Permissibility of Repeal or Amend Municipality Participatory (Civic) Budget Resolution

Permissibility of repeal or amend participatory (civil) budget resolution can become a real problem during the COVID-19 pandemic (or during other crisis-like periods). On the one hand, that kind of action can undermine members of the local community trust in local authorities. On the other hand, the issue discloses a conflict between the essential values of local government. © 2022, Jagiellonian University. All rights reserved.

Reclaiming the Authority to Plan: Recentralization of COVID-19 Response in Ghana

The paper examines the implications of COVID-19 pandemic on multi-level governance (MLG) in Ghana. Adopting a qualitative document analysis approach supported by 18 key informant interviews, the findings revealed four enablers of recentralization: COVID-19-induced legislations for centralized decision, centralized distribution of relief packages and medical supplies, centralized institutional response, and centralized government communication strategies. Despite the use of centralized policy making, the management of pandemic is fraught with institutional inefficiencies, rigidities, and ambiguities. The paper argues that the recentralization of COVID-19 management is symptomatic of a long period of neglect of MLG in Ghana. Since, local governments are perceived as inept and ill-equipped, there is a mistaken believe that recentralized decisions are more effective during emergencies. To ensure an effective response to public emergencies, its mitigation and post-crisis recovery in developing countries, a MLG approach - where central, local, and other non-state actors work together in equal partnership is crucial.

Információbiztonsági incidenstrendek a közigazgatásban 2

A közigazgatás a kibertér felől érkező fenyegetések egyik leggyakoribb célpontja, az állami és önkormányzati szervek elleni kibertámadások egyre célzottabbak, kifinomultabbak és egyre nagyobb kár okozására képesek. Az elektronikus információs rendszerek biztonsága érdekében hatékony fizikai, logikai és adminisztratív intézkedéseket szükséges alkalmazni, amelyek meghatározásához elengedhetetlen az aktuális információbiztonsági incidenstrendek ismerete. Jelen tanulmány célja a Nemzetbiztonsági Szakszolgálat Nemzeti Kibervédelmi Intézet által, 2019 és 2021 közötti időszakban detektált információbiztonsági események átfogó elemzése, a közigazgatást érintő hazai incidenstrendek azonosítása érdekében. Az írás kiemelten vizsgálja, hogy a kibertámadók hogyan reagáltak a Covid-19-világjárványra, és ez milyen módon jelenik meg a hazai incidenstrendekben. Az elemzés további célkitűzése annak megállapítása, hogy mely szektort érte a legtöbb incidens a vizsgált időszakban, és mely incidenstípusok jellemzők ebben az ágazatban. További kutatási kérdésként merült fel, hogy a pszichológiai manipuláció milyen százalékos arányban mutatható ki a detektált incidenstrendekben.Alternate :Public administration is one of the most common targets of cyber threats. Cyberattacks against public and local governments are becoming increasingly targeted, sophisticated, and are capable of causing ever greater damage. Information systems security requires effective physical, logical and administrative measures, which needs knowledge of current trends in information security incidents. The aim of this study is to provide a comprehensive analysis of information security incidents detected by the National Cyber-Security Centre of Hungary between 2019 and 2021 in order to identify national incident trends affecting public administrations. The paper focuses on how cyber attackers have responded to the Covid-19 pandemic and how this is reflected in national incident trends. A further objective of the analysis is to identify which sector was affected the most by incidents during the period under review and which incident types are typical for this sector. A further research question was the percentage of social engineering in the detected incident trends.

Research on Operating Efficiency of Civil Airports in China

In this paper, the DEA-Malmquist model is used to evaluate static and dynamic efficiency of 30 civil airports in China from 2016 to 2021. The developments of airports in different regions are discussed from these aspects: the impact of local government policies and COVID-19 on changes of airports' total factor productivity, and differences in operating efficiency of airports in different regions. The results show that: there are great differences in the operating efficiency of airports in China, and the low pure technical efficiency is the main reason leading to the low technological efficiency. The stagnation of total factor productivity of Chinese airports is mainly influenced by technological progress, and its negative effect drags down the stable technical efficiency and scale efficiency. There are obvious differences in operating efficiency among different regions. Airports in the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta have the highest efficiency, the Chengdu-Chongqing region has the fastest development, and the northeast region has the slowest development and the lowest operating efficiency. © 2022 ACM.

