Blockchain Papers

Oluwole Odutolu, Nnenna Ihebuzor, Ritgak Dimka Tilley-Gyado, Valentina Martufi · 10 authors

-Within the last two decades, the Nigerian government has committed to strengthening its primary health care system, through reforms addressing institutional restructuring, deepening decentralized governance, and the incorporation of an alternative health care financing strategy. One of these reforms prescribed the establishment of state primary health care agencies/boards (SPHCDBs) as an integral part of the national health system, with the principal responsibility "for the coordination of planning, budgeting, provision and monitoring of all primary health care services that affect residents of the state." Central to this reform is the integration of primary health care (PHC) governance and management, popularly called primary health care under one roof. Another reform, piloting results-based financing, has been implemented since 2011 in three states under the Nigeria State Health Investment Project. This study assesses the implementation of the Primary Health Care Under One Roof (PHCUOR) policy as part of the broader PHC reforms, with a specific focus on how this policy has been strengthened through the Nigeria State Health Investment Project (NSHIP) in Adamawa, Nasarawa, and Ondo states, documenting the evolution of SPHCDB and PHC service delivery, with a focus on management, accountability, and incentives. The study shows that, in the above-mentioned states, significant milestones were achieved in the establishment of the SPHCDB, the strengthening of PHC systems, the improvement of accountability linkages, and an increase in service utilization. The authors therefore argue that integrated PHC systems through SPHCDBs, as enshrined in the PHCUOR guidelines, are a panacea for effective provision of primary health care and a potential game changer for health outcomes, especially when reinforced with a results-based financing approach.

Shireesh Apte, Nikolai Petrovsky

Blockchain technology provides a major advance for excipient supply chains, assisting in the delivery of unadulterated, source, process and transit verifiable excipients (or APIs and drug products), but does not alleviate the necessity for quality audits. The adoption of blockchain technology should make the process faster and make the transactional record more robust and reliable, however other rate-limiting steps of the excipient supply chain including transit and testing time will remain. In terms of pure speed, blockchain is suited to financial transactions where no physical goods change hands (such as financial instruments and derivatives, stocks, insurance, land-registry, taxation, medical records etc.) but this does not mean that it should be ignored in respect of the advantages it could offer in improving the excipient supply chain.

Saveen A. Abeyratne .

The blockchain technology as a foundation for distributed ledgers offers an innovative platform for a new decentralized and transparent transaction mechanism in industries and businesses. The inherited characteristics of this technology enhance trust through transparency and traceability within any transaction of data, goods, and financial resources. Despite initial doubts about this technology, recently governments and large corporations have investigated to adopt and improve this technology in various domains of applications, from finance, social and legal industries to design, manufacturing and supply chain networks. In this article, the authors review the current status of this technology and some of its applications. The potential benefit of such technology in manufacturing supply chain is then discussed in this article and a vision for the future blockchain ready manufacturing supply chain is proposed. Manufacturing of cardboard boxes are used as an example to demonstrate how such technology can be used in a global supply chain network. Finally, the requirements and challenges to adopt this technology in the future manufacturing systems are discussed.

Jian Liu, Wenting Li, Ghassan Karame, N. Asokan

Motivated by the great success and adoption of Bitcoin, a number of cryptocurrencies such as Litecoin, Dogecoin, and Ethereum are becoming increasingly popular. Although existing blockchain-based cryptocurrency schemes can ensure reasonable security for transactions, they do not consider any notion of fairness. Fair exchange allows two players to exchange digital items, such as digital signatures, over insecure networks fairly, so that either each player gets the other's item, or neither player does. Given that blockchain participants typically do not trust each other, enabling fairness in existing cryptocurrencies is an essential but insufficiently explored problem. In this paper, we explore the solution space for enabling the fair exchange of a cryptocurrency payment for a receipt. We identify the timeliness of an exchange as an important property especially when one of the parties involved in the exchange is resource-constrained. We introduce the notion of strong timeliness for a fair exchange protocol and propose two fair payment-for-receipt protocol instantiations that leverage functionality of the blockchain to achieve strong timeliness. We implement both and compare their security and efficiency.

