Charry Mae Grepon, Eloiza Tagarda, Maricel Ugat, Ray Butch Mahinay · 6 authors
The Alternative Learning System (ALS) plays a critical role in expanding access to education for out-of-school youth and adults in the Philippines. However, persistent governance and financing constraints continue to challenge the program’s capacity to deliver equitable learning opportunities. This study examines ALS financing within the context of the 2026 EDCOM II reform to understand how national and local funding mechanisms are structured to support program equity and implementation. The study employed a qualitative policy analysis using document review of official policy reports, fiscal allocations, and reform frameworks related to ALS financing. This study does not evaluate implementation outcomes, learner-level effects, or empirically observed program impacts, and is limited to policy-documentary analysis of financing structures and reform intent. Key sources included the FY 2026 proposed national ALS budget, formal EDCOM II reform documents, DEPED-DBM-DILG Joint Circular No. 1 (s. 2025) on the Special Education Fund (SEF), and related governance issues. A results-chain conceptual model was used to analyze the expected and policy derived relationships between financing inputs, intended program outcomes as reflected in policy logic, rather than empirically validated effects. The documentary analysis suggests that a significant portion of the ALS budget is allocated to direct learner subsidies, reflecting a learner-centered and equity-oriented financing design. Policy reforms under EDCOM II also introduce governance and financing mechanisms, such as decentralization, dedicated ALS budget lines, and SEF co-financing, designed to support more equitable resource allocation. However, persistent bottlenecks, including infrastructure gaps, uneven regional access, and service-delivery capacity constraints, may constrain implementation effectiveness. The study concludes that coordinated national and local financing mechanisms may provide enabling conditions for strengthening ALS implementation. Integrating Program Support Funds and SEF allocations may support more responsive resource distribution and locally responsive service delivery. The findings provide policy-documentary analysis that may inform ALS financing reforms and future efforts toward more equitable resource allocation.
Julian Vásquez, Carlos Marin, Paulo Alonso Gaona-García
At present there are many intermediaries for the acquisition of tourist plans, which in some situations represent a risk, because they promise great offers and when the client is going to enjoy what they have acquired, they get unwanted surprises. For this reason, the platform described in this work for the reservation of tourist plans allows companies to offer different activities so that travelers can put together their vacation packages, considering that each of the parties will ensure compliance with the service, using smart contracts and blockchain technology.
This thesis presents the design and implementation of a mobile application for the Android platform aimed at advanced Bitcoin asset management. Its main features are support for multisignature transactions in an M-of-N scheme according to the BIP-48 and BIP-67 standards, and a coin control feature for manual selection of transaction outputs, allowing the user to optimize fees and preserve privacy. A key security element is the integration of the Trezor hardware wallet via the Trezor Connect protocol; private keys never leave the device. The PSBT format (BIP-174) is used to distribute partially signed transactions among cosigners; the application supports native SegWit addresses P2WP- KH and P2WSH. The backend is implemented as a set of microservices in Kotlin/Ktor, the frontend is a native Android application built with Jetpack Compose. Functionality was verified by unit tests of key components and by an end-to-end multisig scenario on the Bitcoin testnet.
The article examines risk management as a strategic foundation for managing the economic activity of an enterprise under conditions of wartime instability, macroeconomic turbulence, and digital transformation. The relevance of the topic is driven by the growing level of environmental uncertainty, intensified competition, and the emergence of new digital and war-related risks that require the formation of an integrated system of strategic risk management. The purpose of the article is to substantiate the theoretical foundations and develop practical approaches to the formation of a risk management system as a strategic tool for managing the economic activity of an enterprise.The paper systematizes the main risk management instruments (risk acceptance, avoidance, transfer, and mitigation), identifies the structural elements of the risk management process, and proposes a model for organizing business processes within the framework of a risk management strategy. The concept of risk zones (risk-free, acceptable, critical, and catastrophic) is disclosed, enabling the assessment of risk concentration levels and ensuring timely adjustments of managerial decisions.Special attention is paid to digital risks arising from the implementation of cross-cutting digital technologies, including artificial intelligence, big data, robotics, and distributed ledger systems. The authors propose an original classification of digital transformation risks at the enterprise level, distinguishing economic, technical, organizational, and war-related risks, as well as identifying key risks associated with the use of artificial intelligence technologies (data privacy risk, infrastructure risk, statistical discrimination risk, incorrect managerial decision-making risk, workforce imbalance risk, etc.). The necessity of integrating digital risks into the corporate risk management system (ERM) is substantiated.The article also considers modern strategic approaches to risk management, including the “three lines of defense” model, the method of defining risk appetite and risk tolerance, and the development of risk culture and effective communication. It is proved that their integrated application creates a holistic risk management architecture aimed at preventive response, balancing profitability and sustainability, and enhancing the economic security of the enterprise. It is concluded that under modern conditions, risk management acts not only as a mechanism for minimizing threats but also as a strategic concept for ensuring long-term stability, innovative development, and competitiveness of an enterprise in the context of the digital economy and wartime challenges.