Reasons for Not Adopting COVID-19 Permitted Changes to Legal Duties: Accounts from English Local Authorities

In England, "easements,” introduced via the Coronavirus Act 2020, were brought in at the start of the pandemic to support English local authority adult social care services. They enabled local authorities to suspend some of their mandatory duties under the Care Act 2014. Easements were only adopted by eight local authorities and for short periods, and the provision was rescinded in late 2021. This article examines why a sample of 16 local authorities, some of which were statistically close to the eight local authorities that did decide to use easements, decided not to do so. It draws on data from interviews undertaken in 2021 with Directors of Adult Services and Principal Social Workers that explored their decision-making about using easements. It also outlines their preparations prior to the pandemic reaching England, how they had operated using "flexibilities” within the Care Act thus not needing to adopt easements, and their views on those authorities that had adopted them.

Partisan polarization, historical heritage, and public health: Exploring COVID-19 outcomes.

When the COVID-19 virus first arrived in the United States in early 2020, many epidemiologists and public health officers counseled for shutdowns and advised policymakers to prepare for a major pandemic. In 2020, though, US society was rife with major political and cultural divides. Some elected leaders promoted policies at odds with the experts, and many people refused to heed the public health-based communications about the coming pandemic. Additionally, the capacity to respond to a pandemic was distributed in the country in a highly unequal fashion. This paper analyzes the noteworthy geopolitical patterns of COVID-19 illnesses, subsequent demands on hospitals, and resulting deaths. This description is based on a snapshot of archival data gathered in the midst of the pandemic during late January and early February of 2021. Demographic data, indicators of political party support, indicators of citizen attitudes, and public health compliance behaviors are combined in a multivariate analysis to explain COVID-19 outcomes at the local government (county) level. The analysis suggests strongly that regional political culture and local demographics played a substantial role in determining the severity of the public health impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Cuando el virus COVID­19 llegó por primera vez a los Estados Unidos a principios de 2020, muchos epidemiólogos y funcionarios de salud pública recomendaron cierres y aconsejaron a los legisladores que se prepararan para una gran pandemia. Sin embargo, en 2020, la sociedad estadounidense estaba plagada de grandes divisiones políticas y culturales. Algunos líderes electos promovieron políticas en desacuerdo con los expertos, y muchas personas se negaron a prestar atención a las comunicaciones basadas en la salud pública sobre la próxima pandemia. Además, la capacidad de respuesta ante una pandemia se distribuyó en el país de manera muy desigual. Este documento analiza los patrones geopolíticos notables de las enfermedades de COVID­19, las demandas posteriores en los hospitales y las muertes resultantes. Esta descripción se basa en una instantánea de los datos de archivo recopilados en medio de la pandemia a fines de enero y principios de febrero de 2021. Los datos demográficos, los indicadores de apoyo a los partidos políticos, los indicadores de las actitudes de los ciudadanos y los comportamientos de cumplimiento de la salud pública se combinan en un modelo multivariado. análisis para explicar los resultados de COVID­19 a nivel del gobierno local (condado). El análisis sugiere fuertemente que la cultura política regional y la demografía local desempeñaron un papel importante en la determinación de la gravedad del impacto de la pandemia de COVID­19 en la salud pública.

