Efficiency Of Service Provision Research Articles

Transforming Care: Individual Social Work in Post-Conflict Zones for Children and Youth.

The significance of efficient social service provision has gained increased attention in war-affected regions following the Russia-Ukraine war conflict. The conventional method of establishing social services is currently facing criticism due to an increasing acknowledgment of the advantages associated with tailored and customised social work interventions, particularly in the context of children and young individuals. The article explores the notion of deinstitutionalization, emphasising its importance in post-conflict areas and emphasising the value of a personalised social work approach in promoting the welfare of children and young people impacted by the Russia-Ukraine war conflict. The present article is grounded in a comprehensive conceptual review of pertinent literature, encompassing books, journals, and related scholarly articles within the specific field of study. Research has endeavoured to ascertain the challenges and ramifications associated with the implementation of institutionalised social work practices. This study has also explored the potential pragmatic benefits of personalised social work interventions in areas of conflict, particularly focusing on children and adolescents. This article could also elucidate the key factors that should be taken into account while engaging with individuals, particularly children and young people, in regions characterised by war. The comprehensive endeavour would serve as a valuable resource for further examination, particularly in relation to the use of a personalised social work approach within the specific circumstances of recurrent invasions and civil conflicts.

Two-layer intelligent deployment of capsule airports and unmanned aerial vehicles for providing emergency communication services

The utilization of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) as base stations for emergency communication services has garnered significant attention due to their lightness and agility. To increase the capacity and coverage of UAVs, the Capsule Airport (CA) is developed, which serves as a recharging and retrieval station for UAVs. Meanwhile, deploying CAs and UAVs in appropriate positions is crucial for ensuring high-quality and efficient service provision. To address this challenge, we propose the Two-Layer Maximum Deployment Problem for Capsule Airports and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (2L-MCDP-C&U). The objective of the 2L-MCDP-C&U is to maximize the number of served users by determining the ground locations for opening a given number of CAs and deploying their UAVs in 3D space, while considering the connectivity of UAV-to-UAV, UAV-to-CA, and UAV-to-user. An improved variable neighborhood search algorithm is designed based on the k-means (VNS-K) to solve the 2L-MCDP-C&U. To further validate its efficacy, we conduct experiments on random instances of various sizes and a practical case study of Zhulin town in China. Our work paves the way for more efficient and effective emergency communication services using CAs and UAVs.

SFC-based multi-domain service customization and deployment

In order to satisfy diversified service demands, future networks are expected to provide higher quality network services, especially in 5G scenarios. Network Function Virtualization (NFV) is a promising architecture to achieve flexible service provisioning by introducing Service Function Chain (SFC) technology. With explosive expansion of network devices and end users, the complex multi-domain network environment and personalized service demands of different users pose serious challenges to efficient service provisioning. To this end, this paper presents a novel SFC-based Multi-domain Service Customization and Deployment framework, MSCD, by blending merits of Software Defined Networking (SDN) and NFV technologies. MSCD framework can automatically customize multi-domain network services based on users’ personalized service preferences, and deploy them in multi-domain networks, to provide customizable multi-domain services for different users. Taking into account user personalized service preferences, resource allocation and VNF dependency constraints, the multi-domain service customization and deployment problem is mathematically formulated as an optimization model with the target of service satisfaction degree maximization. Furthermore, a Greedy strategy based Heuristic Service Customization and dePloyment (GHSCP) algorithm is proposed to customize and deploy the multi-domain services efficiently. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed GHSCP algorithm is efficient and outperforms comparison algorithms in terms of service acceptance ratio and service satisfaction degree.

