We deisgn a DAA scheme based on Short Group Signature on l-MOMSDH assumption.On the basis of Fiat-Shamir heuristic theory,the signature of knowledge and realization of the transformation from non-interactive zero knowledge proof to signature of knowledge are introduced.Because of its short signature,high efficiency and provable security in Standard Model,the security of DAA is increased while its efficiency is also guaranteed.
We develop a dynamic politico-economic model of public investment where decisions can be made at several levels of government: federal, state, or county. The model predicts that in the absence of internal mobility, the higher level of government would fund all investments that present positive externalities not fully internalized at lower levels. But when there are important internal migrations unrelated to fiscal policy, investments that are embodied - and therefore are useful to citizens if they move to other jurisdictions, like education - are more likely to be funded at the local level than investments that are physically sunk, as infrastructure. Such pattern of migrations and financing is consistent with U.S. data.
This study attempts to understand the post-reform decentralization of infrastructure investment and transfer of responsibility in China. Changes in the institutional configuration of infrastructure investment are a reflection of the ongoing process of state restructuring. Since the economic reform, infrastructure investment has transformed from being an exclusive central state-controlled operation to a central-local bargaining regime. The functions formerly exclusive to the central government are now scaling down to local governments, while scaling out to market actors. This has fuelled the formation of new partnerships in infrastructure development. However, the scaling down and scaling out processes have not led to the total retreat of the central state, nor the relaxation of state control. Using the Wuhan-Guangzhou High Speed Rail as an example, this paper investigates the inter-scalar and relational webs of multi-actor and multi-level governance in financing a major infrastructure project. Our main argument is that the state investment regime has now shifted from an exclusive, national monopoly to an intrinsic partnership, between different tiers of governments, and between the state and the market in order to meet the demands of development and to overcome the hurdles of state budget constraints.
The policy regarding the management of national road networks in Indonesia has been centrally programmed and managed by the Directorate General Bina Marga, under the Ministry of Public Works. Under such policy, the national road and bridge system is planned, programmed and financed by the central government, whereas the implementation of construction and rehabilitation/maintenance of roads and bridges are delegated to local authorities. In exercising its authority, the government of Indonesia has relied on traditional design-bid-build approach for delivery of road and highway construction and maintenance projects. Under this approach, program development and engineering were prepared by the central agency (DGBM) whereas the biding and construction process will be carried out by local authorities at provincial level. This paper discusses result of preliminary study on alternative delivery method for road projects in Indonesia. The study attempts to identify the potential application of design-build delivery method, as well as performance based contract to the current management structure of national road network system. In particular, this study aims at investigating the impact of organizational structure and decentralization mechanism at both central and local authorities to current state of application of traditional design-bid-build delivery method in road construction projects.
A new scheme of identity authentication that has zero-knowledge characteristics is established based on RSA algorithm.The analysis of the scheme shows that the algorithm is legible,the mutual time and the opportunity be cheated is less.Only one time proof,it can meet the reliability demands for which other zero-knowledge proof algorithms need much more time proof.
Advanced Computational Techniques and Applications
According to a series of problems appeared in the rural finance management,this thesis applied trusting-agent theory,internal control theory,centralization and decentralization theory,accounting rent-seeking and control theory,and put forward a series of affective measures to improve the present situation of financial management in the countryside,which including township finance trusting to govern,democratic financial management,democratic management,democratic decision-making,democratic supervision,perfecting supporting measures,and so on.
