• Title/Summary/Keyword: The Public Sphere

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Endemic Corruption in Supply Chain and Procurement in the Local Sphere of Government in South Africa

  • Odeku, Kola O.
    • Journal of Distribution Science
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    • v.16 no.9
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    • pp.43-52
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    • 2018
  • Purpose - This article accentuates that there is pervasive corruption in the supply chain and procurement of goods and services in the South African public sector, particularly in the local sphere of government. Consequently, the poor and the indigents who are supposed to receive quality services are affected. Therefore, the article emphasizes the need to strengthen compliance in the supply chain and procurement processes in order to combat corruption. Research design, data, and methodology - This article extensively utilized qualitative literature review approach to address and solve the problem of endemic corruption in the supply chain and procurement being perpetrated by local government officials. Results - The synthesis shows that by strengthening compliance of supply chain and procurement strategies, measures and frameworks, the likelihood of corruption will be drastically reduced if not totally eradicated. It demonstrates that the poor and the indigents who are supposed to receive quality services are being denied due to corruption. It also shows that failure to comply should result to enforcement of punitive sanctions against perpetrators. Conclusions - This study indicates that effective and efficient implementation of supply chain and procurement strategies, measures and frameworks are panacea for curbing corruption in South Africa public sector especially at the local sphere of government.

A Study on the Roles of Public Libraries as Community Public Spheres: Focused on the Case of Seongbuk Public Libraries in Seoul (지역사회 공론장으로서 공공도서관 역할에 대한 연구 - 서울 성북구립도서관 사례를 중심으로 -)

  • Yeon Ok Lee;Young Ah Kang
    • Journal of the Korean Society for Library and Information Science
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    • v.57 no.1
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    • pp.139-160
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    • 2023
  • The research was undertaken to explore the role of the public library as a public sphere. For this, the characteristics and meanings of the library's role were examined by analyzing the public spheres operated by the public library. Data were collected through interviews with librarians at Seongbuk Public Libraries in Seoul. Data collected were coded using NVivo for thematic analysis. As a result of the study, the characteristics and meanings of the library's role in the public sphere were identified in the following five types; 1) A place for meeting, communication and interaction of citizens, 2) Supporting citizen learning and growth through information services and discussion on the subject, 3) Expanding civic participation in the community and strengthen civic power, 4) Strengthening citizens' experience of democracy, 5) Improving citizens' perception of libraries and expanding the library's influence on citizens. In particular, it was found that information services enhance citizen interaction and spread of public opinion on the agenda. The results of this study can be used as a basis for developing and supporting libraries as community public spheres.

Problems of Applying Information Technologies in Public Governance

  • Goshovska, Valentyna;Danylenko, Lydiia;Hachkov, Andrii;Paladiiichuk, Sergii;Dzeha, Volodymyr
    • International Journal of Computer Science & Network Security
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    • v.21 no.8
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    • pp.71-78
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    • 2021
  • The relevance of research provides the necessity to identify the basic problems in the public governance sphere and information technology relations, forasmuch as understanding such interconnections can indicate the consequences of the development and spreading information technologies. The purpose of the research is to outline the issues of applying information technologies in public governance sphere. 500 civil servants took part in the survey (Ukraine). A two-stage study was conducted in order to obtain practical results of the research. The first stage involved collecting and analyzing the responses of civil servants on the Mentimeter online platform. In the second stage, the administrator used the SWOT-analysis system. The tendencies in using information technologies have been determined as follows: the institutional support development; creation of analytical portals for ensuring public control; level of accountability, transparency, activity of civil servants; implementation of e-government projects; changing the philosophy of electronic services development. Considering the threats and risks to the public governance system in the context of applying information technologies, the following aspects generated by societal requirements have been identified, namely: creation of the digital bureaucracy system; preservation of information and digital inequality; insufficient level of knowledge and skills in the field of digital technologies, reducing the publicity of the state and municipal governance system. Weaknesses of modern public governance in the context of IT implementation have been highlighted, namely: "digitization for digitalization"; lack of necessary legal regulation; inefficiency of electronic document management (issues caused by the imperfection of the interface of reporting interactive forms, frequent changes in the composition of indicators in reporting forms, the desire of higher authorities to solve the problem of their introduction); lack of data analysis infrastructure (due to imperfections in the organization of interaction between departments and poor capacity of information resources; lack of analytical databases), lack of necessary digital competencies for civil servants. Based on the results of SWOT-analysis, the strengths have been identified as follows: (possibility of continuous communication; constant self-learning); weaknesses (age restrictions for civil servants; insufficient acquisition of knowledge); threats (system errors in the provision of services through automation); opportunities for the introduction of IT in the public governance system (broad global trends; facilitation of the document management system). The practical significance of the research lies in providing recommendations for eliminating the problems of IT implementation in the public governance sphere outlined by civil servants..

