The Use of Blockchain Technology in e-Government Services

e-Government services have evolved significantly over the last decade, from a paper-based bureaucratic procedure to digital services. Electronically processed transactions require limited physical interaction with the public administration, and provide reduced response times, increased transparency, confidentiality and integrity. Blockchain technology enhances many of the above properties as it facilitates immutability and transparency for the recorded transactions and can help establish trust among participants. In this paper, we conduct a literature review on the use of blockchain technology in e-government applications to identify e-government services that can benefit from the use of blockchains, types of technologies that are chosen for the proposed solutions, and their corresponding maturity levels. The aim is to demonstrate blockchain’s potential and contribution to the field, provide useful insights to governments who are considering investing in this innovative technology, and facilitate researchers in their future activities in blockchain-enabled e-government services.

Orthodoxy Marches West

On New Year’s Day 1837, what might appear to be an insignificant change in bureaucratic procedure actually signified a major step in effecting one of history’s most striking examples of confessional engineering and in terminating the existence of an entire church within the Russian empire. Formally proclaimed in 1839, the union of the Greek Catholic (Uniate) Church with Orthodoxy pushed the boundary between Western and Eastern Christianity substantially westward, and played a key role both in consolidating a single Orthodox Russian nation and in binding territories previously acquired from Poland to Russia’s central provinces. The audacious project had begun a decade or so earlier, but 1837 represented a decisive moment in this process.

Trapped into Reverse Asymmetry: Public Employment Services Dealing with Employers

Although often neglected, the availability of employment opportunities is central to the effectiveness of active labour market policies. Employers play a crucial role in this policy field as they are both clients and co-producers of public employment services (PES). This study focuses on that relationship and reports qualitative research conducted in Tuscany (central Italy) from a street-level perspective. The findings show how public job-brokers manage this asymmetrical relationship and develop specific strategies to obtain employers’ cooperation and accomplish the PES mandate. The strategies identified here involve language adaptation, curricula “creaming”, and control of the bureaucratic procedure. These are shaped through a variable mix of four components that will be defined as relational, perceptive, technical, and tactical. This study contributes to the debate on activation policies, analysing in detail how PES frontline workers interact with employers, dealing with market logic in the public encounter.

The Relationship Between Jurisdiction and the Local Authority’s Online Sustainability Disclosure

<p>The objective of this paper is to examine the relationship between jurisdiction and the extent of sustainability information disclosure on Malaysian local authority websites. The extent of online sustainability disclosure is examined utilizing the coercive isomorphism tenet in both quantitative and qualitative phases. In the quantitative stage, the analysis of 139 websites was conducted. The General Linear Model is utilized to determine the relationship between jurisdiction (measured by different states) and the extent of online sustainability information disclosure. In the qualitative phase, the semi-structured interviews were carried out to answer the underlying possible reasons derived from the quantitative phase. The quantitative phase provided evidence that various states have applied distinctive degree of coercive pressures on the extent of sustainability information disclosure on Malaysian local authority websites. The interview findings revealed additional factors that are relating to the jurisdiction: political, state leadership, and bureaucratic procedure implemented by different states. The paper has recognized the impact of coercive isomorphism for the jurisdiction utilizing both quantitative and qualitative phases.</p>

Why have Advance Directives failed in Spain?

