Local Government Entities Research Articles

THE INFLUENCE OF HEALTH WORKERS’ DISTRIBUTION ON THE QUALITY OF HEALTH SERVICE DELIVERY IN PUBLIC HOSPITALS IN MANDERA COUNTY, KENYA

Background: Quality health care access remains a primary agenda on SDGs at global level. Locally, on personnel, the number of medical professionals per capita within the local governmental entities is frequently used to indicate the unequal distribution of healthcare personnel. Variances in increased mortality trends, the necessity for healthcare services per capita, and hence the human required resources per capita, may differ among units. Mandera County faces similar challenges. The main objective of this study was to determine how health workers’ distribution influences the quality of service delivery of health services at government hospitals in Mandera County. Methods: Using a descriptive research design, health personnel from Mandera County Referral Hospital, Laffey, Rhamu and Banisa Sub County Hospitals formed the unit of analysis. The study conducted December 2022 used a random sample of 189 respondents from a population of 357 using proportional and simple systematic sampling procedures. A questionnaire method that was self-administered and 10 KII (patients) was used to gather data. Results: The study found and concluded that at the significance level of 95%, skills mix, Individual Factors, Institutional Environment and socio-cultural factors were significant and positively correlated factors in influencing quality of health service delivery in public hospitals in Mandera County with significance values of 0.001, .005, .003 and .002 respectively. Conclusion: All the studied variables only affect quality of healthcare service at 53.2%, implying 46.8% needs to be explored further. KEY WORDS: Quality Healthcare, Health Workers’ Distribution, Skill Mix, Service Delivery, Individual Factors, Institutional Environment, Socio-Cultural Factors

The Economic Disparity across Sri Lanka’s Districts

Globally, there is an increasing regional economic development disparity. The region’s growth depends on strong economic development. The sustainable development of Sri Lanka could be harmed by the regional economic disparity. An essential consideration in the establishment of regional development policies is the identification and magnitude of regional economic disparities. This study looks at the current state of Sri Lanka’s regional economic development disparity. This study’s methodology in this regard involved using several economic development metrics. Data for the year 2019 was acquired through authoritative sources. The multivariate analysis technique using the principal component analysis (PCA) approach has been adopted, which assigns a weight to each dimension and indicator to create composite indexes. The economic development of the western province was higher than that of the other provinces, but there was also a notable disparity between the districts of the western province, with the Colombo district having the highest economic development index. The resulting indices enable policymakers to prioritize regions for additional efforts while also assessing the state of regional disparities. The new index also makes it feasible to classify local government entities logically to support the government’s numerous policy-making and development initiatives. To calculate an index of economic disparity similar to that, the approach would apply to any nation.

E-Gram Panchayath

A student initiative called "E-Gram Panchayath" seeks to modernize and digitize the operations of rural local government entities, particularly gram panchayats in India. The project's objective is to provide a web-based platform that will help gram panchayats carry out their obligations and responsibilities, such as the administration of local development, management of community resources, and provision of public services projects. The platform will offer a variety of functions, such as online complaint forms and a platform for accessing official data and papers, tools for monitoring the progression of requests, and development initiatives. The project's objective is to increase the accountability, openness, and efficiency of gram better outcomes for the communities they serve as a result of panchayats.

Algorithmic bias: Looking beyond data bias to ensure algorithmic accountability and equity

As algorithms increasingly aid public sector decision making in the United States, it becomes important to understand how to effectively tackle algorithmic bias in systems that local, state, and federal government entities use and procure, including what kinds of policies are currently in place or proposed. There is a prevalent belief that algorithmic bias arises primarily from statistical biases present in the data used to train or develop the algorithm, but bias may also arise during data collection, problem specification, how and where algorithms are deployed, and within the broader societal contextualization of algorithms. So far, enacted policies in in the US center on temporary bans of particular types of algorithms, transparency, and post-hoc bias audits, as well as more wide-ranging (but non-binding) policy frameworks; all largely focus on quantitative notions of fairness when they assess bias, leaving room for more comprehensive legislation to meaningfully address this issue going forward.

Analisis Pola Pengelolaan Keuangan pada Badan Layanan Umum Daerah

This article discusses the financial administration of Regional Public Service Agency (Badan Layanan Umum Daerah) and its alignment with the financial plan of the Regional Public Assistance Organization. The Regional Public Assistance Organization is a local government entity that provides assistance without prioritizing profit. Its management is governed by Regulation Number 1 of 2004 regarding State Storage Institutions and Unofficial Law Number 12 of 2019 concerning Territorial Monetary Administration. The topics covered include revenue, utilization, and funding of the Regional Public Assistance Organization. Revenue sources encompass administrative fees, collaborations, local government budgets (APBD), and others. Administrative rates are determined by unit costs and reserve profit. Tax systems consider maintenance, enhancement, purchasing power, and fairness. Despite financial management improvements enhancing governance effectiveness, deficiencies highlighted by the Supreme Audit Agency (Badan Pengkajian Unggul or BPK) regarding the financial administration of the Regional Public Assistance Organization underscore the need for development in the financial administration of the Regional Public Service Agency.