Mattia Bongini, Massimo Fornasier

In recent years, numerous studies have focused on the mathematical modeling of social dynamics, with self-organization, i.e., the autonomous pattern formation, as the main driving concept. Usually, first or second order models are employed to reproduce, at least qualitatively, certain global patterns (such as bird flocking, milling schools of fish or queue formations in pedestrian flows, just to mention a few). It is, however, common experience that self-organization does not always spontaneously occur in a society. In this review chapter we aim to describe the limitations of decentralized controls in restoring certain desired configurations and to address the question of whether it is possible to externally and parsimoniously influence the dynamics to reach a given outcome. More specifically, we address the issue of finding the sparsest control strategy for finite agent-based models in order to lead the dynamics optimally towards a desired pattern.

Jian Liu, Wenting Li, Ghassan Karame, N. Asokan

Motivated by the great success and adoption of Bitcoin, a number of cryptocurrencies such as Litecoin, Dogecoin, and Ethereum are becoming increasingly popular. Although existing blockchain-based cryptocurrency schemes can ensure reasonable security for transactions, they do not consider any notion of fairness. Fair exchange allows two players to exchange digital "items", such as digital signatures, over insecure networks fairly, so that either each player gets the other's item, or neither player does. Given that blockchain participants typically do not trust each other, enabling fairness in existing cryptocurrencies is an essential but insufficiently explored problem. In this paper, we explore the solution space for enabling the fair exchange of a cryptocurrency payment for a receipt. We identify the timeliness of an exchange as an important property especially when one of the parties involved in the exchange is resource-constrained. We introduce the notion of strong timeliness for a fair exchange protocol and propose two fair payment-for-receipt protocol instantiations that leverage functionality of the blockchain to achieve strong timeliness. We implement both and compare their security and efficiency.

Houda Ferradi

This thesis presents new results in three fundamental areas of public-key cryptography: integrity, authentication and confidentiality. In each case we design new primitives or improve the features of existing ones. The first chapter, dealing with integrity, introduces a non-interactive proof for proper RSA public key generation and a contract co-signature protocol in which a breach in fairness provides the victim with transferable evidence against the cheater. The second chapter, focusing on authentication, shows how to use time measurements to shorten zeroknowledge commitments and how to exploit bias in zero-knowledge challenges to gain efficiency. This chapter also generalizes Fiat-Shamir into a one-to-many protocol and describes a very sophisticated smart card fraud illustrating what can happen when authentication protocols are wrongly designed. The third chapter is devoted to confidentiality. We propose public-key cryptosystems where traditional hardness assumptions are replaced by refinements of the CAPTCHA concept and explore the adaptation of honey encryption to natural language messages. Our final contributions focus on identity-based encryption (IBE) showing how to add broadcast features to hierarchical IBE and how to use IBE to reduce vulnerability exposure time of during software patch broadcast.