The purpose of this study was to describe the development of the Hungarian mathematics education system from the first half of the 20th century to the present day. The study focused on educational programs for mathematically talented students in Hungary, since it is the success of these talented students that has earned Hungary such an impressive international reputation. The study sought to identify the in-school and extracurricular offerings that comprise the current system for mathematically talented students in Hungary and to determine the major changes to the mathematics education system for gifted students in the past twenty years. To answer these questions, the researcher combined analysis of historical documents and current publications with a series of in-depth interviews with current Hungarian secondary school teachers, mathematicians, professors, and other educators. The primary changes within the school system have come as a result of the decentralization of education that took place along at the end of the 1980s, including a decrease in the reliability of financing for schools and the dissolution of the school inspectorate program. While some of these changes paved the way for increased school autonomy and the ability to offer more customized programs for students, they have also sparked concerns about a decreasing overall level of standards and student knowledge in mathematics. In the special mathematics schools, the admissions process has recently been changed to prohibit these schools from requiring separate exams or interviews, and instead students now take the same standardized exam as all other Hungarian 6th grade students, regardless of intended specialization. This new policy raises questions about public sentiment toward and governmental support for such specialized programs. Extracurricular programs such as camps and competitions remain a strong part of the Hungarian tradition, with an increasing number of competitions offered for students each year. New types of competitions in recent years include team competitions, multiple choice competitions, and some exclusively for students who are not in a special mathematics class. The founding of these new competitions reflects a possible shift in the focus and purpose of competitions away from a strictly talent-search model to a more inclusive "enrichment" approach. Following the regime change in 1990, Hungarian students have faced fewer restrictions in traditional fields along with new opportunities in economics and information technology. As a result, mathematics may no longer hold the privileged position it did during the first half of the 20th century. However, it is clear that in Hungary, tradition itself remains a strong motivating factor and continues to stimulate the development of mathematically talented students. The involvement of the mathematical community in the identification and education of young talents helps perpetuate these traditions.
RESUMEN For 25 years, Colombia implemented a rural development policy according to models adopted in Latin America since the 1960s. That policy advanced progressively toward decentralized and participatory development and it also moved forward to new concept of rural territorial development. Nevertheless, the Integrated Rural Development Program – IRD, turned into a Co-financing Fund, due to several reasons, ended during the second half of the 1990s. The change of protectionist policies towards deregulation, political cooptation of the program and the weak State capacities to replacing the IRD with other alternatives to stabilize rural societies contributed to the disappearance of the policy. Colombia manejo una politica de desarrollo rural durante 25 anos bajo los modelos impuestos en America Latina desde los anos setenta. Esta politica tuvo un avance progresivo hacia un desarrollo descentralizado y mas participativo dirigiendose hacia un concept de desarrollo territorial rural. Sin embargo, por multiples las causas el Programa DRI, convertido en Fondo de Cofinanciamiento, se dio por terminado cuando empezaba el segundo quinquenio de los anos noventa. El cambio de las politicas proteccionistas hacia una desregulacion, la cooptacion del programa por los politicos, asi como la poca capacidad y decision del Estado para sustituirlo con otras alternativas que estabilizaran las sociedades rurales, ayudaron a la desaparicion de esta politica.
This paper examines the effect of regulatory institutions on venture capitalists' (VCs) investment activities in China. Interviews with VCs and systematic examinations on the investment data of 436 venture capital backed companies confirm that China's institutions affect the corporate governance structure of venture capital firms (VCFs) that in turn determine their investment strategies in stage financing, one of the most important mechanisms deployed in venture capital investment. Due to the regulatory restrictions, VCFs in China are divided into two groups in terms of corporate structure: limited partnership, which is a more decentralized organizational form; and, limited company structure, which is a more centralized organizational form. It is revealed that VCFs under limited partnership employ stage financing much more often than VCFs under limited company structure. Furthermore, for VCFs under limited partnership, their stage financing strategies are closely associated with agency problems and the performance of investment that is similar to the US practice. As for VCFs structured as limited companies, they rarely deploy stage financing and the structure of their stage financing do not show visible patterns.
The thesis focuses on higher education as an economic good and identifies its characteristics in relation to the method of financing. The main objective is to analyze the system of financing post-secondary education in Canada. The focus of this paper is mainly evaluation of decentralization and thus participation rate of federal and provincial governments for funding. Then it looks at issue of tuition fees and financial aid for students. On the basis of the analysis are evaluated the pros and cons of the system. The last section is devoted to the current lack of funding tertiary education in Czech Republic and proposed concept of tuition fees.
