Okay, kids, you can come back in; Uncle Mole is in a better mood now. If you're just joining us, you should know that I was in a very foul temper, because I'd only just found out that a prominent scientist, whose work I'd valued, had been exposed as a fake. His lovely work wasn't simply flawed, it was made up. My whole faith in science has been shaken, and I want to fix it. Instead, I've watched TV.I've just seen one of my favorite episodes of the old Twilight Zone. In `It's a Good Life' we meet a mind-reading, omnipotent monster who is terrorizing a small town. The monster is a six-year-old body played by Billy Muni, who would later gain quasi-immortality as the youngest member of the Robinson family on Lost in Space (as in, `Danger, Will Robinson!'). But in this Twilight Zone story by Jerome Bixby, he is a small boy who can do anything, and when he is displeased, he can transform townspeople into horrors, or make them disappear altogether, by `sending them to the cornfield'. So I imagined doing this to our scientific fraud, and I felt better. Maybe this wasn't the point of the story, but it made me feel better.The problem of scientific fraud isn't new, but it seems as though our efforts to eradicate it have not worked. We get tougher, but the fakers just get better at faking. Perhaps we need to further tighten security - remove your shoes and laptops prior to submission...There are two views of this problem, and the one we take will dictate what we should do. The `tip of the iceberg' position says that the fraud that has been exposed represents only the tiniest bit of a problem that is rotting science from the inside. Some have advocated a zero-tolerance policy, and have taken it on themselves to act, vigilante fashion, to publicize any discrepancies they find in publications, demanding satisfaction. The standard operating procedure here seems to be to contact the journal and the community, via emails for example, intimating that every questionable figure is evidence of fakery - mistakes cannot be tolerated. I know of one investigator who is being hounded to explain two identical images in a paper, which he asserts is a post-proof printing error (and was immediately corrected) but he can't prove it. But the vigilantes contend that zero tolerance demands that everyone subject themselves to a `trust no-one' process in the hope that we'll weed out the worst offenders.Don't get me wrong, I do think that there is a lot of fudging in the literature. My old Oxford English Dictionary defines fudge in this context as “to fit together or adjust in a clumsy, makeshift or dishonest manner”. (The most romantic etiology traces this to one Captain Fudge, c1664, a.k.a. Lying Fudge, who was probably a real person, although he may have made himself up.) In science, fudging data can be elimination of compelling results that don't fit the hypothesis (which may be for perfectly valid reasons or not) or adjusting the results, say, when molecular weight markers seem off. It occurs because researchers are under tremendous pressure to publish on a timetable - the need to publish any work that has used up time and resources, however questionable the conclusions. Journals promote this problem by demanding additional results that are conditions for publication, usually on even shorter timetables. Fudging seems inevitable. I am not forgiving it; I'm only saying why I think it happens. But when it goes too far it becomes fakery, and it is unforgivable. The tip of the iceberg view is that much of what we see is not simply fudged; it is faked.The alternative view, to which I subscribe, is that true fraud is exceedingly rare. Mistakes, misinter - pretations, and wishful thinking are more common - and problematic - but I think we can deal with them. But outright fabrication is rare enough to be news.Can I prove this second view? No. But I can demonstrate that it is a useful and profitable position to take. And the demonstration points to a route to the solution, not only for fraud, but also for errors and other problems.Unless you live in a cave and, for that matter, a cave without an internet connection, you know about eBay, the massively successful online auction system. Anyone can buy or sell anything on eBay (including, apparently, fabulously expensive grilled-cheese sandwiches) and can do so with a remarkable level of confidence. It is based on a seemingly naive, but ultimately profound, precept: most people are honest. This is backed up by a readily accessible rating system, where buyers and sellers provide feedback on their transactions, thereby exposing problems if and when they arise. The system is largely transparent: those who lie are quickly flamed, and anyone who gives inordinate numbers of negative comments is discredited. It is freewheeling, but for the most part it is wildly successful.Once, when science was conducted by an elite, feedback occurred in the literature and at meetings. This still happens, but in a manner that is difficult to assess unless one is in the center of the action (again, one of the elite). High-impact journals have no interest in publishing work that refutes other work, regardless of the rigor of the refutation, and the group psychology among researchers translates this into `high impact = true, low impact = less true'. Even when we think that everyone knows that a particular finding is flawed, one only has to take a stroll into a related but different venue, such as the department upstairs, to find that others who might be peripheral to the field can evince surprise at our suspicions. We need a feedback system that everyone can access.I propose that we take a cue from eBay. Link a system to PubMed, for example, by which we can identify a paper and offer feedback (“we repeated this finding, but couldn't reproduce that one” or “this result may be an artifact for the following reasons”). It must