Use Of Government Services Research Articles

Service usage by a New Zealand Housing First cohort prior to being housed.

:BackgroundThe Ending Homelessness in New Zealand: Housing First research programme is evaluating outcomes for people housed in a Housing First programme run by The People's Project in Hamilton, New Zealand. This baseline results paper uses administrative data to look at the scope and duration of their interactions with government services.MethodsWe linked our de-identified cohort to the Integrated Data Infrastructure (IDI). This database contains administrative data on most services provided by the New Zealand Government to citizens. Linkage rates in all datasets were above 90%. This paper reports on the use of government services by the cohort before being housed. We focus on the domains of health, justice and income support.ResultsThe cohort of 390 people had over 200,000 recorded interactions across a range of services in their lifetime. The most common services were health, justice and welfare. The homeless cohort had used the services at rates far in excess of the general population. Unfortunately these did not prevent them from becoming homeless.ConclusionThese preliminary findings show the homeless population have important service delivery needs and a very high level of interaction with government services. This highlights the importance of analysing the contributing factors towards homelessness; for evaluation of interventions such as Housing First, and for understanding the need for integrated systems of government policy and practice to prevent homelessness. This paper also provides the baseline for post-Housing First evaluations.

Applying Behavioral Insights in Policy Analysis: Recent Trends in the United States

An understanding of human nature and of the motivations that drive human behavior have always informed public policies. The use of behavioral research in public policy analysis, which flows largely from social and cognitive psychology, behavioral economics, and other behavioral sciences, came into sharp focus in the last decade. Since then, policy initiatives incorporating behavioral insights have flourished, and thousands of research articles have been published on that topic. A lot of this research has focused on how behavioral insights used by governments at all levels can improve the delivery of governmental services and improve compliance and use of government services by the public. We review recent trends in policy initiatives that specifically incorporate behavioral insights in the United States and outline a framework for further integrating behavioral insights into the various stages of policy analysis and policy design.

How Immigration Enforcement Affects the Lives of Older Latinos in the United States

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of U.S. immigration enforcement on the lives of older Latinos in the United States. Data were drawn from the 2007 Pew Hispanic Center National Survey of Latinos. The sample consisted of 326 participants who were age 55 years or older. Multivariate ordinal logistic regressions indicated that participants who had greater hardships as a result of U.S. immigration enforcement (a) had lower use of government services, (b) perceived the situation for Latinos worse today, (c) had a greater fear of deportation, and (d) perceived a lower quality of life for themselves.

Citizen Apps to Solve Complex Urban Problems

Tackling complex urban problems requires us to examine and leverage diverse sources of information. Today, cities capture large amounts of information in real-time. Data are captured on transportation patterns, electricity and water consumption, citizen use of government services (e.g., parking meters), and even on weather events. Through open data initiatives, government agencies are making information available to citizens. In turn, citizens are building applications that exploit this information to solve local urban problems. Citizens are also building platforms where they can share information regarding government services. Information that was previously unavailable is now being used to gauge quality of services, choose services, and report illegal and unethical behaviors (e.g., requesting bribes). To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper to examine the range of citizen applications (“citizen apps”) targeting urban issues and to address their effects on urban planning, decision-making, problem solving, and governance. We examine citizen apps that address a wide range of urban issues from those that solve public transportation challenges to those that improve the management of public utilities and services and even public safety.

Using information and communications technology to reduce poverty in rural India

The note focuses on experiences in rural India, showing that information and communications technology (ICT) can enhance poor people's opportunities, by improving access to markets, as well as health care. Furthermore, it can empower them by expanding their use of government services, including increased security, and widened access to micro-finance. A revision follows on the computerized milk collection centers in Gujarat which ensures fair prices for small farmers, and, on enabling auxiliary nurse midwifes' services in Andhra Pradesh, by freeing time to deliver health care to poor people. Also reviewed is the case of Gyandoot - a government-owned computer network - making government accessible to villagers in the poor, drought-prone Dhar district in Madhya Pradesh, where immediate, and transparent access to local government data, and documentation is provided. A micro-finance institution in the Medak district of Andhra Pradesh, facilitates Smart Cards, that hold information on clients credit histories, lowering transaction costs, reducing errors, as well as fraud. However, designing interventions that reach the poor is successful, provided grassroots intermediation is taken into account, as well as local ownership, local languages, training, and awareness.