Cara Smith Gueye, Gretchen Newby, Jim Tulloch, Laurence Slutsker · 6 authors

BACKGROUND: A malaria eradication goal has been proposed, at the same time as a new global strategy and implementation framework. Countries are considering the strategies and tools that will enable progress towards malaria goals. The eliminating malaria case-study series reports were reviewed to identify successful programme management components using a cross-case study analytic approach. METHODS: Nine out of ten case-study reports were included in the analysis (Bhutan, Cape Verde, Malaysia, Mauritius, Namibia, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Turkey, Turkmenistan). A conceptual framework for malaria elimination programme management was developed and data were extracted and synthesized. Findings were reviewed at a consultative workshop, which led to a revision of the framework and further data extraction and synthesis. Success factors of implementation, programme choices and changes, and enabling factors were distilled. RESULTS: Decentralized programmes enhanced engagement in malaria elimination by sub-national units and communities. Integration of the malaria programme into other health services was also common. Decentralization and integration were often challenging due to the skill and experience levels of newly tasked staff. Accountability for programme impact was not clarified for most programmes. Motivation of work force was a key factor in maintaining programme quality but there were few clear, detailed strategies provided. Different incentive schemes targeted various stakeholders. Training and supervision, although not well described, were prioritized by most programmes. Multi-sectoral collaboration helped some programmes share information, build strategies and interventions and achieve a higher quality of implementation. In most cases programme action was spurred by malaria outbreaks or a new elimination goal with strong leadership. Some programmes showed high capacity for flexibility through introduction of new strategies and tools. Several case-studies described methods for monitoring implementation quality and coverage; however analysis and feedback to those implementing malaria elimination in the periphery was not well described. Political commitment and sustained financing contributed to malaria programme success. Consistency of malaria programmes depends on political commitment, human and financial resources, and leadership. Operational capacity of the programme and the overall health system structure and strength are also important aspects. CONCLUSIONS: Malaria eradication will require adaptive, well-managed malaria programmes that are able to tailor implementation of evidence-based strategies, founded upon strong sub-national surveillance and response, with adequate funding and human resources.

Dragana M. Radičić

The institutional collapse of a once unique state SFR Yugoslavia at the beginning of the 1990s, devastated economy, hyperinflation, corruption and general tendencies contrary to the processes in developed countries, in a nutshell - the entire macroeconomic environment being unstable, - brought about the need for political, economic, social and institutional reforms in the Republic of Serbia. The reform, among other things, and for the study of the factual issues it is exceptionally significant, covered the system of resource distribution and jurisdiction between the central and subcentral levels of government. Numerous changes which then occurred in the last twenty years or so, and which are still going on, have influenced political and territorial polity of our country to become decentralized, as well as the financial and fiscal relations between the levels of the Establishment. In the spirit of reform commitments, Republic of Serbia brought in a new Constitution and adopted copious amounts of laws, whose ultimate intention was promoting the fiscal system that would be in accordance with the latest theoretical findings and examples of good practice. In the structure of territorial organization of Republic of Serbia, autonomous provinces as entities of territorial autonomy, and municipalities, towns and the city of Belgrade have been established, as entities of local self-governance. Otherwise, subcentral authority levels in our country are facing many and various challenges when it comes to creating government revenue which, in its original or transferred form, remains available, used to finance their government expenditure, a constant need for their abundance and suitability, and all in order to constitute financial autonomy, followed by methods of governing the economic development, as well as the volume and content of jurisdiction.
\nConsidering the fact that the distribution of resources amongst sub-central levels of government is preceded by the distribution of responsibilities, associated is the dilemma of which functions are realized more efficiently on a central and which on a subcentral level of government, and further, to what extent these lower levels are to be subservient to the central state, that is, in what sense independent. In that matter, it is essential to establish the extent of the realized fiscal decentralization, since depending on that degree, fiscal power is delegated to subcentral levels, the performance of public services is more efficient and is in accordance with priorities and preferences of citizens, which is also a precondition of successful functioning of all the segments of the public sector and widespread democratization of a society.

Siguna Mueller, Farhad Jafari, Don Roth

BACKGROUND: Proliferation and expansion of security risks necessitates new measures to ensure authenticity and validation of GMOs. Watermarking and other cryptographic methods are available which conceal and recover the original signature, but in the process reveal the authentication information. In many scenarios watermarking and standard cryptographic methods are necessary but not sufficient and new, more advanced, cryptographic protocols are necessary. RESULTS: Herein, we present a new crypto protocol, that is applicable in broader settings, and embeds the authentication string indistinguishably from a random element in the signature space and the string is verified or denied without disclosing the actual signature. Results show that in a nucleotide string of 1000, the algorithm gives a correlation of 0.98 or higher between the distribution of the codon and that of E. coli, making the signature virtually invisible. CONCLUSIONS: This algorithm may be used to securely authenticate and validate GMOs without disclosing the actual signature. While this protocol uses watermarking, its novelty is in use of more complex cryptographic techniques based on zero knowledge proofs to encode information.