be transparent - commentators are registered and their identities known, and we can similarly access their other reviews. Vigilantes who only find fault will find their comments of less value than those from reviewers who are balanced in their views. And, of course, the authors will be able to respond to criticism if it is especially important. We will have a way to evaluate the experiences of the community, far beyond a paper's `impact', which is more likely to reflect the extent to which a finding is easy to mention. I think we'll gain confidence in the literature, we'll expose fudges, and we'll find very little fraud.For this to work, however, we need a fundamental change in the community of scientists. We need to realize that making mistakes is common and that honesty requires that errors be owned up to. We need to reward, not punish, those individuals who can say that they got it wrong. It happens all the time, and we pretend it doesn't, and, as a consequence, the fudging goes on. We can make it stop, but only if we take away the pressure not to admit to it.But what of the real monsters who are out there? The ones who simply make it up? Such allegations are serious and must be dealt with by informed investigation, as we do now, and evidence of genuine misconduct must come from close to home (fellow researchers with intimate knowledge of the lab and methods). We can deal with this, and only open such investigations when the evidence is overwhelming. But why do they do it, this outright fakery that is so antithetical to the entire process of scientific inquiry? I think I know, because I've just been watching the Twilight Zone.The monster in `It's a Good Life' can do anything, knows everything and, because he is only a child, has no goals but his own desires. He understands only that whatever he wants to happen, happens. When a bright, young, and very ambitious scientist begins his or her career, one of two things occur early on. They can chance on a set of ideas that happen to be correct, and their experiments flow effortlessly towards a happy conclusion. And if this is an important conclusion, rewards come quickly. Or, alternatively, they can be wrong, and they learn at this formative stage that no matter how wonderful an idea may be, and how much they need it to be true, it can still be wrong. This is an extremely important lesson that our first, lucky researcher may not learn, unless, of course, we teach them. The successful student guesses again, and again may be right - more rewards. By the time they come up against something that they cherish that turns out to be mistaken, they may have already become our monster-their idea, their need to be right, exceeds all other goals. It doesn't happen all at once - but someone who is always right begins to believe that they are special, and does not realize that luck is a major factor in all of this. So they make it right. They have made the leap to quasi-omnipotence. I once met a monster like this, and it was truly frightening.'It's a Good Life' was remade, years later, as a vignette in The Twilight Zone Movie. In the rewritten work, the ending was changed: a teacher takes on the task of educating the monster/child, who is desperate for guidance. And this, of course, is what we need to do with our most gifted, lucky young scientists. We have to teach them that ideas are frequently wrong, and this is fundamental to science. And we have to stop stressing that being right brings rewards, while being wrong brings despair. Let's stop giving awards for best poster, best thesis, best student. Science is a reward. We don't need more monsters. Let them be wrong sometimes.Otherwise, I'll want to send you to the cornfield.
Compared with most countries the Norwegian system of financing local governments is highly centralized. Grants make up a substantial part of revenues and local taxes are highly regulated by the center. The development of the system was motivated by a desire to equalize service provision throughout the country. The purpose of this paper is to analyze possible consequences of more decentralized financing with local tax discretion. Contrary to the conventional wisdom the analysis indicates that decentralized financing is likely to give more equal provision of local public services. In addition, substantial efficiency gains can be obtained.
Fundamental meaning of local government system is to enhance inhabitants' welfare and strengthen local competitiveness through consolidation of localization and local autonomy capacity and enlargement of inhabitants' participation. In particular, one of key factors for successful settlement of local government system is financial decentralization and security of independent taxation right. While Constitution guarantees local financial right and prescribes rational adjustment of national and local tax by Special Law of Localization, creation of new tax items and security of independent taxation right, local government law, local tax law, local finance law and 2007 revision of tax law have no legal revisions reflecting these in practice. Therefore, this paper examines division of tax sources in Korea and other foreign countries to seek means to secure financial resources accomplishing purposes of local governments' administration based on decentralization in the reality that non-border and globalization have been extended and formation of decentralized society has been accelerated in knowledge-based information society in the 21st century and investigates issues on financial decentralization on current law, independent financial legislation right by the principle of legislated taxation, transferred imposition of composite real estates tax to local tax, tax item adjustment and common tax system introduction by local governments and local council and application of elastic tax on local tax law based on public law.
