Ministry of Public Administration

Social norms and patriarchal cultures in Bangladesh shaped social structures in such a way that worked as an impediment to women’s empowerment over time. Less access to education, early marriage, being confined to household activities, no participation in decision-making, and no strategic life choices etc. were common for women, which goes to the opposite of women’s empowerment. To empower women in Bangladesh, the government has taken several policies where social protection plans play an important role. The present study tried to evaluate two social protection plans: an asset transfer programme (a housing project) designed for both males and females and a conditional cash transfer (a stipend for schoolgirls) intended for females only. The study discussed the empowerment aspects of these instruments in terms of Kabeer’s empowerment framework (resources, agency, and achievements), the transformational features of the instruments, and the success of facing existing structures. Both instruments seem effective in terms of empowering women through the creation of resources, agency, and achievements. Stipends for girls increased enrolment of girls in school and average educational qualifications which helped them to enter the job market and have authority in the family. Ashrayan project helped women to have control in family matters through absolute ownership in assets and increased the average income level of the women beneficiaries. Though these instruments fight against structural barriers, policymakers still need to work more as long-term perceptions still exist as impediments to women’s empowerment and sometimes stakeholders cannot realise the ultimate meaning of empowerment. Policies can be designed to ensure the full authority of women over their resources, and it is essential to monitor the true essence of empowerment. The government may need to implement policies which will ensure not only resources but also the agency of the women. Overall, social protection instruments work effectively to empower women, bringing them out of their discomfort zone with a set of resources. To address deep-rooted structures and encourage a thorough knowledge of empowerment among all stakeholders, however, a concerted effort is needed as the journey continues.

One of the main DevOps practices is the automation of resource provisioning and deployment of complex software. This automation is enabled by the explicit definition of Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC), i.e., a set of scripts, often written in different modeling languages, which defines the infrastructure to be provisioned and applications to be deployed.We introduce the DevOps Modeling Language (DOML), a new Cloud modeling language for infrastructure deployments. DOML is a modeling approach that can be mapped into multiple IaC languages, addressing infrastructure provisioning, application deployment and configuration.The idea behind DOML is to use a single modeling paradigm which can help to reduce the need of deep technical expertise in using different specialized IaC languages.We present the DOML’s principles and discuss the related work on IaC languages. Furthermore, the advantages of the DOML for the end-user are demonstrated in comparison with some state-of-the-art IaC languages such as Ansible, Terraform, and Cloudify, and an evaluation of its effectiveness through several examples and a case study is provided.

This chapter explores the policy loopholes and implementation pitfalls in Bangladesh's urban health management system in light of the COVID-19 pandemic event to share all as part of the lessons to other countries. Bangladesh is a populous country, and one-third of people live in rural areas but depend on urban health organizations at secondary and tertiary levels to get health services. Policy, acts, and rules are the main sources of information. The authors recommend a sustainable health management strategy for the urban people for primary and self-care services. This write-off followed secondary sources and desktop search methods such as Research Gate, Academia, Google Scholar, and the concerned websites. Finally, as part of sustainable solutions in health management, this chapter recommends national budget allocation to form an urban health unit to supervise and monitor the sustainable urban health system aligning with SDGs 3 and 16.

The focus of the study is to explain the role of human resources management in the success of projects in the Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The descriptive analytical application was used using the questionnaire study tool for a direct sample of 100 employees in the most important results: There is a relationship that has proven successful in human resources management to achieve the success of projects in the Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, There is a positive relationship in human resources management to achieving success in projects in the Saudi Basic Industries Corporation (SABIC) in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, After managing human resources in discussions and meetings related to senior levels.

This study reflected the author's one-decade professional journey in Bangladesh when he worked on the urban local body. Nevertheless, the author's sensuality with high empathy is that alleviating the urban primary health issues requires a governing department—Urban Health Unit. The urban local body is always under capacity to provide health services in terms of sustainability. In this sense, development agencies like ADB, DFID, and UNFPA anticipated the projects and accelerated the primary health care services under urban local bodies' capacities to downsize health pressure in secondary and tertiary health levels. As a result, assertive public participation and time-befitting policy implications were shaky to do so. For this drive, this study dives into ethnographic methods—participant observation and in-depth interviews with project personnel and public representatives in five urban local bodies of Bangladesh to write this chapter for policy recommendations, ab initio, on urban health issues to establish an Urban Health Unit to achieve SDG 3.

Monografija prinaša izbor okoli sto v 2023 nastalih primerov Upravne svetovalnice, raziskovalno-pedagoškega projekta Fakultete za upravo Univerze v Ljubljani in Ministrstva RS za javno upravo, o upravnih postopkih. Ti so pomemben del sodobne družbe, saj se skozi ta formalni okvir določajo razmerja med oblastjo in posamezniki ter s tem trajnostni družbeni razvoj. Toda zgolj pravna pravila za demokratično in učinkovito upravo ne zadoščajo, zato je pomembno načelno tolmačenje vprašanj o rabi ZUP in povezanih predpisov. Monografija vsebuje tri vsebinske sklope, o upravnih zadevah in udeležencih v njih, komunikaciji in fazah postopka ter pravnih sredstvih; vsak sklop prinaša uvod, sledijo posamični primeri. Publikacija je namenjena uradnim osebam in strankam v praksi ter študentom podiplomskih programov.

