6 . Here we use 2,009 population-based studies, with measurements of height and weight in more than 112 million adults, to report national, regional and global trends in mean BMI segregated by place of residence (a rural or urban area) from 1985 to 2017. We show that, contrary to the dominant paradigm, more than 55 of the global rise in mean BMI from 1985 to 2017�and more than 80 in some low- and middle-income regions�was due to increases in BMI in rural areas. This large contribution stems from the fact that, with the exception of women in sub-Saharan Africa, BMI is increasing at the same rate or faster in rural areas than in cities in low- and middle-income regions. These trends have in turn resulted in a closing�and in some countries reversal�of the gap in BMI between urban and rural areas in low- and middle-income countries, especially for women. In high-income and industrialized countries, we noted a persistently higher rural BMI, especially for women. There is an urgent need for an integrated approach to rural nutrition that enhances financial and physical access to healthy foods, to avoid replacing the rural undernutrition disadvantage in poor countries with a more general malnutrition disadvantage that entails excessive consumption of low-quality calories. © 2019, The Author(s)

E-government in Tanzania: Current status and future challenges

The public sector plays an important role in the economic growth and development of developing countries. The application of modern Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) may help improve the public sector by contributing to new services and processes that address citizens as well as government-to-government services, involve citizens more directly in decisions being made, and contribute to streamlining work processes and standardizations needed to develop a well-functioning public sector. Research focusing on E-government in developing countries is still dominated by case studies and conceptual pieces of work. Thus, more empirical-oriented work is needed to expand our knowledge on current status, challenges and future plans. The reported study has been initiated to address such needs. The objective is to investigate, from a broad perspective, on-going E-government initiatives in the public sector in Tanzania. The contribution of this work is twofold. First, the descriptive findings are important to gain insight into the current status of E-government projects in Tanzania. Second, the study reported here could guide the way forward for practice as well as research. We firmly believe that both practice and research should be based on the current situation and identified challenges and aim to describe such issues to guide future work

Curriculum design and delivery for E-government knowledge transfer in a cross cultural environment:The Bangladesh experience

Part 7: Shorter PapersInternational audienceThis paper describes a successful intervention to facilitate the adoption of e-government in a least developed country. The action design research project adopted an unusual approach to facilitating e-government based on earlier grounded research that identified particular underlying inhibitors to adoption. In this case, the need to increase the knowledge of the Bangladeshi public servants to the potential and approaches of e-government was a higher priority than attempting any specific e-government project implementation. A formal education program has been established that is available to all Bangladeshi public servants through institutional training. The project’s approach and the lessons learned in its delivery provide a useful framework for other e-government interventions in least developed countries

Assessing effects of eGovernment initiatives based on a public value framework

Assessing effects of eGovernment initiatives is considered an important but challenging endeavor. Assessments are, among other things, important to justify e-government investments. They are challenging because they are complex, often based on locally defined indicators, many times over-emphasizing financial effects, imprecise, faced with a number of contingencies and very seldom validated. Consequently, effect assessments can be seen as imprecise and difficult to compare across different initiatives. This paper addresses some of the challenges by attempting to assess effects based on a public value framework through an action design study with a Norwegian government agency. Based on our findings, we suggest 5 design principles for adapting and using performance indicators for assessing effects from eGovernment initiatives