Municipal International Cooperations (MICs) in Zimbabwe’s local authorities: An exploratory study of the Harare Metropolitan City

The Constitution of Zimbabwe Amendment No. 20 of 2013 recognises local authorities as key actors in local and national development, thus capacitating them to engage in international and regional relations so as to assist in matters of municipality management and service delivery. In this vein, such relations should promote growth through investments, innovation and information exchanges among others. The study examines the utility of MICs in promoting sound management and the enhancement of service delivery at the Harare Metropolitan City. The study used a qualitative research design where participants were purposively selected to provide data. Data was gathered using interviews and an extensive review of written documents. Data was analysed using thematic and content analysis techniques. The study established that MICs are a reliable tool to promote sustainable development in areas of human capacity development, information technology, and knowledge sharing among others. Additionally, MICs also promote effective and efficient service provision in Harare Metropolitan City. The study recommends the restructuring and fortification of the MICs’ legal and financial frameworks as well as the provision of central government support so that Harare Metropolitan City can autonomously venture into partnerships and be productive without any central government interference.

Undertaking land administration reform: Is there a better way?

Governments establish land administration systems to formally acknowledge and protect property rights, restrictions, and responsibilities (RRR). The protection and recording of property rights is implemented under a jurisdiction-specific complex set of policies, laws, systems, and procedures. In recent decades, the World Bank and many other development partners have provided funding to support land administration reform so that governments can formally acknowledge and protect property rights and provide efficient and effective land administration services. The experience and lessons from these projects have been documented. There have been successes but there have also been projects that have failed to realise clearly stated objectives. A recurrent theme in these evaluations is that many projects fail to create effective, transformative change in the delivery of land administration services and gain the critical mass, and the community participation, necessary to ensure the sustainability of land administration reform. The traditional approach for land administration reform projects has been to focus on the economic and technical design of interventions based on a library of best practice, with perhaps too little attention on politics and governance in land administration reform. Many of the issues or problems noted in the literature relate not to economic or technical matters, but to policy and political decisions. The current approach to land administration reform would appear to need reform itself. The sector needs to seriously consider the political economy issues that impact on the provision of efficient and effective land administration services. There have been concerted efforts to develop more politically informed ways of thinking and working in the design of donor-funded interventions using a range of methodologies including ‘Thinking and Working Politically’ (TWP). Adopting a TWP, or similar politically informed approach, has a lot of potential, but may not be the full answer and TWP may complement rather than replace existing approaches to reform assessment, design, and implementation. This paper sets out a broad review of the experience, lessons, and literature on land administration reform and the potential for adopting a new approach for reform.

E-public Services Evaluation, based on Citizens’ Perception, (The Albanian Case)

The development of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) in recent years has significantly affected business activities in the private sector, as well as in the public sector. Over the years, there has been a growing trend in utilizing technology to provide public services at national and global levels. In Albania, the government and public agencies have faced challenges in implementing electronic services, aiming to enhance the efficiency of public service delivery and meet the needs of citizens and society. The objective of e-government is to cater to the general public’s expectations and satisfaction by offering valuable public services. In this regard, an e-government platform plays a crucial role in facilitating the efficient provision of electronic services, enabling citizens, businesses, and the public to interact successfully with the government and its institutions. The increasing demand for electronic services in Albania is driven by citizens’ desire to improve the quality of public service delivery. To assess the significance of electronic services, this study examines relevant indicators on the e-Albania platform. A survey was conducted in the Tirana region of Albania, involving the distribution and completion of 190 questionnaires. The variables were evaluated using a Likert scale (1-5 rating). The main objective of this research is to assess citizen perception and evaluate the importance of electronic services offered by the e-Albania platform, through measuring citizen’s perception.