Carl F. Cranor, Adam M. Finkel

Abstract Regulatory agencies in the United States and Europe have well‐deserved reputations for fixating on the total benefits and costs of proposed and final regulatory actions, without doing any more than anecdotally mentioning the subpopulations and individuals who may bear disproportionate costs or reap disproportionate benefits. This is especially true on the “cost” side of the cost–benefit ledger, where analysts exert little effort to even inform decisionmakers and the public that the costs of regulations might be distributed either regressively or progressively. Many scholars and advocates have observed that regulation can increase the efficiency of market outcomes, but caution about its untoward (or suboptimal) effects on equity. Here, we argue that without considering distributional information about costs and benefits, regulatory policies in fact can also cause violence to notions of efficiency , for two reasons: (i) society cannot hope to approach Pareto‐efficient outcomes without identifying those who must lose so that others can gain more; and (ii) because the harm experienced by involuntary risks and by imposed regulatory costs is likely non‐linear in its magnitude (at the individual level), efficiency is, in fact, a strong function of the shape of the distribution of these effects. This article reviews evidence about the distribution of regulatory costs and benefits, describes how agencies fail to incorporate readily available distributional information, and sketches a vision for how they could analyze costs and benefits to promote more efficient regulatory choices and outcomes.

Primavera De Filippi

International audience

Virginia Vallejo-Rojas

Taking into account the limitations of official approaches for addressing agri-food research, as well as their associated policies to tackle the problems of hunger and vulnerability of agri-food systems to global change, it becomes necessary to consider new frameworks and alternative policies for research and management of agri-food systems. With this thesis we contribute to the advances of agri-food research by rethinking the way of conceptualizing the agri-food system and by designing and testing analysis tools capable to link the research process with the management dynamics found in the local territory. We focus our attention on those linked to the political paradigm of food sovereignty. To achieve this objective we adopted a deductive and inductive method of research, organized in three phases. During the first phase, and under the wider umbrella of Sociology of Agriculture and Food, we developed a conceptual and theoretical framework which integrates systemic thinking and development studies capable to analyze the political paradigm of food sovereignty. For this purpose, we linked the approach focused in the analysis of socio-ecological systems (SES) with the vulnerability approach focused in the analysis of actors¿ dynamics. As a result, we have obtained an integrate framework that address the ecological and social dimensions of agri-food systems. During the second phase, we tested the framework developed in an empirical case study of a local agri-food system of the canton of Loja, located at the Southern Ecuadorian Andean region. The case is of particular interest due to the recent consideration of comunas and barrios as basic units for citizen participation within decentralized autonomous governments; and, the parallel process of creation of new collective action organizations, such as the recently conformed Agroecological Network of Loja (RAL). Using empirical data obtained from a survey conducted between December 2013 and March 2014 based on questionnaires to households (N = 116) and interviews to key informants (N = 14). We analyzed the role of social and institutional factors on the local agri-food system configuration taking into account the pillars of food sovereignty within the analysis. The results showed the significant, but differentiated, role of institutions (Agroecological Network of Loja), social groups (Saraguro indigenous culture) and income generation strategies on the agri-food system configuration. During the third phase, we assessed the future vulnerability vs resilience of local agri-food system through a participatory scenario development process. Using data obtained from semi-structured interviews (N = 14 and N = 25) and two workshops we analyzed the future trajectories of transformation for the local agri-food system under multiple ecological, socio-economic and political drivers of change. Four scenarios were envisioned by local actors. This assessment showed how drivers