In 2002,the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations initiated the international project named Conservation and Adaptive Management of Globally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (GIAHS).Up to now,six different systems have been selected as pilot sites including China’s Qingtian Traditional Rice Fish Culture.The criteria of GIAHS pilot sites include three parts: System criteria,contextual criteria and project implementation criteria.System criteria cover outstanding characteristics (indicators include food and livelihood security,benefits maximization,social cohesion,resource endowments and knowledge systems,social and cultural diversity,public goods,traditional knowledge,and relation to the land),proved history of sustainability (indicators include economic viability and sustainability,adaptive capacity,and human ecological sustainability),and global significance (indicators include public goods and value-added).Contextual criteria cover representation (indicators include geography,eco-regions ecosystems,systemic,scalar impacts,demonstration effect,and outstanding examples),external threats (indicators include external threats),and policy and development relevance (indicators to be developed).Project implementation criteria cover project integration (indicators include project integration,partnerships,and international conventions),co-finance potential and project approach (indicators include indicators include international conventions,incremental approach,community empowerment,respect,decentralization,ecosystems approach,programmatic approach,and value-added).Considering the implementation of the project in China,the author suggested Nationally Important Agricultural Heritage Systems (NIAHS) and their conservation should be paid much attention to and the criteria should cover some aspects like bio-cultural diversity,cultural-ecological-social sustainability,regional and typical representativeness,contribution to international conventions,importance to local socio-economic development and eco-environmental protection,demonstration and positivity of local governments.
研究成果の概要 (英文) ：Quantum communication has been developed over the past 30 years based on a novel theory of quantum mechanics.To establish secure quantum communication, we need safe and efficient quantum cryptosystems.From a more realistic viewpoint, we discuss quantum cryptographic primitives whose bases are a more realistic model of quantum devices.In particular, we study the strengths and weaknesses of quantum zero-knowledge proof systems.We also study the quantum list decoding of error-correcting codes and the notion of advice given to the quantum devices. 交付決定額
This article explores the intersection of (1) policing and police intelligence with (2) national intelligence and military intelligence. The premise is that for more than 150 years, prior to the events of September 11, 2001, police intelligence had little connection to national or military intelligence. Basically, national intelligence focused on serious world-wide political and economic threats to the nation's well-being; military intelligence focused specifically on military threats to the national security; the police focused their intelligence work on criminals who posed threats to individuals and local communities. A fairly clear division of labor was in place, based largely on the type and scale of threats.Since 9/11, however, it has become plausible that a small group of non-state actors, such as terrorists, could launch a serious attack against the nation using weapons of mass destruction, or even small arms, as in Mumbai. These individuals might live in a local U.S. community or halfway across the world, yet plan and execute a massive and violent attack against a local U.S. community. They might also commit ordinary crimes to help finance their larger intentions. In this new context of terrorism and asymmetric threats, a local police department might develop intelligence of significant interest to national and military intelligence, or vice versa.Important historical, conceptual, and policy issues associated with the intersection of national, military, and police intelligence are discussed more fully elsewhere. 1 This article presents the results of a small-scale study in which subject matter experts were asked to respond to several scenarios related to intelligence and sharing, asking both what should happen and what would actually happen.U.S. POLICINGPolicing in the United States is civilian (non-military), predominantly local (funded and directed by local governments), and extremely fragmented. It is not just that police are distributed all around the country 2 - they mostly answer to local elected officials. The U.S. has almost 18,000 separate law enforcement agencies, roughly 16,000 of which are local. Of the remaining 2,000 agencies, the vast majority represent special jurisdictions (university police, transit police, park police, etc.), followed by state agencies, and lastly by federal non-military agencies. Out of 837,000 full-time sworn police personnel (armed with arrest authority), 74 percent work for local agencies, 13 percent work for federal law enforcement, and 13 percent work for state or special jurisdiction law enforcement agencies. 3The two largest components of U.S. policing are both local: municipal police departments (cities, towns, townships, boroughs, villages) and county sheriff's offices. 4 Two characteristics of these types of law enforcement agencies are absolutely essential for understanding their capabilities and contexts: most are small (77 percent have fewer than twenty-five full-time sworn officers), 5 and they are all independent of each other. There is no chain of command in the police industry - within individual agencies, yes, but among and between the 18,000 agencies, no. 6Along with industry structure, it is important to note a thing or two about police work and police culture. Particularly at the local and state levels, police officers in the field frequently act alone and without immediate supervision. Much of their work involves making low visibility - especially when an officer's decision does not result in a report or an arrest (and most police actions and decisions do not), it is rarely subject to review. If an officer's decision does not result in a report or arrest, it probably will not produce any official for later analysis. As Peter Manning notes, information in police departments can best be characterized as systematically decentralized. …
Sonia Esteban Laleona, Pablo de Frutos Madrazo, María José Prieto Jano
Traditionally, the academic debates about the benefits that the existence of multilevel government structures provide have been directly related to the gains in efficiency that derive from the processes of decentralization of the Public Sector. However, as of the last decades, the Public Finance has broadened its analysis towards other questions, one of them being if the fiscal decentralization influences positively in the economic growth of a country. The objective of this document is to provide a “reading guide” for this new line of investigation on the influence of fiscal decentralization on economic growth.
