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The child is at the centre of all Models of Child Health Appraised research and indeed all primary care delivery for children. Appraising models of primary care for children is incomplete without ensuring that experiences of primary care, design, treatment, management and outcomes are optimal for the child. However, the principle of child centricity is not implicit in many healthcare systems and in many aspects of life, yet it is extremely important for optimal child health service design and child health. By exploring the changing concept of ‘childhood’, we understand better the emergence of the current attitude towards children and their role in today’s Europe and the evolution of child rights. Understanding child centricity, and the role of agents acting on behalf of the child, allows us to identify features of children’s primary care systems that uphold the rights of a child to optimum health. This is placed against the legal commitments made by the countries of the European Union and European Economic Area to ensure that children’s rights are respected.

Introduction: Interest and action concerning fiscal accountability have surged around the world in recent years, especially among Sub-Saharan African countries, because decision-making in the region has traditionally been shrouded in secrecy, with the general public having almost no access to knowledge on the management of public funds. Limited fiscal transparency has led to government fiscal crises where citizens have begun to call for better governance and participation in public funds.

Purpose: This study examines the impact of e-governance on the overall fiscal performance in SSA, while the specific objectives include the effect of e-governance on the central government’s primary balance and public external debt stock.

Methodology: The study employs annual data across 43 SSA countries to analyse the study from 2000 to 2018 using the panel-corrected standard error (PCSE) method for estimating the models. Overall fiscal performance is generated through principal component analysis (PCA), which involves a linear combination of public external debt stock and central government primary balance.

Findings: The results reveal that there is clear evidence of the effectiveness of e-governance on the overall fiscal performance, even though this is not the same for the public external debt stock in SSA, despite the success recorded in the region’s ICT and telecommunication sectors in recent times. In addition, all other control variables impact fiscal performance except population growth.

This chapter examines the six smart city dimensions that serve as pillars in smart city projects. These dimensions are crucial in the development and evaluation of smart city initiatives, representing key areas for consideration. This chapter offers a detailed analysis of the smart city ecosystem, focusing on the governance, environment, people, living, mobility, and economy dimensions. It challenges the prevailing media portrayal of the smart city strategy and engages in the current academic debate surrounding these dimensions. This chapter defines, discusses, and explains each dimension, incorporating case studies from cities such as Copenhagen, San Francisco, Lisbon, and Barcelona. It also includes interviews and factual data to highlight the internal implementation and objectives of the smart city within each dimension. This chapter provides a comprehensive understanding of the smart city ecosystem, its implementation, and the potential benefits and challenges associated with each dimension.

This chapter explores the concept of branding in a contemporary competitive arena of places. The multi-dimensional interpretations of places offer a variety of possibilities to better understand the true essence of destination branding. One of the common interpretations of places is through the study of their images, as destination branding requires a thorough understanding of destination image. The important foundation and relation of destination image are specified and explained. The notion of destination branding has evolved from the fields of marketing and urban studies and has become a cross-disciplinary research area. Thus, the researchers explain that destination branding as well as ‘place branding’ are dynamic concepts that are being continuously being explored in academia for the benefit of practitioners in travel and tourism. This chapter suggests that the use of brand equity is also one of the frontier areas of study in ‘place branding’ as it emphasises the need to thematise destinations (e.g. for their historical heritage, cultural value, natural attractions, etc.) and places for residence (e.g. as green cities, creative cities, smart cities, etc.).

The chapter aims to compare public, private and non-profit working citizens’ preferences for cross-sectoral relations in England and Finland. Its main contribution is in identifying preferences in the delivery of services in the respective countries in which citizen choice has become an issue in times of public sector austerity. Challenges arise because in these two similarly institutionalized healthcare systems but pluralistic societies people have contrasting perspectives on the values that should guide policy decisions. The survey data was therefore collected in both England (N = 2,000) and Finland (N = 1,973) in 2013 from cities in which citizens have choices regarding health service delivery. Our informants in England anticipated more potential for better ‘privatized driven public interest’ than did those in Finland. Surprisingly, over 60% of public sector employees in England would like for-profit healthcare to carry main responsibility, and almost 55% of all employees agree with this. Almost 20% of respondents in both countries did not care who the service provider is if only services are available. Thus, the research has pioneering relevance for policymaking, public strategic management and the comparative empirical study of managing people’s preferences in cross-sectoral relations. We conclude that identifying working citizens’ preferences is crucial for effective utilization of current welfare services because the preferences derive from both service and work experience. In sum, strategically, this identification lets public managers balance biased images of the cross-sectoral differences and reconstruct functional hybridity of services.

Nonaka (1990) makes the distinction between generic knowledge that can be applied in many similar contexts, and local knowledge that can be best applied in a specific local context. Israel (1987) and Fukuyama (2004) point out that “high specificity” tasks (i.e. with clear objectives, and using well-defined technologies) with low transaction volume are more likely to be performed successfully by organizations across a wide range of cultural contexts. In this spirit, Friedman (2005, pp. 313–323) observes that countries can benefit from the “flat world” through a combination of “reform wholesale” and “reform retail”. The former entails market-centered reforms such as privatization, deregulation, reducing trade barriers, and adopting flexible labor laws. A handful of leaders in each country have pushed through such reforms in a wide range of cultural contexts including the developed OECD countries, plus many others such as Brazil, India, Mexico, Russia, China, and other East Asian “tiger” economies. The latter entails upgrading infrastructure, regulatory institutions, and education and health standards. Unlike the former, the latter reforms cannot be instituted by a handful of leaders, but require broad changes at many levels of society. Although the end results in countries successful at “reform retail” have many similarities (e.g. healthy, well-educated citizens) the steps toward achieving the results are very different, depending on culture and other contextual factors.

This chapter reflects on a recent initiative as authors and tutors for the first module of a new online Masters in Public Administration (MPA) programme now offered by the University of Birmingham for public sector professionals around the world.

Our focus is particularly on the key lessons with regard to using the ‘online’ mode for ‘experiential learning’ – that is, facilitating our mid-career practitioner students in the acquisition of added management learning through critical analysis of, and structured reflection on, their work-based experience.

Three particular challenges for online programme designers are identified as follows: the challenge of achieving a ‘learner-centric’ online design (rather than a teacher-centric one); the challenge of facilitating effective communication (within the student group as much as between students and teachers); and the challenge of building an effective online learning community.

The chapter concludes by proposing strategies for approaching and mediating these three challenges in turn. With regard to ‘learner-centricity’ we advocate an approach that promotes in the students a spirit of inquiry and which encourages conceptualisation on the basis of their existing knowledge and experience, rather than following a traditional ‘teacher-centred’ and lecture-dominated pedagogy. In relation to communication, particularly critical is the choice of a high quality course management system (CMS) and exploitation to the full of the system’s capabilities in relation to computer-mediated communication (CMC), both within the student community and through ‘synchronous interaction’, between students and staff. Finally, on the building of a ‘learning community’ of students, we emphasise the importance of facilitating students’ cognitive and social presence throughout the modules and programme through the promotion of active engagement and critical reflection on the key issues in the curriculum.