The responsibility of the central government for local finance increases as the financial condition of the local governments gets worse. The central government is required to improve the local finance rearrangements by focusing on satisfying the financial demand of local governments and realizing the financial equity among local governments. First of all, the current financial situation of the local governments should be reviewed in details for the central government to carry out such duties. The financial decentralization and the local finance renovation performed by central government are not positively evaluated despite its intended policy goal. In fact the central government didn’t consider seriously the opinions of local governments by adhering to its surface cause. Therefore the evaluation and improvement of the local finance rearrangement should be continuously done. The objective and role of the local finance rearrangement are subjected to be obviously presented, and then relevant distribution criteria should be prescribed. It should be kept in mind that the local finance rearrangement is the last resort for successful local government in fact that the responsibility of the central government increases as the economy and society develop.
<abstract language="eng">The constitution of Brazil directs that the country’s health system, the Unified Health System (Sistema Único de Saúde), be politically and administratively decentralized. Nevertheless, handing over competencies, responsibilities, and resources to subnational levels, especially to municipal governments, has been a slow process, lasting almost two decades. Advances have been brought about by the Unified Health System, which, from a analytical perspective, is a public and universal system. Despite that, the decentralization process needs to overcome norms that keep all levels of management dependent on Brazil’s federal Government. The subnational levels have consistently faced difficulties in performing their macromanagement functions with autonomy, especially when it comes to financing and to the establishment or organization of health care networks. Boldness and responsibility will be needed to prevent Brazil’s health decentralization process from leading to fragmentation. New political agreements between different levels of government, with a reassignment of responsibilities and the enhancement of a culture of technical cooperation, are fundamental requisites to making the Unified Health System have a health policy that is truly public and universal.
The aim of this study is to provide sector stakeholders with a snapshot of the order of magnitude and quality of investments made in water supply and sanitation after decentralization as a means of exploring the underlying issues related to the gap in sector financing, effectiveness of current channels of funds and institutional arrangements, which would serve as basis for recommendations on a way forward for developing a sector investment plan. In the context of Indonesia, developing a sector strategy and investment plan will not be achieved overnight as key sets of information remain unavailable. Prior to this study, attempts at quantifying investments in water supply and sanitation have been limited to global figures of investments in water, which included irrigation and water resources conservation, and very limited disaggregated information on funds allocated for sanitation.
Pakistan has an extensive public sector service delivery infrastructure consisting of a three tiered healthcare delivery system which includes Basic Health Units and Rural Health Centers forming the core of the primary health model, secondary care including first and second referral facilities providing acute, ambulatory and inpatient care through Tehsil Headquarter and District Headquarter hospitals and Tertiary Care comprising teaching hospitals. Notwithstanding, most people receive healthcare through private out-of-pocket payments made directly to the providers at the point of care. Recently, many attempts have been made to mainstream alternative arrangements of service delivery at various levels in order to bridge gaps in the present system of service delivery, albeit with limited success. As one of the core areas of reform-related interventions, the Gateway Paper makes a strong case for introducing change at two levels in order to obviate these issues. Firstly, at the level of hospitals the hospital sustainability reform process calls for major structural and financing adjustments, the development of appropriate policy frameworks, decentralizing hospital management to autonomous hospital boards and providing legal, managerial and fiscal autonomy to hospitals with appropriate community representation. At the primary healthcare level, a system for restructuring BHUs and RHCs has been supported--one that makes a case for appropriate checks and balances in order to ensure sustained improvements by redefining the roles of management, quality assurance, regulation and community oversight the latter through linkages with the devolution initiative. The Gateway Paper dovetails these alternative service delivery arrangements with parallel financing models.