Core model of information technology governance system design in local government

Information technology governance (ITG) in local government is aimed at a good governance service framework. Reports produced as a result of the framework’s implementation help to improve governance’s openness, potency, and efficiency. A strong governance structure for adopting information technology (IT) is essential to ensuring its best utilization. The governance system should be properly managed to support the organization’s business. Therefore, this research aims to design an ITG system suitable for best practices using the control objectives for information technologies (COBIT) 2019 framework. The recommendations from the core model were processed based on the priority or competence level that local government entities use. It also produced a core model with capability levels of 1 and 2 that do not exist. The recommendation designated for the priority level of 3 was 17. The core model to be assigned a capability level of 4 urgently needed to be implemented was 23 core models.

Municipal bankruptcies and crime

While the importance of municipal bonds for the provision of public services is well-documented, the consequences of municipal bankruptcies remain understudied. We contribute to this literature by studying the effects of municipal bankruptcies on crime. Using the staggered difference-in-differences approach and agency-level crime data, we find that violent and property crime rates rise after successful (approved by the bankruptcy courts) Chapter 9 bankruptcy filings. The association between successful municipal bankruptcy and crime remains robust to alternative estimation methods, including a novel empirical technique that allows for the treatment effect heterogeneity and dynamics, and several robustness checks and falsification exercises. Our exploratory evidence suggests that the rise in crime rates is due to lower public safety expenditures. Our findings highlight the importance of efficient financial management for local government entities and the need for particular attention to law and order in the local jurisdiction going through bankruptcy.

The Importance of Structuring Relationships Between Local Governments and Business Entities in The Perspective of State Administrative Law in Batam City, Riau Islands

This article explains the importance of structuring the relationship between local government and local business entities from the perspective of state administrative law in Batam City, Riau Archipelago. This study used a qualitative research method, in which several relevant sources obtained were analyzed using descriptive analysis to be able to explain and answer the research questions as a whole. The findings of this study indicate that the dynamics of the dualism of authority that occurs between the Batam City Government and the Batam Concession Agency have violated several principles of good governance, namely those relating to the principle of legal certainty, the principle of not mixing authority, and the principle of implementing the public interest. In the process, to overcome the dualism of authority that occurs, it is necessary to integrate the Free Trade Areas (FTA) of Batam, Bintan, and Karimun with the Free Port Concession Agency (FPCA) by placing the authority of the FPCA under the control of the Governor of the Riau Archipelago Province. Therefore, to adopt a better possibility of the findings of this study, it is very important to immediately amend Government Regulation Number 46 of 2007 concerning the Free Trade Zone and Free Harbor of Batam as amended several times, most recently by Government Regulation Number 62 of 2019 concerning the Second Amendment on Government Regulation Number 46 of 2007 concerning Free Trade Zones and Free Ports.

“They're just trying to survive”: The relationship between social vulnerability, informal housing, and environmental risks in Loíza, Puerto Rico, USA

Socially vulnerable households across the earth tend to live in informal settlements, which also are likely to be in areas that might experience flooding. Given that since the 1980s there have been more frequent and devastating hurricanes, this study asks what is the relationship between informal housing, social vulnerability, and environmental hazards in the context of a US territory? Although most research on this topic has concentrated in the Global South, there are no studies within the US disaster management system on these environmental justice topics—primarily because housing informality is heavily under studied in the US and the Global North. With the purpose of understanding the connection we conducted qualitative analysis using 30 interviews with stakeholders working on different facets of disaster recovery and mitigation in Loíza, Puerto Rico, a US territory. Loíza is a low-income Afro-Caribbean town along the coast, where about half of the homes are located within the 100-year FEMA flood maps. The findings suggest that changes need to be made regarding how local and federal government entities approach informal housing when providing assistance after the 2017 Hurricanes Irma and Maria. It is also important for planners and other decision makers to educate communities and provide recovery funding after a major disaster so that long-term risks could be reduce without displacing the local population.