Effects of intergovernmental revenue on local government draw on fiscal reserves: evidence from COVID-19 fiscal stress

This study investigates the effects of receipt and anticipation of intergovernmental revenues on local governments draw on accumulated fiscal reserves to cushion the impacts of COVID-19-related fiscal stress. Several studies have been conducted on determinants of fiscal reserves accumulation. However, little is known about the determinants of government draw on fiscal reserves, beyond revenue shortfall, in times of fiscal stress. Dwelling on the premise that government's draw on fiscal reserves is influenced by factors beyond revenue shortfall and controlling for the effects of revenue shortfalls and other factors, we analysed local government survey data to determine the effects of intergovernmental revenue on government draw on fiscal reserves. Results show that draw on fiscal reserves is significantly constrained by percent of FY 2020 revenue received from federal and state governments, but significantly and positively inluenced by revenue losses and percent of FY 2021 revenue anticipated from federal government.

Striving for wellbeing digitally in the city amidst the pandemic: Solidarity through Twitter in Ankara.

This article elaborates on the utilization of social media for practices of interaction in the city during the COVID-19 pandemic and discusses its potential in providing for the wellbeing of urban communities. During the early periods of the pandemic when preventative measures were taken intensively to decrease contamination, communities lacked physical relationships with and within cities. Interactions realized in physical spaces in normal conditions were compensated with practices in social media. While such shift can be perceived to have decreased the meaning of cities in the pursuit of daily life and interactions, efforts which were localized upon physical human settlements yet were realized in the digital realm seem to have opened alternative paths for connection among residents. Within this context, we explore Twitter data through three hashtags which were promoted by the local government of Ankara and used densely by the residents in the early periods of the pandemic. Considering that social connection is one of the fundamental enablers of wellbeing, we aim to provide insights into the strive for wellbeing in times of crises where ruptures in physical interaction prevail. The patterns we observe in the expressions that gather around the selected hashtags shed a light on the ways the cities, their people and local governments are positioned in the struggles pursued in digital realm. Our findings support our arguments that social media has significant potential in contributing to the wellbeing of people especially in times of crisis, local governments can increase the quality of life of their citizens with modest actions, and the cities hold significant meanings for people as loci of communities and thus of wellbeing. Through the discussions we pursue, we seek to contribute to the stimulation of research, policies, and community actions that aim at the enhancement of wellbeing of urban individuals and communities.

Insights from the Field: How North Carolina Local Government Climate Communications Compare to IPCC Guidelines

As climate change increasingly threatens the United States, many local governments are implementing programs in response, helping to reduce their communities' contributions to climate change and enhancing their resilience to climate impacts. The purpose of this study is to understand how local governments in North Carolina communicate with residents about their climate change programming. Twelve local government sustainability employees participated in interviews about how they communicated with and received input from residents about such programs. Interview transcripts were coded and analyzed using Atlas.ti 9, and communications approaches were compared to Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recommendations. Participants' communications could be characterized as applying some of the IPCC recommendations, and findings suggest opportunities for greater adoption of IPCC strategies in local government communication about climate programs. The Covid-19 pandemic was primarily described as a barrier to communicating about climate programs but also was credited as creating an opportunity for enhanced connections in one community. Additionally, participants described misconceptions about climate change programming expressed by residents, such as initiatives being perceived as impractical when they were in fact feasible. © 2023 Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers.

Multitask Learning Neural Networks for Pandemic Prediction with Public Stance Enhancement

State and local governments have imposed health policies to contain the spread of COVID-19 since it had a serious impact on human daily life. However, the public stance on these measures may be time-varying. It is likely to escalate the infection in the area where the public is negative or resistant. To take advantage of the correlation between public stance on health policies and the COVID-19 statistics, we propose a novel framework, Multitask Learning Neural Networks for Pandemic Prediction with Public Stance Enhancement (MP3), which is composed of three modules: (1) Stance awareness module to make stance detection on health policies from users' tweets in social media and convert them into a stance time series. (2) Temporal feature extraction module that applies Convolution Neural Network and Recurrent Neural Network to extract and fuse local patterns and long-term correlations from COVID-19 statistics. Moreover, a Stance Latency-aware Attention is proposed to capture dynamic social effects and fuse them with temporal features. (3) Multi-task prediction module to adopt Graph Convolution Network to model the spread of pandemic and employ multi-task learning to simultaneously predict COVID-19 statistics and the trend of public stance on health policies. The proposed framework outperforms state-of-the-art baselines on both confirmed cases and deaths prediction tasks. © 2022 IEEE.