Trust transfer effects and associated risks in telemedicine adoption

Telemedicine has the potential to address considerable challenges in the efficient provision of health care services. However, this will not be realized until a high acceptance rate among patients is achieved. We address the research gap that arises from the need to explore the interplay of different trust referents (physician, technology, treatment) and perceived risk dimensions (performance, privacy, time, psychological) in patients’ telemedicine adoption considering two different symptom types (physical vs. mental). We conducted a scenario-based online survey and performed t-tests, scenario-specific structural equation modeling, and multi-group analysis. T-tests and multi-group analysis do not indicate differences in perceptions and path coefficients between the symptoms. Furthermore, scenario-specific structural equation modeling reveals that for both scenarios, trust in physician is less important for trust transfer effects and intention to use than trust in technology and trust in treatment. Trust in treatment has similar effects for all risk dimensions, while only performance risk relates to use intention. Moreover, the results indicate a considerable intention-behavior gap. We advance IS research by emphasizing the relevance of considering multiple trust referents, trust transfer effects, and a multidimensional perspective on perceived risk.

Analyzing interconnected processes: using object-centric process mining to analyze procurement processes

AbstractThe purchase-to-pay (P2P) process is one of the core business processes in any organization. It ensures the correct and efficient provisioning of materials and services. An efficient P2P process reduces operational costs by ensuring discounts, avoiding late payments, and choosing the optimal supplier for the goods. Process mining techniques help practitioners optimize the execution of P2P processes by analyzing the execution data and providing useful insights. However, existing techniques may result in misleading insights due to many-to-many relationships between business objects, e.g., between orders and invoices in the P2P process. Recently, object-centric process mining techniques have been proposed to avoid the limitations of traditional process mining techniques. In this paper, we present a case study on a real-life P2P process using object-centric process mining techniques. To that end, we adopt the well-known PM$$^{2}$$ 2 process mining project methodology to the object-centric setting and analyze the performance and compliance.

Territorial diagnostics and citizen perception of municipal public management, towards an efficient reform of Local Administration

Spain has a population distribution dispersed in small population centres where 60% of municipalities have less than 1,000 inhabitants. This situation generates a financial and functional incapacity to guarantee the successful and efficient provision of local public services. In order to fulfil its competences and improve services, a territorial diagnosis of the investigated area is necessary to adapt the size and structure of its administration. However, the social superstructure is reluctant to change the form of administrative action, despite being perceived as slow and bureaucratic by citizens. For this reason, this work proposes a reform to improve local economic and financial management by redesigning its administrative structure, thus achieving citizen recognition of the advantages of change. The proposal is developed through a computerised reporting model for public decision-making, the result of which is a systematic spatial report of administrative-financial decisions, which optimises decision-making and makes public management more visible.

Performance Management Systems (PMS): Challenges and Opportunities in the Public Sector

In many scholars' public institutions should have effective and efficient Performance Management Systems (PMS) in place to promote and develop the performance of civil servants. In the public sector, good management of staff performance is fundamental for efficient service delivery. The mandate of public institutions is to offer quality and effective service delivery to the public; as a result, public institutions' performance is scrutinized by the public, who have higher expectations from the government. These expectations are based on the votes cast and the taxes paid by the public. Thus, public institutions should monitor and enhance each employee's performance and productivity to ensure efficient provision of public services. This article seeks to analyse the challenges encountered by the public sector in executing PMS and suggest the strategies the public sector can use to enhance staff performance.

중증장애인 고용 활성화 방안 연구

The disabled population continues to increase, the proportion of elderly people with disabilities and single-person households is increasing, and the proportion of significant disabilities such as autism and mental disorders continues to increase by type of disability. In particular, the significantly disabled are experiencing greater difficulties in employment, so we tried to find ways to revitalize employment for the significantly disabled. To this end, the Ministry of Health and Welfare-centered projects and previous studies that provide vocational support and vocational rehabilitation services for the significantly disabled were analyzed to identify problems and suggest ways to revitalize employment for the significantly disabled. First, efficient service provision and service quality improvement through the linkage of job projects, Second, training of professional manpower and supporting manpower to expand employment and support after employment for persons with significant disabilities, Third, support for additional benefits for people with disabilities using vocational rehabilitation facilities.