Spatial Planning as a Public Management Tool in Poland: Premises and Reality

The aim of this paper is to assess the functioning of spatial planning in Poland in the context of public management objectives. Drawing on the concepts of New Public Management, we use the category of stakeholders and public value generated for stakeholders. Two groups of stakeholders in spatial planning are distinguished, namely public (national and local government) entities, and private entities (including individuals and businesses). We describe the mechanisms of stakeholders’ influence on spatial planning and the effects of this influence on the development of space. We found that the actual spatial planning mechanisms in Poland are aberrational from the perspective of public management. The ubiquity of these aberrations (in diverse municipalities) allows us to rule out the most obvious types of causes, particularly the incompetence or corruption of local authorities or administrative apparatus. Therefore, it is postulated that the causes of the aberrations are structural and inherent to the legal system that impacts spatial planning both directly and indirectly. We propose solutions to improve the situation through the appropriate management of relations with stakeholders in processes implemented by a public entity. The article presents a model of such management. A change in the legal context – above all an amendment of the law regulating spatial planning procedures – provides an opportunity to balance the impact of various stakeholders on spatial planning arrangements.

Using the Corpus of North American Spoken English to explore regional variation in millions of eɪ diphthongs

Increases in the quality of automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems and forced alignment algorithms have opened up new horizons for the study of acoustic properties of naturalistic speech (Coto-Solano et al., 2021). This paper describes the procedures used for the automatic extraction and alignment of audio and ASR transcript excerpts containing eɪ diphthongs from the Corpus of North American Spoken English, a 1.3-billion-word corpus of geolocated ASR transcripts of videos uploaded to YouTube channels of local government entities. In total, more than 2 million eɪ tokens were extracted from naturalistic speech in over 2000 locations in the US and Canada. The pipeline utilizes python code to extract audio segments from the DASH manifest of YouTube videos, then feeds them together with the corresponding transcript excerpt to the Montreal Forced Aligner. Targeted segments are then filtered using functions in Parselmouth, a python port of Praat. Because the underlying corpus is searchable and words are annotated with timing information, the extraction procedure is suitable for retrieving acoustic data from a range of naturalistic speech configurations (for example from discussions of particular topics or in the context of specific utterance types such as questions or replies). The corpus contains a variety of speech genres, making it suitable for studies of geophonetic and sociophonetic variation, and pipelines can be constructed to target specific phenomenona in YouTube videos, depending on the underlying research question.

Legal and Management Aspects Relating to SafetyEnergy in Local Government Entities

Legal and Management Aspects Relating to SafetyEnergy in Local Government Entities

Socio-hydrology and vulnerability of levee systems along the lower Illinois River

ABSTRACT The maintenance of flood mitigation levees in the U.S. and elsewhere, has often found to be insufficient. Recent U.S. levee safety inspections have discovered substantial deficiencies in many federally monitored levees resulting in some of them being assigned an ‘unacceptable’ safety rating. Most levees in the U.S. were constructed using federal money but then were turned over to local government entities to maintain, thus socioeconomic characteristics of these communities may impact their ability to maintain their levee(s). We used dasymetric mapping to assign socioeconomic parameters to levee protected areas along the lower Illinois River to explore differences in these characteristics between communities with an unacceptable levee safety rating to those with an acceptable rating. Principal components analysis was used to determine which socioeconomic parameters explained the majority of variance between levee protected communities and the Mann-Whitney-Wilcoxon U-Test for significance testing. These analyses revealed that differences in total population , race, average per-capita income, and number of residential homes were influential indicators for explaining differences between comunities with levees with acceptable versus unacceptable ratings. These results suggest populations who inhabit levee systems with unacceptable safety ratings are white and relatively wealthier than communities located within levee systems with acceptable ratings. This finding is counter to research that shows that the poor and poorer minorities live in areas with higher flood risk. This is perhaps wealthier floodplain property owners inhabitating unacceptable levee systems may be foregoing necessary levee maintenance, inastead relying on other government programs to pay for flood damages.

Improving the systemic approach to information security management in the context of increasing the level of data protection in local government entities

Improving the systemic approach to information security management in the context of increasing the level of data protection in local government entities

From Extraction to Attraction: Understanding the Socio-Economic and Environmental Interplay of Tin Mining and Tourism

The objective of this study is to gain a thorough understanding of the dynamic relationship between the tin mining industry and tourism in the Bangka Belitung Province of Indonesia. This study utilizes qualitative research methods. Findings revealed that there are challenges associated with the relationship between tin mining and tourism in the Province. The process of transitioning from extraction to attraction necessitates meticulous planning and collaboration among different stakeholders, such as local communities, government entities, private enterprises, and non-governmental organizations. Ensuring the long-term sustainability of both industries requires a paramount focus on balancing economic interests with environmental protection. This study highlights the importance of adopting a comprehensive approach to sustainable development in the Bangka Belitung Province. It is crucial for policymakers to give utmost importance to responsible mining practices and implement strict environmental regulations. At the same time, they should also focus on promoting investment in tourism infrastructure and enhancing capacity building. The collaboration between the mining and tourism sectors has the potential to generate innovative solutions that can bring benefits to the local economy, while also preserving cultural heritage and safeguarding the environment.

