Implementing Blockchain in Public Sectors in MENA Countries: Opportunities and Challenges

Governments all around the world are expanding their study and use of Blockchain technology Blockchains have the potential to improve many aspects of the public sector.  This research discusses opportunities and challenges in using blockchain in the public sectors of MENA countries.  Their public sectors may use it to safeguard sensitive documents and streamline interactions with residents and solve record-keeping challenges and improve the capabilities of the present public systems.  Instability and corruption have weakened public and market trust in MENA countries. Moreover, public data in the region is housed in a disjointed bureau and division. The process of acquiring and transferring assets, whether physical goods or financial instruments, often entails multiple transactions and a long paper trail. We argued that as blockchain needs a minimal digital trace, integrity, and immutability, it is particularly fit for the public sectors in the MENA region. A blockchain would keep detailed records of the exchanged assets as well as every step of the transaction.  All important information about each person or corporation would be maintained in a separate ledger inside an encrypted blockchain. However, the lack of expertise and experience among the government employees, and the lack of real use cases around the world are the main barriers to implementing blockchain technology in the public sector of MENA countries

Improving Security Performance in Smart Campuses

The idea of a smart campus is to combine devices, apps, and people to achieve enhanced operational and educational efficiency. One of the major aspects of the establishment of smart campuses is the building of a smart security system. This research is an effort to review the security technologies and how to increase the security performance of a smart campus using these technologies. The main objective of this study is to discuss asset security and facility access technologies in a smart campus setting. Universities spend millions of dollars on specialized equipment, yet maintaining track of such assets may be challenging. We discussed how security personnel can monitor the whereabouts of high-value items by installing IoT on them and how Smart locks, intelligent ID, and Geofencing can enable the facilities managers to manage campus access, tracking, and define zones. Finally, we review the optimal mix of other technologies and strategies to produce successful deterrent, preventive, protection, and reaction measures. This study argued that using these technologies smart campuses can alter the education system by improving campus security and by offering students and educators an engaged, creative, and safe environment

The Impact of Cloud Adoption on The SMB Profit: Evidence from Panel Data analysis

Cloud computing is among the most recent advanced techniques that can play a critical role in small and medium-sized organizations, especially because it allows small businesses to access ICT resources without incurring big upfront expenditures or investing in specialized personnel.  The backbone of any country's economy is small and medium businesses (SMBs). They generate employment and serve as a catalyst for innovation and entrepreneurship.  Businesses are leveraging the benefits of cloud computing to gain a competitive advantage, cooperate, connect, and grow.  This research hypothesizes that small companies that deploy cloud computing outperform those that do not deploy it in terms of profit growth. The purpose of this study is to examine this hypothesis. The data originated from small and medium enterprises in the Middle East. The data represents balanced panel data of 55 small and medium enterprises over 3 years, from 2015 to 2017 (n=55, t=3). This research employed panel data regression models, namely the fixed-effect and the robust M-estimation methods. The empirical findings appear to confirm the hypothesis that adopting cloud computing favorably affects the profit growth of SMEs. The conclusions of this research might be valuable for business owners in the Middle Eastern countries who seek profit maximization with emerging technologies. &nbsp

Artificial Intelligence in Banking Industry: A Review on Fraud Detection, Credit Management, and Document Processing

AI is likely to alter the banking industry during the next several years. It is progressively being utilized by banks for analyzing and executing credit applications and examining vast volumes of data. This helps to avoid fraud and enables resource-heavy, repetitive procedures and client operations to be automated without any sacrifice in quality. This study reviews how the three most promising AI applications can make the banking sector robust and efficient. Specifically, we review AI fraud detection and prevention, AI credit management, and intelligent document processing. Since the majority of transactions have become digital, there is a great need for enhanced fraud detection algorithms and fraud prevention systems in banking. We argued that the conventional strategy for identifying bank fraud may be inadequate to combat complex fraudulent activity. Instead, artificial intelligence algorithms might be very useful.  Credit management is time-consuming and expensive in terms of resources. Furthermore, because of the number of phases involved, these processes need a significant amount of work involving many laborious tasks. Banks can assess new clients for credit services, calculate loan amounts and pricing, and decrease the risk of fraud by using strong AA/ML models to assess these large and varied data sets in real-time. Documents perform critical functions in the financial system and have a substantial influence on day-to-day operations. Currently, a large percentage of this data is preserved in email messages, online forms, PDFs, scanned images, and other digital formats. Using such a massive dataset is a difficult undertaking for any bank. We discuss how the artificial intelligence techniques that automatically pull critical data from all documents received by the bank, regardless of format, and feed it to the bank's existing portals/systems while maintaining consistency

The Impacts of EdTech Collaboration, IoT-Connected Classroom and Intelligent Grading System on Educational Performance

The Edtech over decades has progressed, overcoming pressing issues such as network inefficiencies, digital literacy, and high infrastructure costs while making the education more engaging. The growth of computers and the increased availability of Internet connections have led to the development of a number of programs that promote collaborative writing via sharing, version tracking, and collaborative editing capabilities. Classrooms are being infused with new IoT in order to keep up with a rapidly connected world. The manual grading approach takes a long time. An automated grading system let students realize the level of the content they have provided fast. This study investigates the role of Edtech on the academic performance of students. We propose that Edtech increases the academic performance of students. To investigate the proposal, we reviewed three aspects of Edtech such as digital collaboration, an IoT-based classroom, and an Intelligent grading system. We discussed how these Edtech elements are transforming the educational infrastructure. Additionally, using multiple regression analysis, we showed that the availability of digital collaboration, IoT tools in the classroom, and an Intelligent grading system increases the student’s academic performance. While Edtech has great potential, only a small number of educational institutes have the resources to fully execute them. This study recommends that all educational institutions should have access to emerging Edtech tools for better academic performance