Defining the Organization of Municipal Solid Waste Management Based on Production Costs

A long-lasting dilemma on the efficient provision of services of general economic interest has become increasingly important in the waste management industry: competition or monopoly in municipal solid waste management. Previous literature has primarily examined the economics of scale and scope to provide an adequate response. Here, we contribute by investigating subadditivity in municipal solid waste management service costs. Subadditivity is a critical concept used to justify imperfect competition, which encourages natural monopolies where one producer will function more effectively than more firms. To test the hypothesis that a subadditivity in costs in waste management exists, we design a simulation based on empirical data for Milan, Italy. We compared the total production cost of the incumbent firm with the alternative hypothesis built by dividing the city into four areas and assigning each area to a different hypothetical firm. The results suggest that the existence of subadditivity results in 6% lower production costs, primarily stemming from business synergies, lower transactional costs, and optimization of productive resources and facilities. The evidence justifies, ceteris paribus, that the provision by a single firm is preferable to multiple firms in the analysis case. Implications for policies are straightforward. The one-fit rule approach fails to set the best condition for policymakers to create a level playing field transparently and efficiently for industry operators to perform efficiently.

Architectural Design of Business Processes For Community Empowerment and Flexibility Based on Presidential Regulation Number 132 of 2022

The development of information technology in daily life is very rapid so that it can increase the productivity of an individual or organization. The Government Sector also utilizes information technology in an effort to increase the provision of effective and efficient public services. Likewise with the Government of Indonesia, in 2018 issued Presidential Regulation No. 95 of 2018 concerning Electronic-Based Government Systems (SPBE) as a guideline for governance that utilizes information and communication technology to provide quality public services. SPBE evaluation and monitoring is carried out by the Ministry of State Apparatus Empowerment and Bureaucratic Reform (KemenPANRB) in every government agency in Indonesia. In 2020 the results of the SPBE evaluation at the Tangerang City Government obtained a score of 3.44 with a good index. For this reason, this research focuses on improving SPBE governance which includes the standardization and integration of SPBE business processes for the Tangerang City Government. This research provides a solution in the form of an SPBE enterprise architecture design in the business process domain according to the SPBE architecture. Several phases are used, namely the preliminary phase, architecture vision, and business process architecture. The main phase of this design is the business process architecture which produces level 0 business process maps, level 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 business process maps and cross-functional maps as standardization of SPBE business processes according to PermenPANRB No. 19 of 2018.

Implementation of clinical assistants in a pediatric oncology department: An impact analysis.

Bureaucratic and administrative tasks associated with health care provision have historically fallen on health care professionals, which is one among the factors contributing to low job satisfaction and lower productivity. Incorporating new professional roles that help to better respond to the needs of both patients and professionals can increase the quality and efficiency of service provision. This article aims to evaluate the impact of the clinical assistant's introduction in the Sant Joan de Déu Barcelona Children's Hospital's pediatric oncology department, in terms of (i) displacement of activity loads carried out by this new professional role and the consequent time freed up for physicians, (ii) physicians' satisfaction and (iii) efficiency of the new care model. This is an observational and retrospective study using administrative data based on the type of activity performed by clinical assistants and the measurement of the time freed up in favor of the physicians. The potential skill mix productivity increase, survey of physicians' satisfaction, and reduction in costs with the new model was analyzed. During the first year of its implementation in the pediatric oncology department, clinical assistants have performed 13,553 requests (69% of the total), representing a total saving of 266.83hours or 6.67 workweeks of 40hours. They performed 74% of outpatient surgical requests in the oncology department, 87% of day hospital requests and 54% of total requests in the outpatient consultations area. Physicians are overall satisfied with the new role and think they can use the time gained to do other things such as research or improving the quality of care. The role change allows reducing the cost per request by 56% in relation to the conventional model. In conclusion, the introduction of clinical assistants in the oncology department could be efficient to the extent that it displaces a significant part of the bureaucratic and administrative tasks previously performed by health care professionals and thus enables to reduce the cost of these processes. This delegation allows them to work more closely to the maximum of their competences and the physicians to have more time for higher added value clinical tasks and increase professional satisfaction.

