Sahel: governments must boost basic services.

Distributed Hash Tables (DHTs) prove valuable for distributed architectures by providing distributed information lookup, routing, and data storage while promising good scalability and robustness at the same time. From this point of view, a DHT could be seen as a basic service that can be used to build distributed applications. Whereas today no widely deployed and publicly accessible basic DHT service exists and thus DHT- based applications have to deploy their very own DHT networks, DHTs consisting of millions of peers are formed by file sharing clients. Although the interfaces of typical DHTs used for file sharing are too narrow, a basic DHT service could probably be created by bundling a suitable client implementation with file sharing software. In this paper, we evaluate whether a basic DHT service could suit the needs of DHT- based applications in terms of stability, number of participating peers, the peers'' session lengths, geographical distribution and peer connectivity when deployed similar to DHTs driven by file sharing. As these metrics mostly depend on end user behavior rather than on the DHT protocol, we report on measurement results gathered from monitoring of the BitTorrent Mainline client''s DHT over six months. We analyze which metrics would fit a basic DHT service and which could prove problematic. Furthermore, we discuss resulting technical requirements for an appropriate DHT protocol.

Growth of slums, urban poverty and inequality, deteriorating quality of the urban environment, unplanned growth, rapid periurbanisation and growth of sprawls, and deficiencies in the coverage of basic urban services have plagued Indian urbanisation. Through micro-level surveys in select slums and squatters in Delhi and Bangalore, this study attempts to identify the structural and institutional barriers to full engagement of marginalized groups in processes and mechanisms of local democracy, including participation in community based organizations in the provision of basic urban services. Results indicate two prominent categories of exclusion, viz, institutional including housing, land and basic services and structural including barriers to participation of women in economic, social and political activities. These manifest in various forms of inadequacies for different vulnerable groups. To elucidate, the migrants, living mostly in rented accommodation, have lower coverage to basic amenities as compared to the non-migrants. Similarly, the condition of the scheduled population is poor as compared to non-scheduled population. The condition is also poor for the low-income households. The slum dwellers from both cities perceive that providing support to elderly and disabled population, women and child safety, improving connectivity to slums and developing infrastructure and community based preparedness for disaster should be on high priority for the government. The slum dwellers showed low faith in local government as compared to NGOs, in whom they have higher confidence. An integrated approach to urban planning and management with proper targeting of beneficiaries may ensure inclusion of the disadvantaged sections of the society.

Municipalities play a significant role in the field of social care services. The basic social services are primarily provided by local governments. The Hungarian municipalities have strong social powers and duties, but their role is in a permanent transformation. The strongly decentralised system established in the early 1990s has since been centralised and the majority of specialised social services has been nationalised in the last decade. This has resulted in a new model; a mixed system having evolved after 2013. The provision of the specialised services has been mainly centralised, while the basic services have remained the responsibility of the municipal bodies. In this article, the impacts of this reform are analysed. The centralisation of the specialised services and the reforms of the financial support of municipal basic social services significantly transformed the former accessibility. The accessibility to these services depends on several factors: it depends on the central regulation of the entitlement rules, of the central funding of the municipal tasks and partly that of the economic power of the municipality. The central regulation and the central support of these services play a very important role in this system.

The objective of this study is to make (a description based on the score function, an inferential index) to identify the factors that guide development actors in the spatial distribution of basic equipment and services in the rural territories of the district of Abidjan. The study was motivated by a lack of information on the criteria for choosing the allocation of rural areas with equipment, in view of the needs of the populations and the existing disparities between areas in basic services. The methodological approach is based on a combination of cartographic approach and inferential statistics. The cartographic approach describes the distribution of said equipment, while inferential statistics (after determining the variables), prioritize the localities in view of their level of endowment in services provided to the populations. The results revealed, at 75% that factors relating to administrative status and geographic location influence the developer in the distribution and quality of socio-collective facilities. While demographic factors guide 17% of the services involved in improving the living environment of rural people, in making their choices on the population of localities in the distribution of basic services to the populations. To this end, localities with administrative status, or located near a main axis of communication have a better endowment of basic services than the peripheral and island villages of the district of Abidjan.

The Timed Asynchronous System (TAS) model[3] has less stringent assumptions than the synchronous model but is still strong enough to serve as a foundation for the construction of dependable applications. In this paper, we verify the correctness of some basic distributed services in TAS. First, TAS is modelled and then some important properties of two basic services, FADS (Fail Aware Datagram Service) and HALL (Highly Available Local Leader Election Service), are formally verified. The PVS theorem prover is used for modelling and verification of the algorithms. During the process of verification, some of the assumptions in the model that were not explicitly noted in the literature came to light. In addition, due to the insight gained in the process of verification, the ability to extend the validity of some of the properties in the face of additional failures in the system became clear through appropriate modifications of these assumptions.