HS-Sign: A Security Enhanced UOV Signature Scheme Based on Hyper-Sphere

  • Chen, Jiahui;Tang, Shaohua;Zhang, Xinglin
    • KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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    • v.11 no.6
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    • pp.3166-3187
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    • 2017
  • For "generic" multivariate public key cryptography (MPKC) systems, experts believe that the Unbalanced Oil-Vinegar (UOV) scheme is a feasible signature scheme with good efficiency and acceptable security. In this paper, we address two problems that are to find inversion solution of quadratic multivariate equations and find another structure with some random Oil-Oil terms for UOV, then propose a novel signature scheme based on hyper-sphere (HS-Sign for short) which directly answers these two problems. HS-Sign is characterized by its adding Oil-Oil terms and more advantages compared to UOV. On the one side, HS-Sign is based on a new inversion algorithm from hyper-sphere over finite field, and is shown to be a more secure UOV-like scheme. More precisely, according to the security analysis, HS-Sign achieves higher security level, so that it has larger security parameters choice ranges. On the other side, HS-Sign is beneficial from both the key side and computing complexity under the same security level compared to many baseline schemes. To further support our view, we have implemented 5 different attack experiments for the security analysis and we make comparison of our new scheme and the baseline schemes with simulation programs so as to show the efficiencies. The results show that HS-Sign has exponential attack complexity and HS-Sign is competitive with other signature schemes in terms of the length of the message, length of the signature, size of the public key, size of the secret key, signing time and verification time.

Public Health and Community Health Education in South Africa

  • Koen, Daleen
    • Korean Journal of Health Education and Promotion
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    • v.1 no.1
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    • pp.125-155
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    • 1999
  • The term public health is used today when the health of a population is referred to. Before we look at public health, we should know the meaning of health. It is, however a difficult concept to define. The World Health Organisations definition of health, states that health is a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease and infirmity (WHO Constitution 1947). Health, in this context, is placed in an idealistic sphere that is unattainable in everyday life.(omitted)

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The Antinomy of the Enlightenment Discourses and the Rise of the Novel (계몽주의 담론의 이율배반과 '소설의 발생')

  • Kim, Bong-Ryul
    • Journal of English Language & Literature
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    • v.54 no.1
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    • pp.3-29
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    • 2008
  • Ian Watt, author of The Rise of the Novel, maintained that the novel originated in modern England, came from prose discourses such as the news, political essays and journalistic writing which propagated the Enlightenment, and the novels represent formal realism. The main point of this paper is to examine Watt's theory of the rise of the novel on the basis of the criticism of antinomy of the Enlightenment and "the public sphere" in Habermas' terms. At first, I will criticize formal realism, which is not a new literary species, but a formally renovated realistic form that represented capitalism and protestantism. And, then, I will show that formal realism is a kind of antinomy because it turned away from the voices and reality of the low-class and women though the novel concentrated on common people, not the aristocrats. Secondly, I will inquire into the antinomy of the Enlightenment in the aspects of reason, freedom, individualism and women. In my view, as soon as the high-middle class acquired their political rights, these values were no more encouraged and the result revealed antinomy of the Enlightenment more explicitly. Thirdly, I'd argue that "the public sphere" had positive meanings to everyone when the bourgeosie were fighting against the Absolutism and the aristocracy. I'll also insist that the high-middle class and the intellectuals were in "the public sphere" in which Habermas argues that rationality and equality were thought to have been realized, while the low-middle class and most women were de-enlightened and disciplined by reading the novel privately. In conclusion, formal realism is not the rise of the novel, but the opening of the novel peculiar to bourgeosie parliamentarism from the middle-eighteenth century to the middle-twentieth century.