Seroprevalence estimation and management factors associated with high herd seropositivity for Babesia bovis in commercial dairy farms of Puerto Rico

A cross-sectional study was conducted to determine individual cow seroprevalence of Babesia bovis in adult lactating dairy cattle of Puerto Rico (PR), to assess the associations of farm management factors on herd seroprevalence, and to document the species of ticks infesting cattle within these farms. Antibody activity against B. bovis was determined using an indirect fluorescent antibody test (IFAT). Serum samples were obtained from 2,414 adult lactating dairy cattle from 76 randomly selected commercial dairy farms. Herd seroprevalence ranged from 0 to 51% with an overall individual cow seroprevalence for B. bovis of 26%. Ticks were collected from animals on 7 (9%) of the 76 participating commercial dairy farms. All collected ticks (n = 87) were Rhipicephalus (Boophilus) microplus. Factors associated with high herd seropositivity were dairy farms with calf but not heifer raising facilities (OR = 16, 95% CI = 3.0-86), having more than 4 neighbors with cattle (OR = 17, 95% CI = 1.6-178), same producer owning more than one farm (OR = 7.2, 95% CI = 1.6-32), and use of government services to apply amitraz on cattle (OR = 5.5, 95% CI = 1.5-20).

User Attitudes to E-Government Citizen Services in Europe

In 2005, the eUSER project undertook a questionnaire survey covering about 10,000 households in 10 European Union member states, the purpose of which was to provide some of the first systematic evidence in Europe of citizen user behaviour and their attitudes to the use of public services, and particularly the role of e-services in this context. The survey focused on a number of themes — the public’s use of government services, the different channels (or media) employed, the nature of potential future demand for e-government, the barriers and experiences in using e-government, and the socio-economic attributes of e-government users compared with non-users. The results provide important new information on the role that the Internet is now playing in the delivery and take-up of government services by European citizens. Face-to-face contact is still the most important channel for contacting government in Europe. In some countries (e.g., the UK), however, telephone and post have overtaken face-to-face. Results also show that potential demand for e-government services is about 50% of all government users and could be higher. One quarter of individual e-government users have acted as intermediaries for family members or friends, and one quarter have also done so on behalf of their employer. Most barriers that users anticipate they will meet when using e-government relate to difficulty in actually starting, with a feeling that face-to-face is better and the fear about data privacy important. However, once citizens have used e-government services, the barriers appear less, though still important, and relate mainly to the difficulty of feeling left alone with problems or questions.

The World Wide Web as an information system in Spain's regional administrations (1997–2000)

As a citizen's information system, the World Wide Web (Web) has led to a revolution in the information providing use of government services. It has also led to major changes in the very relationships that citizens have with their governments. The present work is an empirical analysis of the Web sites maintained by the Spanish regional government administrations. The aim is to determine the current degree of development of the technological application, the alternative service that the citizen is offered, and its evolution since 1997. The results show there to be different degrees of regional development, a notable advance in the number of new entities offering Internet-based services. They also demonstrate a slow evolution in the introduction of substantial changes into Web sites that have already been created and a great heterogeneity with respect to services provided (personnel directories, that is, addresses of functionaries and political appointees working in an Administration, press releases, tourist information, statistics, etc.). This study forms part of a broader investigation of the incidence of Internet technology within the Spanish Administration, that is, the hierarchy of organizations that administer Spain's public services.

The need for equity-oriented health sector reforms.