This study is an empirical investigation into the effects of service quality, customer satisfaction, and brand image on customer loyalty in high-end health management centers affiliated with medical centers in Taiwan, and to provide management strategy recommendations for healthcare institutions to enhance customer loyalty. A survey method was used, analyzing customers of high-end health management centers as the research subjects. A total of 500 questionnaires were distributed, with 446 valid samples collected. The questionnaire was reviewed by experts for expert validity, and the data met the required standards after reliability analysis. Statistical analysis was conducted on the questionnaire content to test the research hypotheses. Regarding demographic variables, age showed differences across all Dimension. Education level and monthly income showed significant differences in the loyalty construct. Customer satisfaction and brand image have a significant positive impact on customer loyalty, with customer satisfaction having a stronger influence. However, service quality did not have a direct significant impact on customer loyalty. Additionally, both service quality and brand image had a significant positive impact on customer satisfaction, indicating that service quality indirectly affects loyalty through customer satisfaction. It is worth noting that customers with a higher frequency of health checkups had lower loyalty. In the highly competitive health checkup service market, customer satisfaction and brand image are the key drivers of customer loyalty. Although basic service quality is a necessary condition, it does not directly affect loyalty. This suggests that customers take basic professionalism and service for granted. Therefore, if healthcare institutions can go beyond basic services by optimizing the process experience and building a professional yet humane brand image, it is recommended to shift the marketing focus from "quality promotion" to "brand value creation" to establish a long-term competitive advantage in the market.

Since the coming of democracy in South Africa, the last decade has been marked by extraordinary, yet positive changes in policy development. Democratic organisation, both as a system of government and as a value system commanding the support of ordinary people, is of key importance in these developments and the implications for South Africa are still being analysed. Noticeable are the fundamental changes in the energy sector where there has been a shift from energy self-reliance and energy security to a more sustainable policy approach driven by economic efficiency, social equity and environment protection. Institutes of Democracy like IDEA (2004) concur with this trend that a strong democratic system must support poverty reduction for meaningful democratic change and, in practice; this is clearly the trend being defined. It is now a sustainable development issue, and voter’s confidence that is fast becoming the defining principle and drives for rapid policy change and service delivery in the form of an Integrated National Electrification Programme (INEP) in the energy sector. Policy makers in energy policy acknowledge this phenomenon as defining what is now seen as a ‘post-apartheid energy paradigm shift’. In this paper, it is suggested that the National Electrification Programme (NEP) has performed beyond expectation in increasing access to electricity for the poor in the country. It is also argued that, there is now an electrification and political democracy nexus exhibited in social and political development of this country. In this line of thought, the argument given is that one of the reasons why people voted for the ruling party in 1999 and 2000 was the NEP. Furthermore this identified linkage provides policy recommendations that suggest that the government should deliver other basic services in a similar manner in order to gain people’s confidence. In South Africa, because of the country’s unique social, economic and political history, a trade-off between basic social service delivery and linkage with democracy then becomes very crucial. Keywords

Collaboration in cooperative information systems, like concurrent design and engineering, exploits common work and information spaces. In this paper we present the TOGA service (transaction-oriented group and coordination service for data-centric applications) and the data propagator CHAMPAGNE that together realize a shared information space that is controlled by a basic collaboration service. Our approach enables: 1) the evolution of a set of separate applications to form a cooperative information system, i.e., it provides a technique towards component-oriented system engineering; and 2) it can be exploited as a basic service within collaboration frameworks to effectively manage common work and information spaces.

One of the most significant developments in the 1990s in social policy in developing and transition countries has been the growth of privatization in health, education and water services - three basic services, which involve most of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Welfare pluralism was very much a core element of the Washington Consensus. Despite the talk of the Washington Consensus being ‘dead for years’, the international financial institutions have pushed for welfare pluralism in social services since the 1990s. This article critically scrutinizes the arguments and evidence that have been made in favour of greater private sector participation in these services. The article addresses what role the private sector could or should play in these services and is, thus, driven by practical policy concerns. For reasons of space, this article does not address the non-profit or nongovernmental organization (NGO) provision of basic social services (which, in most countries, is quite small in size).

There is a growing recognition that the chronically mentally ill are a heterogeneous population with a multiplicity and diversity of needs. But inadequate information concerning the extent of the population service needs and the degree to which aftercare services meets these needs has contributed to the minimization of the problem. This article reports on the extent to which aftercare services meets the needs of discharged patients. Most discharged patients had a need for basic maintenance aftercare services such as individual counseling, chemotherapy, and financial assistance. However, there was also a high need for more rehabilitative services such as socialization services, social and vocational rehabilitation, and supportive residential services. Although almost half had their basic service needs met by aftercare services, few had their rehabilitative ones met.