Effectiveness of a Brief Engagement, Problem-Solving, and Triage Strategy for High School Students: Results of a Randomized Study

Schools offer an advantageous setting for the prevention, early identification, and treatment of mental health problems for youth. However, school mental health (SMH) services are typically not based on evidence for effectiveness, nor are they efficiently delivered, with SMH practitioners (SMHPs) able to only treat a small number of students in need. The current study evaluated the feasibility, acceptability, efficiency, and outcomes of a four-session assessment, engagement, problem-solving, and triage strategy for SMHPs that aimed to improve efficiency while being based on elements of evidence-based care. The study, conducted in 15 US school districts in three states, used stratified random assignment to assign 49 high schools and their participating SMHP(s) to either the Brief Intervention for School Clinicians (BRISC; N = 259 students) or services as usual (SAU; N = 198 students). SMHPs implemented BRISC elements with adequate to excellent fidelity and reported the strategy was feasible and well-aligned with presenting problems. Students assigned to BRISC reported significantly greater engagement in SMH at 2 months and completion of SMH treatment by 6 months. BRISC-assigned SMHPs reported significantly greater treatment completion after four sessions (53.4%) compared to SAU (15.4%). Students in the BRISC condition also reported significantly greater reduction in problem severity as evaluated by the Youth Top Problems Assessment. No differences were found for anxiety or depression symptoms or overall functioning. Results indicate that BRISC is a feasible early intervention and triage strategy that may aid in more efficient provision of SMH services with no compromise to SMH effectiveness.

Service Routing in Multi-Tier Edge Computing: A Matching Game Approach

Although microservice envisioned as a promising approach for edge applications which can improves the development efficiency and the deployment productivity, it also leads to the operational complexity during service runtime. This leads to the emergence of service mesh, a decided infrastructure layer over microservices for reliable service-to-service communication. However, when migrating the service mesh to the multi-tier edge computing, the corresponding extensions on the top of service mesh is needed to overcome the challenges brought by the multi-tier edge servers, shared microservices and diverse QoS requirements. Therefore, in this paper, we investigate the problem of service routing to achieve the efficient microservice-based service provision in multi-tier edge computing. The objective is to route user requests to the optimal microservice instances with low service delay and resource cost. To this end, we first formulate the service routing problem as an integer non-linear optimization problem, which is NP-hard. Then we map it to a many-to-one matching problem by employing the matching game theory and propose a dependency-aware deferred acceptance algorithm with dynamic quota. The experimental results based on a real-world dataset demonstrate that our proposed algorithm can significantly outperform existing representative algorithms in terms of service delay and resource cost.

Collaborative AI-Enabled Intelligent Partial Service Provisioning in Green Industrial Fog Networks

With the evolutionary development of the latency-sensitive industrial Internet-of-Things (IIoT) applications, delay restriction becomes a critical challenge, which can be resolved by distributing IIoT applications on nearby fog devices. Besides that, efficient service provisioning and energy optimization are confronting serious challenges with the ongoing expansion of large-scale IIoT applications. However, due to insufficient resource availability, a single fog device cannot execute large-scale applications completely. In such a scenario, a partial service provisioning strategy provides a promising outcome to enable the services on multiple fog devices or collaboration with cloud servers. By motivating this scenario, in this article, we introduce a new deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-enabled partial service provisioning strategy in the green industrial fog networks. With this strategy, multiple fog devices share the excessive workload of an application among themselves. To reflect this, a task partitioning policy is introduced to partition the requested applications into a set of independent or interdependent tasks. Furthermore, we develop an intelligent partial service provisioning strategy to utilize maximum fog resources in the network. The experimental results express the significance of the proposed strategy over the traditional baseline algorithms in terms of energy consumption and latency up to 25% and 16%, respectively.