The COVID-19 epidemic has hastened the growth of Virtual Communities and is affecting virtually every part of work in the public and business sectors. Virtual communities, popular forums for communication and entertainment, increasingly affected the users’ decisions. Though many technology adoption models/theories are available, a distinctive model for decision-making in a virtual environment is scarce. This research developed the virtual communities’ decision model and empirically tested its performance. This study examined 16 well-established theories/models of information technology, social science, marketing, and behavioral finance and extracted nine constructs from 58 identified constructs considering theoretical cohesiveness along with the three-stage method proposed by Moore and Benbasat. A unified model for virtual communities’ decisions (VCDM) is developed and validated using the data collected from individual capital market investors in Bangladesh. The structural equation modeling technique is used to analyze the data. The upshot implies that VCDM performs adequately and explains the maximum variances in intention to decision and investment. VCDM also outperforms the majority of the related theoretical models. The acceptance levels of fit indices and all significant relationships among different constructs are also empirically validated. The moderating effect of the virtual group use experience is also confirmed. Future research can use VCDM in marketing, behavioral finance, ecommerce, information systems and social science context. VCDM thus facilitates a beneficial tool for managers, service providers, and other users to assess the likelihood of effectiveness for decisions in a virtual environment.

As energy experts' judgement can be biased, we involved stakeholders simultaneously in deriving an energy security (ES) framework for Bangladesh to check whether their perception on ES issues is different from that of energy experts, and whether they reduce experts' biasness. We conducted a two-round Delphi and statistical analysis to identify key ES issues and indicators for the framework. Findings suggest that stakeholders' perception is significantly different from that of the energy experts on several issues, which directly impact energy consumers' living or require adequate knowledge and critical thinking for analysis. Results further suggest that inclusion of stakeholders reduces biasness in expert judgements by complementing the experts’ selection with their higher ratings for several key ES issues.

Uslužbenci in funkcionarji v javni upravi se dnevno srečujejo s številnimi obsežnimi dokumenti, ki jih je treba pregledati in uporabiti glede na informacijske zahteve konkretne naloge. To velja pri pripravi odločitev, pripravi zakonodaje in politik, pregledovanju zakonodaje in politik, ocenjevanju učinkov zakonodaje in politik, pri raznih analizah, pri opisovanju podatkovnih virov in storitev ter pri številnih drugih nalogah. Ker pregledovanje množice dokumentov in izbor uporabnih dokumentov glede na naše potrebe pomeni velik časovni vložek, smo oblikovali pristop na podlagi umetne inteligence za vsebinsko pregledovanje velikih zbirk besedil. Pristop s semantično analizo besedil ter primerjavo vsebinske sorodnosti med posameznimi besedili v zbirki omogoča časovni prihranek in celovito analizo zbirk. V prispevku predstavimo prve rezultate projekta, v katerem razvijamo splošno uporabno orodje za analizo množice besedilnih dokumentov. Cilj projekta je izbor in implementacija gradnikov semantične analize, s kombinacijo katerih lahko izvajamo poljubne tipe analiz dokumentov in gradimo analitične delotoke, ki bi bili lahko uporabni pri tipičnih nalogah, opravilih in storitvah javne uprave. Implementacija vključuje gradnike za dostopanje do podatkovnih prostorov, vložitve dokumentov v vektorske prostore, iskanje podobnih dokumentov, vizualizacijo podatkovnih kart, iskanje karakterističnih pojmov, rangiranje dokumentov glede na semantično podobnost z izbranimi pojmi in urejanje pojmov v ontologije. V članku predstavimo primer uporabe semantičnega povezovanja predlogov vladi z zbirko zakonskih besedil.

This research is concerned with understanding the factors behind the trade-off between child labor and child schooling, given the well-documented links between the two. It examines parents' behavior in their decision-making on their children's schooling or practicing child labor. Depending on qualitative research methods including 28 semi-structured interviews and two focus group discussions conducted in the rural areas of Bangladesh in 2020, this study reveals the following: subsistence needs compel households, particularly the ultra-poor and the female-headed, to trade off child labor with schooling; due to higher demand of labor, parents engage their children into work instead of schooling; parents of labor-intensive occupations tend to trade off child labor with schooling; sexual division of labor remains obvious; finally, credit constraints and cultural beliefs have negative impacts on parental decision-making on child schooling. Interventions aiming to reduce child labor and increase schooling in these rural areas must remain mindful of the socio-economic and cultural needs.