The Game Analysis among Governments, the Public and Green Smart Supply Chain Enterprises in Necessity Purchase and Supply during COVID-19 Pandemic

During the COVID-19 pandemic, panic buying, price inflation, and the pollution of production processes led to economic and social unrest. In response to the current situation, the current research takes less account of the subjective perception of public panic buying and the lack of reference to the reality of effective governance. First, this paper uses prospect theory to portray the public's perceived value of goods in panic buying and non-panic buying situations. Then, drawing on the experience of effective governance in China, a tripartite evolutionary game model of local government, the public and green smart supply chain enterprises is constructed under the reward and punishment mechanism of the central government. Then, this paper analyzes the strategic choices of each game player and the stability of the system equilibrium. The structure of the study suggests the following. (1) Improving local government subsidies and penalties, the cost of positive response and the probability of response can lead to an evolutionary direction where the public chooses not to panic buy and green smart supply chain enterprises choose to ensure a balance between supply and demand and increase pollution control in the production process. (2) Our study yields three effective combinations of evolutionary strategies, of which an ideal combination of evolutionary strategies exists. Non-ideal evolutionary strategy combinations can occur due to improper incentives and penalties of local governments and misallocation of limited resources. However, we find four paths that can transform the non-ideal evolutionary strategy combination into an ideal evolutionary strategy combination. (3) The central government's reward and punishment mechanism is an important tool to stabilize the tripartite strategy, but the central government cannot achieve effective governance by replacing incentives with punishment.

Governance response during COVID-19 and political affirmative action: evidence from local governments in India. (Special Issue: Local governments in pandemic response.)

A great deal of work argues that the entry of women into public spaces can promote political and institutional change. The COVID-19 provides an opportunity to investigate whether and under what conditions women's political representation in rural local governments deliver effective local governance? Drawing from two rounds of data collected in 174 local governments and 1051 households in three Indian states, the paper shows that women Pradhans in the Gram Panchayats had no differential impact on the governance response to COVID-19 compared to the unreserved ones. Analyzing the heterogeneity in these responses suggests that institutional factors like the proportion of women in village council and local entrepreneurship diversity can enhance women Pradhan's capacity to respond to the pandemic. We explore two channels that enable women Pradhan to govern effectively during the pandemic: improving women's participation in the labor force and reducing household's vulnerability to poverty in the pre-COVID period.

Parties, Patronage and COVID-19 Vaccination Distribution in Indonesia

During the COVID-19 pandemic, as Indonesia mobilized to deliver vaccines to the population, an unexpected phenomenon occurred: political parties became directly involved in the vaccine delivery effort. In this article, we draw on online reports and interviews to demonstrate that these campaigns acted as an extension of the patronage politics that dominate the country's political arena. The involvement of political parties had little effect on the national vaccination effort, as parties delivered a relatively small number of vaccines and often targeted areas that already had high coverage. Instead, parties and politicians used these events to strengthen links with constituents and supporters. We identify three main pathways that allowed political parties to access the vaccines: lobbying by members of the national legislature's health commission;through local governments;and by direct executive government access to the national Ministry of Health. This "hijacking" of a national policy for clientelistic purposes provides insight into the presence of intra-party coordination of patronage goods but also demonstrates the personalization and fragmentation of patronage distribution highlighted in the existing literature. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for the quality of public healthcare and other services in Indonesia.

Documents on Democracy

Global/Canada The post–Cold War assumption of democracy's inevitable triumph—described by Francis Fukuyama as the "End of History" thesis—does not apply to our world, and democracies need to adjust accordingly, argues Canada's deputy prime minister, Chrystia Freeland. The jeers I face in Question Period, the fact-checking of skeptical journalists, the hard verdict of the ballot box—all of these make me a better minister than I would be if we governed in splendid authoritarian isolation. Support independent workers' power in and beyond these protests;abolish anti-worker practices like the 996 work schedule and strengthen labor law protections, including protecting workers' right to strike and self-organization, so they can participate more extensively in political life. Avoid the risky tactic of long-term occupation of streets and town squares—adopt "Be Water"-style mobilization to prevent authorities from too easily clamping down on protesters.

