Editorial Introduction - GROUP 2022 Second Wave

For over a quarter century, GROUP has offered a premier yet intimate and welcoming venue for agenda-setting, diverse research. Although the traditional focus of the conference is on supporting group work, it has expanded to include research from computer-supported cooperative work, sociotechnical studies, practice-centered computing, human-computer interaction, computersupported collaborative learning, participatory technology design, and other related areas. The work presented in this issue embodies that interdisciplinary ethos. Papers in this issue cover a wide range topics, from human-AI collaboration, to collaboration in virtual reality, to perceptions of privacy and security, to the myriad impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. The application domains are similarly wide ranging, from health data, to civic engagement, to educational settings, to government provision of social services. Similar to the 2021 issue, this issue also continues the tradition of design fiction at GROUP. This issue of PACM:HCI brings you papers from the planned 2022 ACMConference on Supporting Group Work (GROUP 2022). Typically, the GROUP conference occurs every two years. However, research developments do not necessarily follow conference deadline cycles. Thus, the GROUP conference offers authors the opportunity to submit to multiple waves. The first wave of papers for this conference were published in July 2021 in Volume 5 of PACM:HCI, and papers from this current issue were first submitted in May 2021. Both of these sets of papers published as part of the planned GROUP 2022 conference were authored and reviewed during the COVID-19 pandemic. These papers represent commendable volumes of hard work and resilience, not just from the authors, but also from the reviewers, the program committee, and the conference organizers. Additionally, the pandemic forced a major change to the conference at which these papers will be presented.

State Fragility, Social Contracts and the Role of Social Protection: Perspectives from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Region

Social contracts and state fragility represent two sides of one coin. The former concept highlights that governments need to deliver three “Ps”—protection, provision, and political participation—to be acceptable for societies, whereas the latter argues that states can fail due to lack of authority (inhibiting protection), capacity (inhibiting provision), or legitimacy. Defunct social contracts often lead to popular unrest. Using empirical evidence from the Middle East and North Africa, we demonstrate how different notions of state fragility lead to different kinds of grievances and how they can be remedied by measures of social protection. Social protection is always a key element of government provision and hence a cornerstone of all social contracts. It can most easily counteract grievances that were triggered by decreasing provision (e.g., after subsidy reforms in Iran and Morocco) but also partially substitute for deficient protection (e.g., by the Palestinian National Authority, in pre-2011 Yemen) or participation (information campaign accompanying Moroccan subsidy cut; participatory set-ups for cash-for-work programmes in Jordan). It can even help maintain a minimum of state–society relations in states defunct in all three Ps (e.g., Yemen). Hence, social protection can be a powerful instrument to reduce state fragility and mend social contracts. Yet, to be effective, it needs to address grievances in an inclusive, rule-based, and non-discriminatory way. In addition, to gain legitimacy, governments should assume responsibility over social protection instead of outsourcing it to foreign donors.

Technologies for Connected Government Implementation

This chapter aims to identify critical success factors and examines the best use of Web 2.0 technologies to improve the effectiveness and transparency of electronic government (e-government) provision. To this end, the chapter presents the use of e-Portals for connected government (c-government), e-government, and mobile government. Since the connected government practices rely not only on the technologies used but also on the culture, regime, and structure of the population, a number of other relevant factors are also discussed to further determine the impact of latest technologies on c-government practices. This study has resulted in the identification of six basic critical success factors affecting the success of c-government. At the same time, it is suggested that Web 2.0 technologies may be used to make e-government applications more human-centred, transparent, social, dynamic, and applicable. New concepts such as Industry 4.0 and Society 5.0 are also examined.

Residents’ Resentment of Neighbourhood Choice in Port Harcourt Municipality

This study examined residents’ resentment of neighborhood choice in Port Harcourt municipality, Nigeria. The study utilized both secondary and primary data sources. Primary data were collected using face-to-face administration of a largely pre-coded household questionnaire, to a probability sample of 396 respondents, drawn from the neighbourhoods. Data analysis was based on responses from 193 questionnaires retrieved and the univariate analytical method was adopted. The study found that large percentage of residents reported a negative rating of neighbourhood choice indicators such as waste collection and disposal, safety of lives and property, fire stations, cleanliness of the neighbourhood, residential planning, and government provision of housing for the poor, hospitals/clinics, recreational areas, maintenance of streets, aesthetic condition, noise level and the neighbourhood condition. Residents rated markets adequate and fire hazards low. The study concluded that majority of the residents rated neighbourhood quality indicators inadequate. The study recommended that government should intervene in these areas to improve the neighbourhood quality to achieve sustainability.