of change can affect different components of the local agri-food system when it is conceptualized as SES; and, how different perspectives contribute to build different future trajectories of active transformation. Overall, the results of the research process emphasize the role played by actors (understood as an intersectional group where gender takes meaning from its intersection with ethnicity and class) and novel institutional arrangements action to star the active transformation of agri-food systems in the marginal Andes. These findings have implications in agri-food systems policy design at local level, where the local peasant initiatives of social innovation have to be seen as potential mean to achieve the materialization of the political paradigm of food sovereignty within Andean agri-food system. Frente a las limitaciones tanto de los enfoques oficiales para la investigación agroalimentaria como de las políticas asociadas para abordar el problema del hambre y la vulnerabilidad de los sistemas agroalimentarios al cambio global, se hace necesario considerar nuevos marcos de análisis y políticas alternativas para el estudio y la gestión de los sistemas agroalimentarios. Con este trabajo de tesis nos proponemos contribuir al avance de la investigación agroalimentaria repensado la forma de conceptualizar el sistema agroalimentario y diseñando herramientas de análisis que vinculen el proceso de investigación con las dinámicas de gestión encontradas en el territorio local, enfocándonos en aquellas vinculadas con la soberanía alimentaria. Para alcanzar este objetivo hemos realizado un proceso (inductivo y deductivo) bajo el paraguas de la sociología de la agricultura y la alimentación, que hemos llevado a cabo en tres fases de investigación. Durante la primera fase, hemos desarrollado un marco teórico y metodológico que integra el pensamiento sistémico y estudios del desarrollo bajo el paradigma político de la soberanía alimentaria. Con este fin hemos vinculado el enfoque centrado en el análisis de los sistemas socio-ecológicos (SES) con el enfoque de vulnerabilidad centrado en el análisis de la dinámica de los actores. Como resultado hemos obtenido un marco integrado que aborda las dimensiones ecológica y social de los sistemas agroalimentarios, tal y como lo requiere el paradigma político de la soberanía alimentaria. Durante la segunda fase, hemos aplicado empíricamente el marco desarrollado en el sistema agroalimentario del cantón Loja, ubicado en los Andes del sur de Ecuador. Este caso de estudio es de particular interés debido a la reciente consideración de las comunas y barrios como unidades básicas para la participación ciudadana dentro de los gobiernos autónomos descentralizados; y, paralelamente, a la creación de nuevos procesos de acción colectiva, como la Red Agroecológica Loja (RAL). Usando datos empíricos obtenidos de cuestionarios a hogares campesino (N = 116) y entrevistas en profundidad a informantes clave (N = 14), realizada entre diciembre de 2013 y marzo de 2014, analizamos el rol de los factores sociales e institucionales sobre la configuración del sistema agroalimentario integrando dentro del análisis los pilares de la soberanía alimentaria. Este análisis mostró el rol significativo, pero diferenciado, de las instituciones (Red Agroecológica Loja), grupos sociales (cultura indígena Saraguro) y las estrategias de generación de ingresos para dar lugar a la configuración del sistema agroalimentario local. Durante la tercera fase, evaluamos la vulnerabilidad vs resiliencia del sistema agroalimentario local mediante un proceso de análisis de escenarios participativos. Hemos analizado las futuras trayectorias de transformación del sistema agroalimentario local bajo múltiples conductores de cambio (de tipo ecológico, socio-económico y político) mediante el análisis de datos obtenidos a partir de entrevistas semi-estructuradas (N = 14 y N = 25) y dos talleres. Los actores locales visionaron cuatro posibles futuros escenarios. Nuestra evaluación muestra cómo los conductores de cambio afectan los diferentes componentes del sistema agroalimentario local cuando se lo conceptualiza como SES; y, cómo las diferentes perspectivas de los actores construyen diferentes trayectorias para la transformación activa del sistema. En general, los resultados del proceso de investigación enfatizan el rol que desempeñan los actores (entendido como un grupo interseccional donde el género se concibe a partir de su intersección con la etnicidad y la clase) y los nuevos arreglos de acción institucional para iniciar la transformación activa del sistema agroalimentario en los sectores marginales andinos.