Changes in the Number of Public Health Nurses Employed in Local Governments in Japan During the Covid-19 Pandemic: A Cross-Sectional Study.

Introduction: Prefectural public health centers in Japan conducted epidemiological surveys of all COVID-19 patients, which subsequently increased their workload as the infection rate increased. The survey was conducted by public health nurses (PHNs); therefore, an increase in their workload was expected. However, changes in the number of PHNs have not yet been examined. This study focused on recruiting PHNs to local governments in Japan during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods: This cross-sectional study of 150 local government public health centers was conducted from November to December 2021. The survey items included the number of full-time and part-time PHNs, number of PHNs who resigned or retired from the job, and number of PHNs recruitment examinations conducted between 2017 and 2021. For all variables, the mean, standard deviation, and minimum and maximum values for each municipality and year were calculated, and a one-way analysis of variance was performed. Conclusion: The response rate of the questionnaires was 54.0% (81/150). The change in the employment status of PHNs from 2019 to 2020 was not statistically significant in 2020, which was the COVID-19 outbreak year. However, the number of full-time PHNs increased by 2.6, while part-time PHNs almost doubled from 5.2 ± 8.3 to 10.8 ± 9.6 (p = .61) for prefectures, from 13.6 ± 13.1 to 21.5 ± 34.8 (p = .23) for cities, and from 16.8 ± 26.8 to 52.3 ± 132.5 (p = .70) for wards. The survey revealed that since the COVID-19 pandemic, the ratio of part-time to full-time PHNs significantly increased. Current status reports of public health centers will encourage political decisions and research on the factors necessary to balance the supply and demand of full-time PHNs.

The Comprehensive Analysis of the Network of Superstructure Based on Territorial Characteristics of Accommodation and Food and Beverage Service Providers Considering the Financial Crisis and COVID-19: The Case of Bihor County, Romania

This study presents the territorial differences in structure of functioning accommodation and food-and-beverage service providers by their distribution based on registered field of economic activity and financial data on the level of local governments within Bihor County that were classified into four potential destination types. Furthermore, the aim of the research is to identify the concentration of business activities based on their turnover in proportion to the population on the level of local governments using the Hoover-index method for the period of 2005–2020. Lastly, another aim is to examine the efficiency of these hospitality service providers using the Hoover index on their sales revenue in proportion to their labor force between 2005 and 2020. The time frame enabled the examination of the effects of two critical incidents: the financial crisis of 2008 and COVID-19, which impacted the activity of the examined firms in hospitality. As a result, both group of service providers showed a significant increase in number of entities, turnover, and average annual number of employees after 2014. That trend was intensively interrupted by COVID-19, which was not the case for the period of financial crisis. The significance of Oradea and Sânmartin were present as central areas regarding business activities of the examined fields, thus crucially influencing the trends of the county. In the case of territorial inequalities, the two categories showed differing trends, as in the case of efficiency, although lodging services proved to show higher territorial inequalities but better performance.

Perspectives on social equity in local government administration: Scheduling a city council hearing during San Diego's COVID-19 pandemic

Learning how to ensure public access and advance social equity in the legislative process is critical to navigating an ambiguous local government context. This case study compares and contrasts the perspectives of and diverse demands on two public administrators, the San Diego City Clerk and the Chief of Staff to the San Diego City Council President, as they navigate the critical decision to hold a City Council hearing to consider emergency actions, including direction to draft an eviction moratorium, during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. Through presenting the viewpoints of a leader in an independent city operations department and a leader in an elected official's office, we demonstrate how to analyze and think critically, facilitate public participation, and lead in the public interest. This case study encourages students to develop an awareness of these perspectives and to reflect on social equity through the lens of public access and the legislative process. © 2023 Network of Schools of Public Policy, Affairs, and Administration.