The Threat of Aerial Bombing in World War Two Lagos, 1938–1943

The spectre of air bombing attacks on West African cities during World War Two remains an unexplored dimension of World War Two history. Lagos had long been perceived as vulnerable to attack from neighbouring Dahomey (Benin), and the Fall of France in June 1940 intensified these threats, while increasing anxiety concerning potential Axis raids. Focusing on air-raid planning in Lagos particularly, this article will argue that the possibility of aerial bombing exposed not simply the incapacity of the colonial government and officials’ limited understanding of housing and employment in 1940s Lagos, but also the inadequacy of measures to protect African lives. Conversely, the air-raid threat motivated Africans to critique limited government provision and propose their own interpretations of this new and deadly threat. Although the feared aerial raids never materialised, the crisis and anxiety they provoked yield significant insights into wartime Nigeria, local participation in civil defence, and African responses to World War Two more generally.

Rules for Recovery: Impact of Indexed Disaster Funds on Shock Coping in Mexico

Government provision of disaster transfers is typically hampered by liquidity constraints and by weak rules and administrative capacity to disburse reconstruction resources. We show that by easing these hurdles, Mexico’s indexed disaster fund (Fonden) considerably accelerates economic recovery after a disaster. To estimate Fonden impact on recovery, as measured by night lights, we exploit the heavy rainfall index that determines program eligibility. We find that for one year after a disaster, eligible municipalities are 6 percent brighter than those ineligible, with gains likely concentrated among less resilient municipalities. We additionally document how Fonden rules shield resources from political abuse. (JEL G22, H12, H84, O13, O18, Q54, R38)

Addressing Inequality: The First Step Beyond COVID-19 and Towards Sustainability

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted billions of lives across the world and has revealed and worsened the social and economic inequalities that have emerged over the past several decades. As governments consider public health and economic strategies to respond to the crisis, it is critical they also address the weaknesses of their economic and social systems that inhibited their ability to respond comprehensively to the pandemic. These same weaknesses have also undermined efforts to advance equality and sustainability. This paper explores over 30 interventions across the following nine categories of change that hold the potential to address inequality, provide all citizens with access to essential goods and services, and advance progress towards sustainability: (1) Income and wealth transfers to facilitate an equitable increase in purchasing power/disposable income; (2) broadening worker and citizen ownership of the means of production and supply of services, allowing corporate profit-taking to be more equitably distributed; (3) changes in the supply of essential goods and services for more citizens; (4) changes in the demand for more sustainable goods and services desired by people; (5) stabilizing and securing employment and the workforce; (6) reducing the disproportionate power of corporations and the very wealthy on the market and political system through the expansion and enforcement of antitrust law such that the dominance of a few firms in critical sectors no longer prevails; (7) government provision of essential goods and services such as education, healthcare, housing, food, and mobility; (8) a reallocation of government spending between military operations and domestic social needs; and (9) suspending or restructuring debt from emerging and developing countries. Any interventions that focus on growing the economy must also be accompanied by those that offset the resulting compromises to health, safety, and the environment from increasing unsustainable consumption. This paper compares and identifies the interventions that should be considered as an important foundational first step in moving beyond the COVID-19 pandemic and towards sustainability. In this regard, it provides a comprehensive set of strategies that could advance progress towards a component of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 10 to reduce inequality within countries. However, the candidate interventions are also contrasted with all 17 SDGs to reveal potential problem areas/tradeoffs that may need careful attention.

Self-Employment Dynamics of Immigrants and Natives: Individual-level Analysis for the Canadian Labour Market

This paper analyses the dynamic transitions of self-employment in four states of the Canadian labour market (paid-employment, self-employment, unemployment, and being out of the labour force) by answering three core questions: (1) What are the determinants of the transitions into and out of the four labour market states? (2) Are the probabilities of transitions between immigrants and natives significantly different, and if so, are they due to entry–exit rate gaps between immigrants and natives? (3) What are the proportions of spurious and structural state dependence in the labour market states of immigrants and natives? Our analysis was based on longitudinal data from Canada’s Survey of Labour and Income Dynamics (SLID) for males aged 25 to 55 for the period 1993 to 2004. Our results revealed that immigrants rather than natives are relatively more likely to be self-employed during the unemployment period. The findings also confirmed that males with positive investment income or wealth tended to be largely self-employed. From a policy perspective, the government provision of financial support towards self-employment positively benefits natives in seeking self-employment opportunities. Government policies to lessen labour market discrimination promotes the self-employment of immigrants.

For the good of the empire, or the relief of the poor? Motivations for British Government Provision of Famine Relief in Scotland, 1783–4

The failure of the grain and potato harvests across much of Britain in 1782 led to the enactment of traditional famine-relief measures across the country to secure sufficient food supply for the population. It has been well established by historians that the British government also allocated £10,000 worth of grain to the north of Scotland to provide additional support. What has been less thoroughly investigated is why. This article examines the motivations behind the government's break with traditional famine-relief policies by exploring the nature and impact of the crisis in the north of Scotland in greater detail. By comparing government intervention in major Scottish subsistence crises both before and after 1782–4, the government's actions in 1783 can be seen as marking a significant change in attitude towards the most vulnerable sections of the population during subsistence crises, and the inhabitants of the north of Scotland in particular. Consequently, a new policy of state-sponsored famine relief was established that shaped government response to subsequent Highland subsistence crises until the 1840s.