David M. Quinn, Jonathan Wilkenfeld, Kathleen Smarick, Victor Asal
International relations scholars have long focused on power relations among nations as an explanatory factor for a wide variety of state behaviors, including alliance formation, strategic interactions, and negotiation strategies. Power transition theorists have argued that war is most likely when power is equally distributed among nations or, more precisely, when the power of the challenger approaches—or begins to exceed—that of its opponent (Organski, 1968 Organski, A. F. K. 1968. World Politics, New York: Knopf. [Google Scholar]; Organski and Kugler, 1980 Organski, A. F. K. and Kugler, Jacek. 1980. The War Ledger, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]; Kugler and Lemke, 1996 Kugler, Jacek and Lemke, Douglas. 1996. Parity and War: Evaluations and Extensions of The War Ledger, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). Balance of power theorists, on the other hand, have argued that equality of power among nations diminishes the chance of war, as uncertainty about outcomes caused by approximate power parity leads actors to be more cautious (Claude, 1962 Claude, Inis. 1962. Power and International Relations, New York: Random House. [Google Scholar]; Wright, 1965 Wright, Quincy. 1965. A Study of War , 2nd, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. [Google Scholar]). The research presented here considers relative power not as a cause of conflict, as these previous studies have done, but as a factor relevant to conflict resolution efforts. In this study, we focus on crises as a specific instance of conflicts in the international system and on mediation as a specific conflict resolution measure. Building upon previous work (Wilkenfeld et al., 2003 Wilkenfeld, Jonathan, Young, Kathleen, Asal, Victor and Quinn, David. 2003. Mediating International Crises: Cross-national and Experimental Perspectives. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 47: 279–301. [CSA][CROSSREF][Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar], 2005 Wilkenfeld, Jonathan, Young, Kathleen, Quinn, David and Asal, Victor. 2005. Mediating International Crises, London: Routledge. [Google Scholar]), we examine the way mediation styles and power relations among crisis actors interact and impact on whether the crisis ends in an agreement, and whether the crisis outcome leads to long-term, postcrisis tension reductions. This research is intended to extend understanding of the nature of crisis behavior and to inform efforts to manage crises most effectively.
The move from platform centric planning to network enabled capability poses not only organizational challenges but also challenges to the technology that will be needed to enable networked operations. Within this context, this paper outlines the central role that autonomous software agents, that coordinate their activities in flexible ways, have to play in providing robust system solutions. The major research challenges are addressed in order to take this promising technology forward and to make it suitable for NEC application. The interactions of the various autonomous agents within the system, that are necessary in order to achieve their individual and collective aims, can be analyzed and designed using techniques from Game Theory and Mechanism Design. Game theory is exploited because it has developed powerful tools for analyzing decision making in decentralized open systems with multiple autonomous agents. Recently, these tools have been tailored to computational settings to provide a principled foundation for building multiple agent systems. This tailoring gives rise to the field of computational mechanism design.
The constitution of Brazil directs that the country's health system, the Unified Health System (Sistema Unico de Saúde), be politically and administratively decentralized. Nevertheless, handing over competencies, responsibilities, and resources to subnational levels, especially to municipal governments, has been a slow process, lasting almost two decades. Advances have been brought about by the Unified Health System, which, from a analytical perspective, is a public and universal system. Despite that, the decentralization process needs to overcome norms that keep all levels of management dependent on Brazil's federal Government. The subnational levels have consistently faced difficulties in performing their macromanagement functions with autonomy, especially when it comes to financing and to the establishment or organization of health care networks. Boldness and responsibility will be needed to prevent Brazil's health decentralization process from leading to fragmentation. New political agreements between different levels of government, with a reassignment of responsibilities and the enhancement of a culture of technical cooperation, are fundamental requisites to making the Unified Health System have a health policy that is truly public and universal.
Este trabajo analiza la estructura de los servicios de salud pública en Estados Unidos. Pretende aportar la perspectiva de una organización federal de la salud pública con más de 200 años de historia, que puede ser de utilidad en el actual contexto español. La información se ha obtenido a partir de la realización de entrevistas con personas clave de los tres niveles de la administración pública (federal, estatal y local), así como con académicos (muchos de los cuales han sido directives del sistema de salud pública). Se presta especial atención a la organización, financiación y actividades de los departamentos de salud pública locales y de los estados, así como a los esquemas de relación entre ambos. Se comentan las implicaciones para un país como España, que ha pasado en poco tiempo de una estructura muy centralizada a una estructura descentralizada en 17 comunidades autónomas. The present article analyzes the structure of public health services in the USA. It aims to describe the perspective of 200 years of a federal organization of public health services, which could be useful in the current context in Spain. Information was obtained by interviews with key informants from the three levels of government (federal, state, and local) and with academics (many of whom had previous experience as public health officers). Special attention is paid to the organization, financing and activities of local and state health departments, as well as to the relationships between these departments. The implications for a country like Spain, which has evolved in a short period from a highly centralized system to a decentralized system based on 17 Autonomous Communities, is discussed.