To many, the expression ‘health system reform’ brings to mind a particular set of measures widely adopted during the 1990s in order to deal with a particular problem: increased reliance on private sector institutions and operating procedures in order to improve efficiency. But in principle, the expression ‘health system reform’ is a general one, applied to a broad range of policy measures designed to deal with an equally broad range of problems. According to one standard definition, for example, health sector reform can be defined as ‘sustained, purposeful change to improve the efficiency, equity, and effectiveness of the health sector.’ 1 Adoption of a broader definition provides an opportunity to move beyond the current narrow debate over whether the particular reform measures of the past have helped or harmed the poor, to a broader look at the reform measures required to benefit the poor in the future. Such a look is badly needed. For a rapidly-growing body of evidence points to large differences between the poor and better-off not only with respect to health status and the use of private health services, but also with respect to the use of government services, including services widely promoted because of their anticipated relevance for the poor. This evidence points to a clear need for a new wave of major equity-oriented health sector reforms, conceived and executed with even more passion and determination than the efficiencydirected reforms of the 1990s. The objective: to increase the efficiency and effectiveness with which health systems reach the poor and disadvantaged, thereby alleviating current inequities in health service use and contributing to lessened differences in health status. The passages that follow will seek to stimulate further thought about how to achieve such reforms by presenting three arguments. The first is that significant reforms will require changes that are far deeper than commonly recognized in policy circles. The second is that current movement toward debt relief in poor countries is creating a climate potentially more favourable to such deeper changes than the climate of the recent past. The third is that epidemiological and health systems researchers can best help equity-oriented health policy makers take advantage of the present climate by developing an evidence base concerning intervention options for reaching the poor effectively.

Does use of a government service depend on distance from the health facility?

To reduce mortality from common childhood illnesses such as diarrhoea and upper respiratory infections, it is important that health services are available and used appropriately. Physical accessibility to a health facility may influence its use, particularly in rural areas. We assessed whether use of government services for treatment of the three most common acute childhood illnesses (fever, diarrhoea and upper respiratory infections) was influenced by the physical accessibility of the government primary health care centres. We analyzed data from a household survey which was collected between November 1992 and January 1993, from 139 randomly selected villages located around 14 government facilities in Thatta, a rural district of Pakistan. There were 691 children under 5 years of age who suffered from the three acute illnesses; 85% of these children used either a government or a private service. Children living at less than 4 km from a government facility made 22% less use of that facility than those living 4 km or more away. After controlling for the effects of distance from a private facility and treatment cost in a multiple logistic regression model, children living less than 4 km from a government facility were no more likely to use the facility than those living 4 km or more away (Adjusted Odds Ratio: 1.01, 95% Confidence Interval: 0.68-1.50). These results suggest that factors other than distance are the primary determinants of use of government services for treating children in the Thatta district. To increase the use of government health services, policymakers should assess carefully the factors determining the use of existing facilities, before they plan the building of more health facilities. Further studies are needed to examine the management of health facilities and the clients' perception of health-care providers.

The Demographic Implications of West African Family Systems

This study discusses family systems in Western Africa and the implications for mortality and fertility decline. Nigeria is used as the principal example. The author finds that the greatest changes occurring in Africa are those in the health field. Research confirms the greater extent of use of modern facilities and pharmaceuticals. Most West African women make decisions about the health of children unless expenses are involved. The shift in the recent past to user-pay systems and structural adjustment appears to have led to the decline in use of government services. It is argued that Nigerian infant mortality remained stable and child mortality increased during the 1980s due to the introduction of fees in 1984 devaluation of the currency and the high cost of imported drugs. The author emphasizes that the important issue is that health costs changed from a minor household expenditure to a major one involving family negotiations. West African lineage is a powerful force and distinctive in that its members never leave. Concepts of matrilineality and patrilineality differ in West Africa from East and Southern Africa. In West African societies there is double descent lineage. There is a strong belief that husbands have the final say in reproductive decisions. The survival of children is a fathers responsibility. Even matrilineal societies do not exclude a fathers right to family limitation. West African marriage is a contract between two lineages. Due to widespread polygamy a mother and her children comprise one economic unit. Fosterage is widespread. Shared decision making means shared blame when something goes wrong. West African fathers bear only part of the cost of raising children. It is argued that research gaps exist about how user-pay systems affect changes in health treatment how pressures on male budgets affect family limitation and how to trace divided budgets in lineages and marriages.