A Critical Review of SNS Political Participation Studies (SNS 정치참여 연구 동향)

  • Yun, Seongyi
    • Informatization Policy
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    • v.20 no.2
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    • pp.3-19
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    • 2013
  • Studies on the SNS political participation have covered issues of SNS effect on political participation, electoral campaigns, and the public sphere. Such issues as characteristics of SNS political participation, the characteristics of SNS users, SNS effect on the political participation, active SNS political participants, and the impact on young people's political participation, etc. have been studied in the area of political participation effect. On the election issues, SNS impact on election turnout, voting behavior, and the election results were main research topics. Finally, the research on the public sphere mainly discussed topics of quality of SNS information and social fragmentation phenomenon. What is commonly observed across all the three subjects is that the conflicting claims appear to almost all the topics. These contradictory findings are likely to occur because variables of real politics are not fully taken into account and research variables are not strictly manipulated. We can get more accurate research results in the study of SNS political participation when we conduct cross-national research reflecting the context of real politics and also designing independent variables more in detail and elaborately.

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A Spatial Audio System Using Multiple Microphones on a Rigid Sphere

  • Lee, Tae-Jin;Jang, Dae-Young;Kang, Kyeong-Ok;Kim, Jin-Woong;Jeong, Dae-Gwon;Hamada, Hareo
    • ETRI Journal
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    • v.27 no.2
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    • pp.153-165
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    • 2005
  • The main purpose of a spatial audio system is to give a listener the same impression as if he/she were present in a recorded environment. A dummy head microphone is generally used for such purposes. Because of its human-like shape, we can obtain good spatial sound images. However, its shape is a restriction on its public use and it is difficult to convert a 2-channel recording into multi-channel signals for an efficient rendering over a multi-speaker arrangement. In order to solve the problems mentioned above, a spatial audio system is proposed that uses multiple microphones on a rigid sphere. The system has five microphones placed on special points of the rigid sphere, and it generates audio signals for headphone, stereo, stereo dipole, 4-channel, and 5-channel reproduction environments. Subjective localization experiments show that front/back confusion, which is a common limitation of spatial audio systems using the dummy head microphone, can be reduced dramatically in 4-channel and 5-channel reproduction environments and can be reduced slightly in a headphone reproduction.

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A Comparative Study on the Regulation System of Public Sphere in the Social Media Space During the Election Campaign (소셜 미디어 관련 온라인 선거 공론장 규제체계 비교연구)

  • Lee, Dong-Hoon;Ryu, Jung-Ho;Jung, Soo-Young
    • Korean journal of communication and information
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    • v.55
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    • pp.74-99
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    • 2011
  • This article tries to find out some regulatory facts to improve and vitalize roles of social media such as facebook, twitter, etc in the election campaign. For this goal, a theoretical approach is based on the agnostic and open aspects of the regulation system of election. Case study and in-depth interview were used as research methods in this article. The results are as follows. First, some differences are in the election regulatory system regarding the roles of social media in UK, US, Japan and Korea. The election public sphere systems of these countries categorized to the types of legal factors to control political communications in election public sphere; free-speech oriented system(UK. US), limited free-speech oriented system(Korea), normative-oriented system(Japan). Second, most respondents answered they agreed with some improvement ideas to reflect needs of netizen and academic who suggest to minimize regulatory burdens on social media in the political communication during the election campaign.

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