Background In Spain, there has been great effort by lawmakers to put Advance Directives (ADs) into practice since 2002. At the same time, the field of bioethics has been on the rise, a discipline that has spurred debate on the right of patients to exercise their autonomy. Despite all this, the implementation of ADs can be said to have failed in Spain, because its prevalence is very low, there is a great lack of knowledge about them and they have very little impact on clinical decisions. The purpose of this article is to analyze and discuss the main reasons for the failure of ADs in Spain. Main body The main reasons why ADs have no impact on clinical practice in Spain have been fundamentally four: (1) the training of health professionals about the end of life and AD is lacking; (2) there has been no public process to increase awareness about AD, and therefore people (with the exception of specific highly sensitized groups) know little about them; (3) the bureaucratic procedure to document and implement ADs is excessively complex and cumbersome, creating a significant barrier to their application; (4) in Spain, the remnants of a paternalistic medical culture continue to exist, which causes shared decision-making to be difficult. Conclusion Due to the four reasons mentioned above, AD have not been a useful tool to help honor patients’ autonomous decisions about their future care and, therefore, they have not achieved their objective. However, despite the difficulties and problems identified, it has also been observed that health care professionals and the Spanish public have a very positive view of AD. Having identified the problems which have kept AD from being successful, strategies must be developed to help improve their implementation into the future.

“I have to read it out loud”: Intertextuality in prison discipline

This article combines ethnographic and linguistic analysis to illuminate a critical aspect of the US criminal justice system—disciplinary hearings in prison. Focusing on one woman's (Cherry's) hearing, I consider the remaking of power through bureaucratic procedure. The scripted interaction requires the sergeant to read Cherry's ticket out loud in his performance of authority. I explore the intertextual relations motivated by this verbal animation for their ability to construct a unified front of the institution against which Cherry is tried. Cherry, however, manipulates these intertextual relationships, deploying verbal skills gained through her long entanglement with the criminal justice system to mitigate her punishment. The linguistic analysis of Cherry's hearing, positioned in her prison history, reveals the continual remaking of power in prison interactions that are framed by institutional regulations influencing the negotiation of officer authority and possibilities of inmate resistance. (Prisons, intertextuality, resistance, power, legal interactions)*

How could it happen? The killing of people in mental hospitals in Germany under the Third Reich

About 70 000 people resident in mental hospitals in Germany were killed by gassing between 1940 and 1941. The number matched a target which had been set previously. This dreadful crime both required, and was facilitated by, a certain bureaucratic procedure. This was described by SS Colonel Viktor Brack under questioning before the Nuremberg Military Court in 1946 (translated from the German by the author).

Heirs of Yu the Great: Flood Relief in 1740s China

This article presents a case study of the bureaucratic response to devastating floods that struck northern Jiangsu and Anhui provinces in 1746. It is based on the detailed official directives preserved in an anonymous casebook of administrative correspondence. The work offers revealing glimpses into the world of a senior official striving to balance correct bureaucratic procedure with prompt, meticulous attention to the pressing needs of over 800,000 flood victims. The article highlights some noteworthy features of the approach to flood relief reflected in the casebook, thereby complementing previous scholarship on the state's response to drought in the same period and refining our understanding of some points of procedure. The material arguably represents Qing famine-relief efforts at their peak of conscientiousness, on the eve of a long era of decline. Concluding reflections place the study in a larger, cross-cultural framework, identifying possible implications for the diplomacy of human rights in our own day. L'étude de cas présentée dans cet article porte sur la réponse de la bureaucratie aux inondations dévastatrices qui affligèrent les provinces du Jiangsu et du Anhui en 1746. Elle s'appuie sur les directives officielles détaillées conservées dans un recueil anonyme de correspondance administrative. L'ouvrage livre des aperçus révélateurs de l'univers d'un haut fonctionnaire s'efforçant de jongler entre l'application correcte de la réglementation et une attention immédiate et méticuleuse aux besoins urgents de plus de 800 000 victimes d'inondations. L'article met en lumière quelques traits remarquables des méthodes adoptées pour secourir ces dernières, ce qui permet de compléter les travaux antérieurs consacrés à l'action contre la sécheresse pendant ces mêmes années et d'affiner notre compréhension sur certains points de procédure. Les matériaux analysés représentent probablement les efforts pour combattre la famine sous les Qing au maximum de leur efficacité, avant une longue période de déclin. Les remarques de conclusion replacent cette étude dans une perspective interculturelle plus large et suggèrent de possibles implications pour la diplomatie des droits de l'homme aujourd'hui même.