Martin Brennecke, Simon Mertel, Tobias Guggenberger, Johannes Sedlmeir · 6 authors
Zusammenfassung Auf dem Weg zu einer kreislauffähigen Wertschöpfung nimmt die lückenlose Dokumentation von Produktionsketten eine elementare Rolle ein: Sie erlaubt es, eingesetzte Ressourcen und Schritte im Wertschöpfungsprozess nachzuvollziehen und nachhaltigkeitsbezogene Angaben überprüfbar und somit vermarktbar zu machen. In diesem Kontext wird immer wieder über die Blockchain-Technologie diskutiert. Neben den Chancen, die eine Blockchain für eine verifizierbare Dokumentation und Interaktionen über Organisationsgrenzen hinweg bietet, werden in diesem Beitrag die Herausforderungen ihrer Nutzung aufgezeigt. Dabei wird auch auf komplementäre Technologien, insbesondere kryptographische Ansätze für digitales Identitätsmanagement und Zero-Knowledge Proofs, eingegangen und gezeigt, wie diese zur Bewältigung der Herausforderungen genutzt werden können.
Traditional and electronic voting systems face significant challenges in ensuring transparency, security, and voter trust. Issues such as centralized control, lack of auditability, vulnerability to tampering, and potential for fraud undermine the integrity of electoral processes. This paper proposes a novel blockchain-based electronic voting system designed to address these shortcomings through decentralized ledger technology and smart contracts. The system ensures vote integrity, voter anonymity, and public verifiability while preventing double voting and eliminating single points of failure. By employing cryptographic techniques such as zero-knowledge proofs and ring signatures, voter privacy is maintained without compromising transparency. The proposed architecture is evaluated through simulation, demonstrating scalability, reduced transaction costs, and robustness against common cyber threats. This work contributes to the advancement of trustworthy digital democracy and provides a feasible framework for real-world electoral deployment.
The concept of blockchain has transformed the trust concept by decentralizing, non-modifiable, and transparent, but there is a certain conflict between the principle of public verifiability and data privacy. As DeFi and cross-institutional data collaboration should grow, it has become a fundamental concern to have the confidentiality of this data without losing verifiability on-chain. The following paper will be a review of blockchain privacy technologies developed in 2020-2025, which will involve the history of zero-knowledge proofs and homomorphic encryption development at the cryptographic primitive level, as well as share new developments such as secure multi-party computation. It points out advances in recursive proof systems, distributed proof generation architectures and scalable multi-party computing systems to overcome bottlenecks in performance. There is a trade-off between privacy, system performance, regulatory compliance, and decentralization in a comparative analysis of technology integration in both public and permissioned chains. Lastly, research directions in the future are suggested in order to overcome issues associated with low proof efficiency, regulatory compliance problems, and migration of post-quantum cryptography. The review offers both theoretical and technical sources on how to develop trusted blockchain infrastructure that would strike the right balance between compliance, high-performance, and data sovereignty.
Advancements in networking applications increase the requirement for secure data storage and an efficient data access mechanism with robust networking characteristics. Consequently, the huge volume of data generated from the het-erogeneous networks, such as smart cities, healthcare, and smart energy trading systems, suffers from scalability issues and generates insights for secure data storage and effective data management. Therefore, the research proposes a secure data storage and access scheme named Multimodal Biometric-enabled Zero-Knowledge Proof of Stake(MBZKPS). The Multimodal Biometric Data Access(MBDA) ensures secure and robust access to the heterogeneous data with reduced computational overhead. The Distributed Storage System and the Zero Knowledge Protocol with Proof of Stake alleviate the storage pressure on the blockchain and regulate the heterogeneous data storage and access in the blockchain. The Message Digest 5(MD5) with Homomorphic Encryption enables computations on the encrypted data with better data confidentiality preserva-tion. The introduction of the blockchain eliminates the scalability issues with improved privacy preservation and data integrity. Simulation results validate the superiority of the MD5 with Homomorphic Encryption (HE) used in research by achieving 0.95ms decryption time, and 0.97 encryption time with 0.73 Genuine User Rate occupying 363.76KiloBytes of memory for 250 nodes. In addition, the proposed research performs secure data storage with a 1025.85 ms response time and 1.01ms transaction time using blockchain.