Perceptions of and Attitudes toward COVID-19 Vaccination among Urban Slum Dwellers in Dhaka, Bangladesh

Vaccine hesitancy or low uptake was identified as a major threat to global health by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2019. Vaccine hesitancy is context-specific and varies across time, place, and socioeconomic groups. In this study, we aimed to understand the perceptions of and attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccination through time among urban slum dwellers in Dhaka, Bangladesh. In-depth telephone interviews were conducted between October 2020 and January 2021 with 36 adults (25 females and 11 males) living in three urban slums of Dhaka City, Bangladesh. Follow-up interviews were undertaken in April and August 2021 to capture any shift in the participants' perceptions. Our findings show that for many there was an initial fear and confusion regarding the COVID-19 vaccine among people living in urban informal settlements;this confusion was soon reduced by the awareness efforts of government and non-government organizations. Women and young people were more interested in being vaccinated as they had had more exposure to the awareness sessions conducted by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and on social media. However, people living in the slums still faced systemic barriers, such as complicated online vaccine registration and long queues, which led to low uptake of the vaccine despite their increased willingness to be vaccinated. This study highlights the importance of using sources such as NGO workers and television news to debunk myths, disseminate COVID-19 vaccine information, and support adherence to vaccination among urban slum dwellers. Our study underscores the importance of addressing systemic barriers blocking access and understanding community perceptions in order to develop effective communication strategies for vulnerable groups that will then improve the COVID-19 vaccine uptake.

Methods for the final evaluation of Health Japan 21 (the second term): focusing on the method of evaluating health indices against targets

The final evaluation of "Health Japan 21 (the second term)" was carried out in 3 stages: (1) evaluation of the target items against the target values;(2) evaluation of the results of various activities;and, (3) evaluation of the health promotion movement as a whole in the 21st century, and clarification of the issues that exist for formulating the next National Health Promotion Plan. This paper primarily explains the methods for stage (1), so that it can be used as a reference when evaluating the health promotion plans of local governments. "Health Japan 21 (the second term)" has 53 specific "target items," based on five basic directions. One or more specific "indicator(s)" are set for each target item, and the actual values of the indicators against the target values, as well as related efforts are evaluated. To better understand the trends of the indicators by segment, the data were presented in a visual and attractive manner using charts and figures. In addition, confidence intervals were calculated for the values of indicators, a statistical test was performed, and adjustments for age were made if necessary and possible. By comparing the actual value of each indicator against the target value, an evaluation was made by classification into the following categories: (A) achieved the target value, (B) improved, (C) unchanged, (D) became worse, or (E) difficult to evaluate. In addition to the individual indicators, the overall evaluation of each target item was similarly classified into A to E. The results of the evaluation and analysis for each target item were summarized in the "Evaluation Sheet - Form 1," which included annual trends in the indicators against target values, data sources and calculation methods, analysis results (including issues regarding the survey), and the evaluations of the individual indicator (s) and target items. In the "Evaluation Sheet - Form 2," the results of the evaluations were reported in more detail, consisting of a summary of the evaluation status of the target items, the organization of related efforts, analysis related to the evaluation of each target item, future issues, and the impact of the spread of the COVID-19 infection. Furthermore, in stage (2), the efforts of the national government, local governments, companies, and organizations were organized and evaluated. In stage (3), in addition to the evaluation of Health Japan 21 (the second term), the major flow of movement of Japan's health promotion, continuing from Health Japan 21 was comprehensively evaluated, and the issues for the next National Health Promotion Plan were sorted out. For convenience in evaluating the health promotion plans in local governments, PC tools that enable the same data analysis, such as age-adjustment, statistical tests, figures, and charts, that are used for the evaluation of "Health Japan 21 (the second term)" are provided on the website of National Institute of Public Health, and are also used in the training programs. When evaluating the local health promotion plans in prefectures and municipalities, it is advisable to refer to them, as necessary.