Pakistan currently principally uses three modes of financing health--taxation, out of pocket payments and donor contributions of which the latter is the least significant in terms of size. Less than 3.6% of the employees are covered under the social security scheme and there is a limited social protection mechanism, which collectively serves the health needs of 3.4% of the population. The main issues in health financing include low spending, lack of attention to alternate sources of financing and issues with fund mobilization and utilization. With respect to the first, health reforms proposed as part of the Gateway Paper make a strong case for promoting the reallocation of tax-based revenues and developing sustainable alternatives to low levels of public spending on health. With respect to alternative sources of health financing, the Gateway Paper lays stress on exploring policy options for private health insurance, broadening the base of Employees Social Security, creating a Federal Employees Social Security Programme, developing social health insurance within the framework of a broad-based social protection strategy, which scopes beyond the formally employed sector, establishing a widely inclusive safety net for the poor; mainstreaming philanthropic grants as a major source of health financing; developing a conducive tax configuration; generating greater corporate support for social sector causes within the framework of the concept of Corporate Social Responsibility and developing cost-sharing programmes, albeit with safeguards. The Gateway Paper regards efficient fund utilization a priority and lays stress on striking a balance between minimizing costs, controlling costs and using resources more efficiently and equitably--in other words, getting the best value for the money, on the one hand, and increasing the pool of available resources, on the other. Specific interventions such as the promotion of transparent financial administration, budgeting and cost controls and enhancing the capacity to overcome onerous financial management procedures and decentralizing decision-making are underscored as a priority as is the need for ensuring greater financial procedural clarity at the federal-provincial-district interface.
In this paper we review the fiscal evolution of China and Russia, asking how the process of creating a separate, tax-financed public sector in the two countries differed. We observe that the size of China&apos;s budget sector was consistently smaller than in Russia and that budget decentralization was consistently greater. We see both pros and cons in China&apos;s decentralization. Local governments that were allowed to keep marginal increases in local tax revenue had incentives to pursue growth-supporting policies, including support for foreign investment and export-oriented production. However, in the absence of financial markets, there were barriers to investment outside the local region, resulting in inefficient use of capital and protectionism. Fiscal deficits and rapid expansion of credit have threatened stability in both countries, but China has proved more successful than Russia in managing macroeconomic policies. Finally, we argue that Russia&apos;s status as a petro-state makes management of the public sector particularly difficult. In Russia, recentralization has been associated with expansion of state ownership of enterprises and production by territorial governments, state ministries, state banks, and the natural monopolies.
Abstract:- Since the invention of the first idea of digital signatures relied on public key algorithms many properties are added, and numerous novel schemes are developed. Besides this grow, a novel idea in identification schemes relied on public key algorithms is also presented, that is zero knowledge proof of identity. However, along with this development many remarkable schemes for instance the Fiat-Shamir protocol is generated. The Fiat-Shamir protocol is relied on one particular type of digital signature scheme that is RSA scheme, but generates signature for its own, which is vulnerable compared with the digital signature generated by the RSA scheme. The zero knowledge identification scheme proofs ownership of the digital signature on publicly known messages. The aim of this paper is to present a new idea in digital signature schemes based on computational delegation and is claimed to be more efficient than the current schemes.
Abhilasha Bhargav-Spantzel, Anna Squicciarini, Elisa Bertino
An emerging approach to the problem of reducing the identity theft is represented by the adoption of biometric authentication systems. Such systems however present however several challenges, related to privacy, reliability, security of the biometric data. Inter-operability is also required among the devices used for the authentication. Moreover, very often biometric authentication in itself is not sufficient as a conclusive proof of identity and has to be complemented with multiple other proofs of identity like passwords, SSN, or other user identifiers. Multi-factor authentication mechanisms are thus required to enforce strong authentication based on the biometric and identifiers of other nature.In this paper we provide a two-phase authentication mechanism for federated identity management systems. The first phase consists of a two-factor biometric authentication based on zero knowledge proofs. We employ techniques from vector-space model to generate cryptographic biometric keys. These keys are kept secret, thus preserving the confidentiality of the biometric data, and at the same time exploit the advantages of a biometric authentication. The second authentication combines several authentication factors in conjunction with the biometric to provide a strong authentication. A key advantage of our approach is that any unanticipated combination of factors can be used. Such authentication system leverages the information of the user that are available from the federated identity management system.