Cindy Tekobbe, John McKnight

Financial technologies embody and shape notions of social, as well as financial, worth. New digital ‘alt-finance’ systems, including the blockchain technology underlying Bitcoin and similar ‘cryptocurrencies,’ are no exception: technology, rhetoric, imagined users and non-users, and a long history of sociotechnical, political, and cultural relations are all elements in a dynamic assemblage with wide-ranging consequences. This paper examines the rise and fall of one alt-finance system: MazaCoin, a Bitcoin variant intended to benefit the Oglala Lakota of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. The story of MazaCoin is one of an attempt to unite two apparently divergent sociotechnical assemblages: (1) a libertarian, elite technology of cryptocurrency, and (2) a richly traditional indigenous community with a deep desire for cultural survivance, bound up in a precarious economy left behind in the wake of more than a century of genocide.

Joerg Osterrieder, Julian Lorenz

We provide an extreme value analysis of the returns of Bitcoin. A particular focus is on the tail risk characteristics and we will provide an in-depth univariate extreme value analysis. Those properties will be compared to the traditional exchange rates of the G10 currencies versus the US dollar. For investors - especially institutional ones - an understanding of the risk characteristics is of utmost importance. So for bitcoin to become a mainstream investable asset class, studying these properties is necessary. Our findings show that the bitcoin return distribution not only exhibits higher volatility than traditional G10 currencies, but also stronger non-normal characteristics and heavier tails. This has implications for risk management, financial engineering (such as bitcoin derivatives) - both from an investor's as well as from a regulator's point of view. To our knowledge, this is the first detailed study looking at the extreme value behaviour of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin.

Adam Bouland, Lijie Chen, Dhiraj Holden, Justin Thaler · 5 authors

We examine the power of statistical zero knowledge proofs (captured by the complexity class SZK) and their variants. First, we give the strongest known relativized evidence that SZK contains hard problems, by exhibiting an oracle relative to which SZK (indeed, even NISZK) is not contained in the class UPP, containing those problems solvable by randomized algorithms with unbounded error. This answers an open question of Watrous from 2002 [Aar]. Second, we "lift" this oracle separation to the setting of communication complexity, thereby answering a question of Göös et al. (ICALP 2016). Third, we give relativized evidence that perfect zero knowledge proofs (captured by the class PZK) are weaker than general zero knowledge proofs. Specifically, we exhibit oracles relative to which SZK is not contained in PZK, NISZK is not contained in NIPZK, and PZK is not equal to coPZK. The first of these results answers a question raised in 1991 by Aiello and Håstad (Information and Computation), and the second answers a question of Lovett and Zhang (2016). We also describe additional applications of these results outside of structural complexity. The technical core of our results is a stronger hardness amplification theorem for approximate degree, which roughly says that composing the gapped-majority function with any function of high approximate degree yields a function with high threshold degree.

S. Matthew English, Fabrizio Orlandi, Soeren Auer

Different versions of peer-to-peer electronic cash exist as data represented by separate blockchains. Payments between such systems cannot be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution. Bitcoin provided part of the solution but its utility is limited to intra-blockchain transactions. The benefits are lost if a trusted third party is required to execute inter-blockchain transactions. We propose a solution to the inter-blockchain transaction problem using the same fundamental principles of Bitcoin. The protocol is described by the Uberledger framework, a hierarchical meta-blockchain layer that encapsulates information regarding the fidelity of peer-to-peer transaction facilitators.