Abstract : Mobile airborne networks deployed and used by the armed forces face significant challenges in balancing security concerns with reliably servicing the needs of the forces dependent on it. These issues are complicated by the ever-changing collaborative environments that these networks are tasked to support. The Zero Knowledge Protocol (ZKP) is a powerful technique that replaces the portion of a traditional credential-based key management system where credentials are exchanged. Instead, in ZKPs a proof of the existence of the credential is sent, allowing the receiver to develop absolute confidence that the user has a valid credential, without exposing the credential to risk of compromise. Based on the results of this research, we assert that it may be possible to construct a ZKP scheme with strong anonymity given any identification protocol and a shared-key update scheme.
This note proposes a template for assessing the governance of urban water supply and sanitation (WSS) service providers and its impact of the quality of service and performance of operations. The template can be used for decentralized autonomous public corporations responsible for providing the WSS service to customers as well as other institutional arrangements ranging from government departments to autonomous public WSS asset holding companies subcontracting operations to professional operators. This template complements the extensive work done on performance indicators through the International Benchmarking Network for Water and Sanitation Utilities (IBNET). IBNET has developed a series of indicators to help carry out a complete physical check-up of an urban WSS sector or an urban WSS service provider. Annex gives the complete list of IBNET metric indicators aimed at measuring service coverage, sustainability, and affordability. When reliable data are generated, the indicators give an excellent snapshot of the quality of the WSS service and of the performance of WSS service providers and picture of their evolution over time. In many cases however, it is difficult or even impossible to find reliable data on basic parameters. Designing and implementing a program aimed at generating reliable data is often one of the first gaps to be addressed to help define and monitor the progress of performance improvement programs. The performance of a WSS service provider is obviously influenced by its corporate governance and the environment it operates in. Too often the functions of policy formulation, regulation of the WSS service, ownership of WSS assets, financing of WSS infrastructure development and provision of WSS service are governed by unclear and unenforceable mandates and/or contracts. While IBNET provides an excellent framework to measure the performance of a WSS service provider, no standard appraisal methodology exists for the governance of the WSS service provider and its environment. This template sets out to fill this gap. The template has been developed at the request of World Bank staff that feels that it could help improve effectiveness and efficiency. The template is aimed at assessing the situation in one city or country, including making comparisons over time (e.g. before and after certain interventions). Although not a benchmarking tool per se, it also allows to make cross comparisons at least within countries if not between countries.