A Prospective Epidemiological Survey of Paediatric Trauma in Africa: A Cross-Sectional Study.

Trauma is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in children worldwide. There is a need for development and provision of efficient paediatric trauma services based on adequate information and funding which are lacking in low- and middle-income countries. This study was carried out to assess the scale of the problem, identify the most common causes of trauma in Pan African Paediatric Surgical Association (PAPSA) zone and to define the limiting factors for provision of the necessary services required to reduce the potential mortality and disability. Data were collected through an electronic form sent out in PAPSA platform. Members were requested to provide prospective data on all paediatric major trauma admitted to or seen at their health facilities between the beginning of April 2019 and the end of June 2020. Hospital location, child's age, gender, type of injury, mechanism of injury, severity, initial management, method of transport, time to arrive to hospital, availability of surgical specialities, length of hospital stay and injury outcome were analysed. There were 531 entries. The mean age was 3.53 years and median age 1.34 years. Male-to-female ratio was 2:1. The leading causes for injuries were falls 194 (36.53%) and motor vehicle crashes (MVCs) 176 (33.15%) followed by obstetrical 42 (7.9%), thermal 27 (5.1%) and domestic injuries 22 (4.1%). The most common injuries were limb fractures 181 (34.1%) and traumatic brain injury 111 (20.9%). Public and private transport were used in 313 (58.9%), while ambulance service was used in only 54 (10.1%). Distances to a health facility varied between 1 and 157 km. 70.2% of cases did not receive any primary care, while definitive care was received in 95.5% of the cases. Outcome was full recovery in 90.6% of patients, morbidity in 8.1% and a mortality rate of 1.3%. Most of the injuries were in the under 5-year age group. The two main causes of trauma in children in this study were the falls from height and MVCs. Long distance travels to reach health-care facilities were noticeable in this study, together with substantial lack of adequate ambulance facilities and shortage in necessary subspecialty services such as neurosurgical, orthopaedics and rehabilitation. Implementing proposed recommendations can reduce the burden.

Performance Management Systems (PMS): Challages and Opportunities in the Public Sector

To the vast majority of scholar’s public institutions should have effective and efficient Performance Management Systems (PMS) in place to promote and develop the performance of civil servants. In the public sector, good management of staff performance is fundamental to efficient service delivery. The mandate of public institutions is to offer quality and effective service delivery to the public; as a result, public institutions' performance is scrutinized by the public, who have higher expectations from the government. These expectations are based on the votes cast and the taxes paid by the general public. Thus, public institutions should monitor and enhance each employee's performance and productivity to ensure the efficient provision of public services. This article seeks to analyse the challenges encountered by public sector in executing PMS and suggest the strategies the public sector can use to enhance staff performance.

A Comprehensive Survey on Machine Learning-Based Intrusion Detection Systems for Secure Communication in Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a distributed system which is made up of the connections of smart objects (things) that can continuously sense the events in their sensing domain and transmit the data via the Internet. IoT is considered as the next revolution of the Internet since it has provided vast improvements in day-to-day activities of humans including the provision of efficient healthcare services and development of smart cities and intelligent transport systems. The IoT environment, by the application of suitable security mechanisms through efficient security management techniques, intrusion detection systems provide a wall of defence against the attacks on the Internet and on the devices connected with Internet by effective monitoring of the Internet traffic. Therefore, the intrusion detection system (IDS) is a resolution proposed by the researchers to monitor and secure the IoT communication. In this work, a meticulous analysis of the security of IoT networks based on quality-of-service metrics is performed for deploying intrusion detection systems by carrying out experiments on secured communication and measuring the network’s performance based on comparing them with the existing security metrics. Finally, we propose a new and effective IDS using a deep learning-based classification approach, namely, fuzzy CNN, for improving the security of communication. The major and foremost advantages of this system include an upsurge in detection accuracy, the accurate detection of denial of service (DoS) attacks more efficiently, and the reduction of false positive rates.