Eko Indra Praza

Abstract.This research aimed to analyze the financial performance of the District/ Municipality in Jambi Province and to determine the effect of financial performance either simultaneously or partially on capital expenditure. The data used in this research is a panel data comprising time series data is data in 2010 - 2013 and cross section data is data of 9 (nine) District and 2 (two) Municipality is located in the Province of Jambi. The analytical method used panel data regression analysis. The analysis showed that the financial performance of the District/ Municipality in Jambi Province is still relatively low as the PAD contribution to regional revenue is still small so transfer income still dominate the local revenue to finance most of the regional expenditure. The results of panel data regression using the Fixed Effect Model (FEM) showed that the financial performance simultaneously significant effect on capital expenditure allocation of the District/Municipality in Jambi Province from 2010 to 2013 and partially Ratio Degree of Decentralization significant positive effect on the allocation of capital expenditure. Financial dependency ratio, Financial Independence Ratio and the ratio degrees contributions public enterprises significant negative effect on capital expenditure . Effectiveness ratio of PAD does not significantly influence the allocation of capital expenditure.Keyword: Financial Performance, Decentralization, Financial Independence, Abstrak. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk menganalisis kinerja keuangan Pemerintah Kabupaten/Kota di Provinsi Jambi dan untuk mengetahui pengaruh kinerja keuangan baik secara simultan maupun secara parsial terhadap alokasi belanja modal. Data yang digunakan dalam penelitian ini merupakan data panel yang terdiri dari data time series yaitu data tahun 2010 – tahun 2013 dan data cross section yaitu data 9 (sembilan) Kabupaten dan 2 (dua) Kota yang berada di Provinsi Jambi. Metode analisis yaitu analisis regresi data panel. Hasil analisis menunjukkan bahwa kinerja keuangan Kabupaten/Kota di Provinsi Jambi masih tergolong rendah. Hasil regresi data panel dengan menggunakan metode Fixed Effect Model (FEM) menunjukkan bahwa kinerja keuangan secara simultan berpengaruh signifikan terhadap alokasi belanja modal Kabupaten/Kota di Provinsi Jambi dari tahun 2010 sampai dengan tahun 2013 dan secara parsial Rasio Derajat Desentralisasi berpengaruh positif signifikan terhadap alokasi belanja modal. Rasio Ketergantungan Keuangan, Rasio Kemandirian Keuangan dan Rasio Derajat Kontribusi BUMD berpengaruh negatif signifikan terhadap alokasi belanja modal. Rasio Efektifitas PAD tidak berpengaruh signifikan terhadap alokasi belanja modal. Kata Kunci : Kinerja Keuangan, Desentralisasi, Ketergantungan Keuangan

Riko Eka Kusuma

AbstractSince the enactment of Law No. 12 Year 2008 on the second Amendment to the Law Number 32 Year 2004 on Regional Government, as an interpretation of Article 18 , to bring new changes in governance in the region. This law has fundamentally changed the practices of government, one of which is related to the position, duties and functions of the District. The main changes was in the definition of the township itself besides the other changes such as the shape of the organization, financing, personnel appointments, logistics fulfillments and accountability,. Previously, the District was an administrative region in the context of the work environment that organizes the implementation of tasks in the area of public administration. While according to the Law No. 12 of 2008, Article 126 Section 3, the District is the district/city in the context of the principle of decentralization. That is, if used within the framework of the principle of deconcentration district, it is one of the administrative area, in addition to national, provincial, district and municipality, as well as administrative city. At the present time the Districts is the working area of the districts of the region. However, districts are not a territory, it is a service areas.Keywords: Delegation of authority, Head of District, Regional Government

James Smith, Jeni Tennison, Peter S. Wells, Jamie Fawcett · 7 authors

Blockchains, or ‘distributed ledgers’, are part of a new area of technology that is generating a lot of interest. They have the potential to become an important component of our global data infrastructure.