In a digital world, users’ Personally Identifiable Information (PII) is normally managed with a system called an Identity Management System (IMS). There are many types of IMSs. There are situations when two or more IMSs need to communicate with each other (such as when a service provider needs to obtain some identity information about a user from a trusted identity provider). There could be interoperability issues when communicating parties use different types of IMS. To facilitate interoperability between different IMSs, an Identity Meta System (IMetS) is normally used. An IMetS can, at least theoretically, join various types of IMSs to make them interoperable and give users the illusion that they are interacting with just one IMS. However, due to the complexity of an IMS, attempting to join various types of IMSs is a technically challenging task, let alone assessing how well an IMetS manages to integrate these IMSs. The first contribution of this thesis is the development of a generic IMS model called the Layered Identity Infrastructure Model (LIIM). Using this model, we develop a set of properties that an ideal IMetS should provide. This idealized form is then used as a benchmark to evaluate existing IMetSs. Different types of IMS provide varying levels of privacy protection support. Unfortunately, as observed by Josang et al (2007), there is insufficient privacy protection in many of the existing IMSs. In this thesis, we study and extend a type of privacy enhancing technology known as an Anonymous Credential System (ACS). In particular, we extend the ACS which is built on the cryptographic primitives proposed by Camenisch, Lysyanskaya, and Shoup. We call this system the Camenisch, Lysyanskaya, Shoup - Anonymous Credential System (CLS-ACS). The goal of CLS-ACS is to let users be as anonymous as possible. Unfortunately, CLS-ACS has problems, including (1) the concentration of power to a single entity - known as the Anonymity Revocation Manager (ARM) - who, if malicious, can trivially reveal a user’s PII (resulting in an illegal revocation of the user’s anonymity), and (2) poor performance due to the resource-intensive cryptographic operations required. The second and third contributions of this thesis are the proposal of two protocols that reduce the trust dependencies on the ARM during users’ anonymity revocation. Both protocols distribute trust from the ARM to a set of n referees (n > 1), resulting in a significant reduction of the probability of an anonymity revocation being performed illegally. The first protocol, called the User Centric Anonymity Revocation Protocol (UCARP), allows a user’s anonymity to be revoked in a user-centric manner (that is, the user is aware that his/her anonymity is about to be revoked). The second protocol, called the Anonymity Revocation Protocol with Re-encryption (ARPR), allows a user’s anonymity to be revoked by a service provider in an accountable manner (that is, there is a clear mechanism to determine which entity who can eventually learn - and possibly misuse - the identity of the user). The fourth contribution of this thesis is the proposal of a protocol called the Private Information Escrow bound to Multiple Conditions Protocol (PIEMCP). This protocol is designed to address the performance issue of CLS-ACS by applying the CLS-ACS in a federated single sign-on (FSSO) environment. Our analysis shows that PIEMCP can both reduce the amount of expensive modular exponentiation operations required and lower the risk of illegal revocation of users’ anonymity. Finally, the protocols proposed in this thesis are complex and need to be formally evaluated to ensure that their required security properties are satisfied. In this thesis, we use Coloured Petri nets (CPNs) and its corresponding state space analysis techniques. All of the protocols proposed in this thesis have been formally modeled and verified using these formal techniques. Therefore, the fifth contribution of this thesis is a demonstration of the applicability of CPN and its corresponding analysis techniques in modeling and verifying privacy enhancing protocols. To our knowledge, this is the first time that CPN has been comprehensively applied to model and verify privacy enhancing protocols. From our experience, we also propose several CPN modeling approaches, including complex cryptographic primitives (such as zero-knowledge proof protocol) modeling, attack parameterization, and others. The proposed approaches can be applied to other security protocols, not just privacy enhancing protocols.
An interactive proof system allows a prover to convince a verifier, beyond any reasonable doubt, that a mathematical statement is true. The proof system is said to be zero-knowledge if the verifier learns nothing but the validity of the statement. This thesis studies the properties of zero-knowledge under two important attack models: man-in-middle attack and concurrent attack.
A zero-knowledge interactive proof system which ensures independence of executions under the man-in-middle attack is known as a non-malleable zero-knowledge proof system. We present a non-malleable zero-knowledge protocol of optimal round-complexity (four) for all languages in NP . In addition, this protocol has a black-box simulator. Our construction proceeds by constructing an important cryptographic primitive, called a non-interactive and non-malleable commitment scheme.
To achieve these results, we define and develop the notion of adaptive one-way functions. This notion is of independent interest. Various candidate constructions for adaptive one-way functions based on the hardness of specific number-theoretic assumptions are also presented. Our results in the man-in-middle model assume the existence of adaptive one-way functions.