Knowledge and activity of the young generation of Poles in the scope of the functioning of local government entities

Knowledge and activity of the young generation of Poles in the scope of the functioning of local government entities

Responsibility of local government entities related to the implementation of the budget formulation and execution process – selected issues

The functioning of the local government in the state, finding its foundations in the decentralisation process, is related to the allocation of specific tasks to it and, as a consequence, to a relevant share in public revenues. Equipping local government units with financial resources is in fact an important element ensuring their ability to perform the entrusted public tasks, while running their own financial management allows for independent decisions on the manner of management of the entrusted public resources. Independent financial management relates to the adoption of a budget resolution on an annual basis, which is its basis, and with a specific procedure for budget execution. The granting of certain competences (public tasks), revenue authority and the attribute of independent running of the financial economy is connected to a specific mode of responsibility of local government units, which, like responsibility in financial law in general, is a complex issue and is characterised by a variety of applied sanctions and legal regulations. The sanctions applicable in this case – depending on the entity concerned – are primarily systemic financial law sanctions, administrative sanctions, sanctions for breach of public finance discipline, but also criminal sanctions, fiscal criminal sanctions and civil sanctions.

Why is the distribution of Specific Purpose Grants for Infrastructure (DAK fisik) not optimal?

Every year the distribution of Specific Purpose Grants for Infrastructure (DAK fisik) could be more optimal and accumulates at the end of the year. This study aims to identify constraining factors and provide solutions to the distribution of DAK fisik. The stages of the DAK fisik implementation start from planning, the process of procurement of goods/services, distribution, and implementation of activities. The implementation of the DAK fisik involves several central and local government entities. This research is qualitative with primary data collected using a questionnaire instrument distributed to the technical unit managing the DAK fisik in the City of Tegal. Primary data was also obtained from discussions and interviews with the specialized crew. The results of this study indicate that the factors of planning, implementation, regulation, human resources, procurement of goods/services, and distribution are factors in which some elements cause delays in the distribution of DAK fisik. The procurement of goods and services is the most inhibiting factor in the distribution of DAK fisik

Collaboration in crisis: Utilizing the SOS program, an at-home COVID-19 vaccine administration initiative, to demonstrate best practices in emergency management collaboration.

The Save Our Seniors (SOS) program was created by local government officials in South Texas to vaccinate the community's most vulnerable citizens amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. The Corpus Christi Fire Department (CCFD) collaborated with various local government entities and other organizations to identify individuals needing the vaccine but unable to leave home. The program was soon adopted statewide and beyond. Using data collected from interviews with the public officials and emergency management personnel responsible for the creation of the SOS program, this Viewpoint provides information about the collaborative efforts used to implement the program and offers best practices for collaboration in local emergency management.

Urban encroachment in ecologically sensitive areas: drivers, impediments and consequences

The drivers and consequences of unregulated urban expansion processes in Accra, Ghana, are examined together with the associated encroachment upon ecologically sensitive areas in the city’s rapidly growing periphery. Three sites are considered which attracted settlers from vastly different economic segments of the urban population from the 2000s and onwards. A combination of geographical information system (GIS)-based analysis, evidence from a recent household survey, insights from a range of key informant interviews and field observations provide evidence for the dynamics of urban expansion and settlement consolidation. These dynamics wield significant pressure on ecologically sensitive areas, <em>e.g.</em> wetlands, riparian zones and coastal lagoons, which are transformed into housing development through drainage, landfilling, channelling of streams and construction of barriers. Encroachment upon ecologically sensitive areas is associated with intensifying flood hazards. Key impediments are identified for the preservation of ecologically sensitive areas within the specific urban governance context of Accra. Encroachment is not necessarily driven by poverty or low income; it occurs for several socio-economic situations. Governance and enforcement in planning need improvement. Such insights must inform efforts to promote more sustainable trajectories of urban expansion, allowing cities to accommodate rapidly growing populations while preserving ecologically sensitive areas and benefiting from crucial ecosystem services. <strong><em><br /></em></strong> <strong><em>Policy relevance</em></strong> Critical impediments exist in planning urban expansion. Insights are provided on why ecologically sensitive areas are not sufficiently protected from urban encroachment. These include the intricacies of regulating land transactions in rural and peri-urban areas before incorporation into the built-up area of the city, the ambivalent and overlapping land administration systems, the strong incentives for traditional authorities to commercialise marginal land, the unfeasibility of policing permanent structures, and the lack of cooperation and coordination among local government entities concerning the management of urban watersheds. Within the urban governance context of Accra, encroachment upon ecologically sensitive areas constitutes a ‘wicked’ planning problem that defies rational, technical solutions and which is fraught with multi-causality, multiple perspectives and diverging interests. Insights into these complexities must inform efforts to promote more sustainable trajectories of urban expansion.