Louis Larue

De nombreuses monnaies parallèles circulent depuis toujours à côté de la monnaie officielle. Aujourd’hui, une nouvelle génération de monnaie est en train de naître des nouvelles technologies : les crypto-monnaies, dont l’exemple le plus connu est le bitcoin. Ces monnaies n’existent que sous forme de code informatique, sans équivalent papier ou métallique. Bien qu’elles constituent une avancée technologique remarquable, elles soulèvent de nombreux défis tant éthiques qu’économiques, que ce numéro de Regards économiques essaie d’éclairer

Hoda Ghafari, Fatemeh Afshari

Purpose: Administrative decentralization seeks to redistribute authority, responsibility and financial resources to provide public services among different levels of the government. It is the transfer of responsibility for the planning, financing and management of certain public functions from the central government and its agencies to field units of government agencies, subordinate units or levels of government, semi-autonomous public authorities or corporations, or area-wide, regional or functional authorities. When governments devolve functions, they transfer authority for decision-making, finances, and management to quasi-autonomous units of local government with corporate status. According to Article 3 of the Constitution of Malaysia, Islam is the country's official religion; therefore, studying the legal system of this country, which has a Muslim background, is essentially important to our country. In addition, given the importance of decentralization in Iran, it is of considerable importance to study the challenges of the decentralization system, even when they are formed in a federal system. The Malaysian legal system, modeled based on the English law, has, after independence of the former country, chosen federalism, and, consequently, the political decentralization system for their government. However, the important issue refers to whether the system of political decentralization has been achieved completely and properly in this country and what are its damages? Decentralization can be a way of improving access to services, tailoring government actions to private needs, and increasing the opportunities for state-society interactions. Design/Methodology/Approach: This paper is formed and based on the critical paradigm with the descriptive method, and has been conducted in two sections. The first section of the study investigated the levels of government, and, in the second part, the relationship between federal, state and local governments will be discussed. Findings: Malaysia is one of the three Asian countries and the only southeastern Asian country which has chosen a federal government. The important matter is whether the mentioned federal system results in decentralization? The Malaysian government includes three layers: the federal government, the government of provinces and local government. The provincial and local governments, as the symbol of decentralization in such countries, are determined in Malaysia’s Constitution with their duties, discretions and limitations. Actually, however, the federal government interferes in provincial activities. 91 percent of financial resources are controlled by the federal government. The independent activities of local governments are hindered by factors such as limited responsibilities, federal and provincial governments’ interference in local government affairs, the role of the national association and housing ministry parallel to the local government regarding law and policy-making, existence of unique obligatory policies for all local governments, limited financial resources, and the appointment of local authorities by the federal government. Consequently, the above explanations imply that federalism, as a governmental system, will not necessarily result in decentralization. Originality/Value: Given the large number of studies on the issue of decentralization in the Iranian legal system, this paper, with the aim of observing the originality principle, intends to conduct a comparative study on the legal systems of Malaysia and the United Kingdom.

Roger Atsa Etoundi, Emmanuel Moupojou Matango, Celestin Parfait Bessala Bessala, Serge Mani Onana

Abstract During the last decade, the development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) has led the world into a new era of innovative technologies that can provide effective responses to human concerns. In developed countries, the profitability motivation has imposed Service‐Oriented Architectures (SOA) in enterprises as a better way to design information systems capable of taking into account inter‐organizational cooperation mechanisms while preserving autonomy of the latter. Those Service‐Oriented Architectures did not stop at the doors of public administrations. Thus, several specifications have been made to adapt them to the peculiarities of public governance. But these models are not always able to respond effectively to the concerns of governments in developing countries particularly when they are structurally and territorially decentralized. Therefore, we propose a more suitable model to this type of e‐governance. We will later see how our model can be more suitable for the organization of remote and secured fairground courts in Cameroon to address constraints related to finance, time and security that these courts currently impose.

Nicolas T. Courtois, Guangyan Song, Ryan Castellucci

Abstract In this paper, we study and give the first detailed benchmarks on existing implementations of the secp256k1 elliptic curve used by at least hundreds of thousands of users in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. Our implementation improves the state of the art by a factor of 2.5 with a focus on the cases, where side channel attacks are not a concern and a large quantity of RAM is available. As a result, we are able to scan the Bitcoin blockchain for weak keys faster than any previous implementation. We also give some examples of passwords which we have cracked, showing that brain wallets are not secure in practice even for quite complex passwords.