An interactive proof system which remains zero-knowledge under the concurrent attack is known as concurrent zero-knowledge proof system. The simulation techniques of known concurrent zero-knowledge protocols lack an important measure of quality, namely precision. We present a concurrent zero-knowledge protocol for all languages in NP with a precise simulation technique.
The two attack models mentioned above are somewhat orthogonal to each other. This leads to a combined and stronger attack model: concurrent man-in-middle attack. A protocol that remains zero-knowledge under this attack is called concurrent non-malleable zero-knowledge. A general compiler for transforming a protocol with much weaker security (namely, honest-verifier zero-knowledge) into a protocol with strong security (i.e., concurrent non-malleable zero-knowledge) is also presented. This transformation is based on the (standard) decisional Diffie-Hellman (DDH) assumption.
Corporate strategy is an essential management tool for achieving a firm’s \nperformance through strategic initiatives. Managers of firms must assess their firm’s \ncurrent competitive position, build a vision for where they must be in future, and craft \ntransformation strategy to turn the future vision into reality. The research design was \na case study. The areas of interest in this study were the various college departments, \nschools and institutes and also the central administration departments which form the \nintegral part of the University. Structured/unstructured interviews were used with \nsome open ended questions to allow for more in depth information to be obtained \nfrom the interviewees. The researcher used secondary data from various existing \npublications, both administrative and financial reports including government reports. \nThe unit of analysis for this study included central administration and college \ndepartments together with some institutes and schools. Data was analysed using \ncontent analysis because this study sought data that was qualitative in nature given \nthat it is a case study. \nThe study concludes that strategic planning (SP) had an effect on the performance of \nthe University of Nairobi (UoN). SP had led to overall improvement in various areas \nwhich included compliance with set budgetary levels, events within the UoN being \nopen to public, work environment, implementation of service delivery charter, \nresearch innovation and technology and outreach and extension \nactivities/programmes. The study further concludes that University of Nairobi was \nfaced with various challenges of SP. \nThe study recommends that in order for (UoN) to overcome the challenges of SP, \nthere is need for commitment to goals, more staff training, workshops on strategic \nplanning, increased financing, complete decentralization of operations, marketing of \nUoN’s programmes, committed and qualified human resource and increased \nparticipation and consultation of all stake holders
Organizational Leadership and Management Strategies
Organizational Strategy and Culture
Human Resource Development and Performance Evaluation
Governing Africa's Forests in a Globalised World (2010) is the result of a collaborative effort of many different parties in government and university. The authors include foresters, anthropologists, social scientists and geographers. This mix makes the work comprehensive and multidisciplinary and multi-stakeholders approach for drawing implications from the empirical findings for policy and practice. There are two main sections in the work: the first deals with decentralization, livelihoods and sustainable forest management, and the second covers international trade, finance and forest governance reforms.
African history and culture studies
Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management
Alina Profiroiu, Tudorel Andrei, Marian Nica, Elena Daniela ŞTEFĂNESCU
The reform process of the state and implicitly of the public administration was a priority for the past governments of Romania. During 2004- 2009, within the reform process, the main actors involved in the coordination, implementation and monitoring of reform measures were: the Prime Minister, the Superior Council for Public Administration Reform, Public Policy Coordination and Structural Adjustment, the Ministry of Public Finance, the General Secretariat of Government, Ministry of Administration and Interior (renamed for a short time Ministry of Interior and Administrative Reform), the Central Unit for Public Administration Reform, National Institute of Administration, the National Agency of Civil Servants, and the National Modernizers Network. For evaluation of aspects related to the reform process it was designed a selective research within the members of the National Modernizers Network, for assessing their perception of the public administration reform undertaken by the institutions presented above. Evaluating their opinion can be an important point in the revitalization of the area of the administration reform process. Also, the research conducted aimed at assessing the degree of modernizers’ involvement in activities related to important aspects of the reform process: strategic planning, formulating and evaluating public policies, financial management, human resources management, decentralization, introduction of new information and communication technologies and administrative simplification.