This paper selects the data of each city and district and county in Chengdu-Chongqing twin-city economic circle from 2012 to 2020, constructs the index system of equalization of basic public services, and uses the Thiel index to measure the level of basic public services for five primary indicators and several secondary indicators in Chengdu-Chongqing twin-city economic circle, and the results show that: (1) The level of equalization of basic public services in Chengdu-chongqing economic circle is in a“Good”stage. (2) The degree of inequality of basic public services of social security, medical and health care, and education and culture in the total region is increasing year by year. (3) The differences in the equalization of basic public services between regions are most prominent in the deepening of the inequality of basic public services in social security and infrastructure year by year. This paper then analyzes the characteristics and causes of the unequalization of basic public services in the Chengdu-Chongqing twin-city economic circle and proposes policy recommendations for the future development path.

Highlights of the 2000 Institute on Psychiatric Services

Basic services such as safe drinking water, proper garbage disposals, adequate sewage systems, sufficient street lighting and strong infrastructure in places like schools and hospitals, among others are all fundamental prerequisites to a decent urban life. Yet, the vastly increasing rural-to-urban migration, as is common in developing countries today, presents intricate difficulties for local urban bodies, as they struggle to accommodate and provide basic services to a rapidly increasing population. Efficiency in managing and maintaining urban infrastructure, combined with adequate public services and full citizen accountability, defines the quality of any urban government. In this context, the present paper tries to evaluate the performance and public role of urban governance as concerns selected wards of the Chandernagore Municipal Corporation (CMC). The CMC was chosen due to its status as the fifth-ranked city among Class-I cities situated in the west bank of the Hooghly River (within the Kolkata Metropolitan Area). As this is the oldest municipal corporation in West Bengal, is located only 35 km north of Kolkata and is a densely populated urban area (with a population density of 8800 person/km2), the demand for efficient and adequate basic services is an enormous challenge. In this paper, the evaluation of basic services has been done through the application of The Urban Governance Initiative (TUGI) index, an index based on the judgement of citizens’ regarding the performance by urban services. The study also tries to focus on new initiatives by the CMC—such as the Citizen Charter—in order to inform citizens about institutional targets regarding the supply and maintenance of basic services as well as future plans regarding the expansion and improvement of these services.

This study aims to determine the direct and indirect effect of 4c skills (communication, collaboration, and critical thinking through the skills of guidance and counselling teachers on implementing basic guidance and counselling services in Makassar City Junior High Schools. This research method uses a quantitative approach with a correlational research design that aims to investigate the extent to which a variable is related to one or more variables. The research data were collected using research instruments, namely the BK teacher's 4C skill questionnaire and the implementation of basic guidance and counseling services which were distributed to 60 respondents of guidance and counseling teachers, this instrument has been tested for validity and reliability with confirmatory factor analysis, then analyzed using descriptive analysis techniques and path analysis using JASP statistical data. So the results of the research: 1) The description of the implementation of basic services has a high category, 2) The description of the 4C skills of BK teachers from critical thinking variables is in the high category, and creativity, collaboration, and communication are in the medium category, 3) Communication skills BK teacher communication and collaboration have a direct influence on the implementation of basic counselling services but indirectly through creativity, while critical thinking skills have no direct and indirect influence on the implementation of basic counselling services through creativity.

The provision of basic public services in rural areas is a necessary condition for promoting farmers, agriculture, and rural development, and has important economic effects. The supply of basic public services in rural areas has an impact on agricultural growth, rural poverty reduction, and farmers’ production and investment, and ultimately directly or indirectly affect farmers’ income and consumption. In order to effectively improve the effectiveness of providing basic public services in rural areas, this study takes rural basic public services as the research object, and analyzes the economic and geographic perspectives, models, and algorithms of supply effectiveness through a literature review. It was found that the research area level needs to be deepened, and the shortcomings of traditional models and algorithms were also found. This article will make full use of the TOPSIS model’s methodological advantages in comprehensive ranking, combine the entropy method with the TOPSIS model, and sort the evaluation objects by approaching the optimal solution, so as to more objectively evaluate the rural basic public service supply in the sample counties. Based on the data aggregation algorithm, with the help of spatial analysis methods, Gini coefficient, and Theil index to further study the spatial distribution characteristics of supply. The research shows that the method has good performance and can be used as a reference for the subsequent related research rural basic services theory.