Biometric Identification and Security
User Authentication and Security Systems
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
In this paper, a non-interactive zero-knowledge proof scheme is proposed for secure identification in wireless networks, and it uses a timed oblivious transfer technique to enable a single verifier to identify multiple provers. The verifier and the prover do not need to be synchronized in this scheme. This scheme also enjoys the distance bounding property which makes the proposed scheme invulnerable to the relay attack. We propose to use the order statistic for the detection of relay attackers. We show that it is optimal in terms of minimum variance. Finally, we will shed some light on implementation issues of our proposed scheme.
In this paper, a new forward secure threshold signature scheme is presented, which is the first one from bilinear pairings. Compared with the known schemes against malicious adversary, the new scheme needs the fewest interactions and is very efficient. As an additional contribution, we present a new interactive zero-knowledge proof protocol and convert it into a non-interactive protocol to verify the validity of part signatures in this scheme. The scheme is robust against malicious adversary and forward secure in the random oracle model
Fingerprinting schemes are technical means to discourage people from illegally redistributing the digital data they have legally purchased. These schemes enable the original merchant to identify the original users of the digital data. Anonymous fingerprinting schemes allow a seller to fingerprint information sold to a user without knowing the identity of the user and without the seller seeing the fingerprinted copy. Finding a (redistributed) fingerprinted copy enables the seller to find out and prove to third party whose copy it was. In this paper, we propose a new scheme of anonymous fingerprinting by using electronic wallet, in which, the user doesn't need making a computationally expensive zero-knowledge proof on finding a fingerprinted copy, the seller can directly determine the redistributor by a simple computation without the help of a registration authority and without making a search for the redistributor's public key in purchase record. In addition, our scheme can prevent the collusion of merchant and registration center to make false-accusation to honest users. By using electronic wallet, our scheme can be integrated with electronic payment system
2 source records
Advanced Steganography and Watermarking Techniques
Nelson Turyahabwe, C. J. Geldenhuys, Stephen Watts, A.Y. Banana
Uganda is one of the sub-Saharan African countries that has devolved the management of forest resources. Meaningful devolution, however, requires that local governments and other community organizations should have capacity in terms of adequate and competent human resources, finance, information, skills, and the appropriate legal framework to effectively deliver services. This paper examines the technical and institutional capacity in selected local organisations to manage decentralised forest resources in Uganda. We found that technical and institutional capacity to implement decentralised forest governance exists in local organisations through partnerships with other actors in the productive use of the available resources. Local organisations mobilised and managed human, physical and financial resources for decentralized forest management. They also demonstrated the capacity to make and implement integrated plans and budgets and formulated byelaws regulating forest use. Our findings, however, revealed that none of the organisations had either the legal mandate or sufficient human and physical resources to govern forest resources unilaterally due to inadequate devolution of decision-making powers and inadequate fiscal support from the central government. The findings suggest a need for local organisations to recruit more technical staff, strengthen internal sources of revenue and networking amongst organisations both at local and national government levels for effective management of decentralised forest resources.
Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management
Since South Africa held its first democratic elections in 1994, it has given significant attention to building an effective system of decentralization including provincial and local government. While provincial governments are responsible mainly for the implementation of social services such as health and education, the provision of much of the urban infrastructure is the responsibility of local government. Although many challenges remain, the country has made significant progress over the past decade in addressing urban service backlogs in poor areas. At the same time, it has greatly improved macroeconomic fundamentals. The system of financing local government seeks to place accountability firmly at the local level, with most revenues in the larger urban centers raised locally through a combination of local taxes and fees for services, while poorer regions are predominantly grant funded. The objective has been to encourage the financing of capital infrastructure through local borrowing based on sustainable, transparent local finances rather than national repayment guarantees, which are outlawed. There is some indirect subsidization of loans through the state-owned Development Bank of Southern Africa. But the emphasis is on achieving redistribution through transparent, formula-based grants paid directly from national to local governments. While further bedding down of the system is needed, the approach is proving largely successful. The paper concludes by recommending that the existing division between provinces as providers of social services and local governments as the key locus of responsibility for services related to the built environment should be strengthened, particularly through the devolution of more urban transport related functions. A number of key risks are also highlighted, including issues related to the reform of local business taxes.