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Currently, countries worldwide are struggling with the virus COVID-19 and the severe outbreak it brings. To better benefit from open government health data in the fight against this pandemic, this study developed a framework for assessing open government health data at the dataset level, providing a tool to evaluate current open government health data's quality and usability COVID-19.

Based on the review of the existing quality evaluation methods of open government data, the evaluation metrics and their weights were determined by 15 experts in health through the Delphi method and analytic hierarchy process. The authors tested the framework's applicability using open government health data related to COVID-19 in the US, EU and China.

The results of the test capture the quality difference of the current open government health data. At present, the open government health data in the US, EU and China lacks the necessary metadata. Besides, the number, richness of content and timeliness of open datasets need to be improved.

Unlike the existing open government data quality measurement, this study proposes a more targeted open government data quality evaluation framework that measures open government health data quality on a range of data quality dimensions with a fine-grained measurement approach. This provides a tool for accurate assessment of public health data for correct decision-making and assessment during a pandemic.

Researchers have generally compared council-manager municipalities against mayor-council forms when seeking to measure the efficiency gains envisioned by early twentieth century reformers. Many studies have used per capita expenditure levels of municipalities as a proxy for efficiency, associating lower spending levels with greater efficiency. This study utilizes the “Adapted Cities Framework” advocated by Frederickson, Johnson, and Wood (2004) which classifies municipalities into five, rather than two, institutional types to analyze per capita expenditure data from a national survey of 1,000 small municipalities. Using OLS regression and other statistical analyses, the authors demonstrate that there is a significant difference between the per capita expenditure levels of the five city types. As municipalities more closely conform to the pure reformed councilmanager model of government, higher per capita expenditure levels are evidenced.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the positive development experienced in the telecom sector since 2001 when neutral licensing was granted to the Global System Mobile Communication operators (MTN, Vmobile, Globacom and Mtel) to operate for five years.

Discusses the unified licensing regime in Nigeria.

At its expiration a new licensing order; unified licensing regime was introduced by the Nigeria Communication Commission to replace the neutral license. The introduction of the unified licensing means an advancement in the country's information and communication technology (ICT) development. This technological advancement will make the nation e‐ready in the communication arena and further help to shrink the international divide.

The paper proviedes insights into how unified licensing has acted as a facilitator for ICT empowerment and national development in Nigeria.

In 2001, the first municipal consolidation occurred in over 100 years in Michigan between two cities and one village in Michigan's rural Upper Peninsula, forming the City of Iron River. The three units of government combined to have a population of 3,391 within the newly incorporated boundaries. Driving the consolidation was continual population loss and erosion of the economic tax base of the individual municipal governments since the 1960s. This study sought to assess whether, five years after the consolidation, the governments had saved money as compared to a peer group of governments in Michigan. The findings indicate that the new city of Iron River was able to provide some evidence of cost control and savings following the consolidation.

The former municipality of Metropolitan Toronto was Canada’s largest government and a unique body. It was abolished on 31 December 1997 and a new unified City was ushered in on 1 January 1998. It consists of all the former municipalities of the Metropolitan Council and has reduced the former two‐tier system to a single tier. There was considerable opposition initially to the establishment of a unicity by local politicians and the citizenry at large. This has to be seen against a background of general opposition to some of the policy decisions of the Ontario Provincial Government at that particular point in time. Despite the opposition, legislation was enacted establishing the new City. The councillors initially elected in late 1997, the top management team of the Council and virtually all the residents have since accepted the decision on unification and have committed themselves to building the new City. The transition team appointed by the Province and the political and management component of Toronto have done considerable groundwork in developing the unified City to meet present and future challenges locally, regionally and internationally. The amalgamation of the municipalities has resulted in savings of $150 million resulting from inter alia, reduction of departments and divisions, staff, information technology systems, office space, consolidating of the corporate fleet and the City Service Boards. It should be noted that amalgamated programmes only constituted 27 per cent of the budget of the new City. However, coincidental with the amalgamation process was the implementation of the “Who Does What” policy introduced by the provincial government and the Council had to take on significant additional responsibilities. Provincial assistance was provided by way of a one‐off grant of $50 million and a $200 million loan. Consequently, any actual savings achieved initially will have to be viewed in this context.

There is a current argument that “national security” and “national defense” are no longer synonymous terms-that there is a new and broader definition for the activities that contribute to “the common defense.“ A whole of government approach is suggested as a means for integrating and coordinating national security policies and programs. To support this approach, recommendations have been made for an integrated national security budget. Focusing on the executive budget process, three approaches to an integrated national security budget are examined: organization-based, program-based and function-based. Though there are questions about the importance of budget structure and the effectiveness of program budgeting, a whole of government integrated unified national security budget could facilitate the fiscal trade-offs required between alternative means of pursuing national security objectives in the executive budget.

The purpose of this paper is to review and analyze how the development and utilization of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies for social responsibility are defined in the national AI strategies of the USA, Russia and China.

The notion of responsibility concerning AI is currently not legally defined by any country in the world. The authors of this research are going to use the methodology, based on Luciano Floridi’s Unified framework of five principles for AI in society, to determine how social responsibility is implemented in the AI strategies of the USA, Russia and China.

All three strategies for the development of AI in the USA, Russia and China, as evaluated in the paper, contain some or other components aimed at achieving public responsibility and responsible use of AI. The Unified framework of five principles for AI in society, developed by L. Floridi, can be used as a viable assessment tool to determine at least in general terms how social responsibility is implied and implemented in national strategic documents in the field of AI. However, authors of the paper call for further development in the field of mutually recognizable ethical models for socially beneficial AI.

This study allows us to better understand the linkages, overlaps and differences between modern philosophy of information, AI-ethics, social responsibility and government regulation. The analysis provided in this paper can serve as a basic blueprint for future attempts to define how social responsibility is understood and implied by government decision-makers.

The analysis provided in the paper, however general and empirical it may be, is a first-time example of how the Unified framework of five principles for AI in society can be applied as an assessment tool to determine social responsibility in AI-related official documents.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the factors influencing the behaviors of government officials during the implementation of open government data (OGD). By identifying and understanding the key factors that determine government officials' adoption of OGD in China, this study can create a valuable reference for other countries and their decision-making regarding government implementation of OGD.

This research collected data by in-depth interviews with government officials in Chinese OGD departments. Through these interviews, the authors consulted 15 administrators from departments that are responsible for the information tasks in Beijing and other cities on their opinions about OGD. The authors also interviewed senior executives from information technology (IT) companies, as well as open data policy scholars from big data alliance and research institutions.

This paper provides insights about how to promote government officials in OGD implementation, including (1) strengthen social supervision for the environment, through developing and publishing OGD technology roadmaps, then attracting the public to actively participate in the implementing of OGD; (2) establish an OGD assessment mechanism for government officials, with bonus motivations, position promotion incentives, as well as spiritual incentives via regional or sector rankings; (3) alleviate the risks of officials' OGD decisions in actual practice, using the institution construction of OGD to guide its direction and strengthen security protection.

This paper fulfils an identified need to study how government officials' behavior can be motivated on OGD implementation.

This paper reports on a critical literature review, which aimed to identify, understand and qualify barriers that hinder the release of open government data (OGD) in China. Moreover, the purpose of this paper is to develop and propose a theoretical framework, which can be adopted as a basis for empirical investigation in the future, and to articulate mitigating strategies.

This study adopted an inductive qualitative approach, retrieving 42 academic articles from three main Chinese academic databases: CNKI, Wanfang and CQVIP. A thematic analysis approach was employed for the literature analysis.

The literature analysis pointed to 15 barriers to the release of OGD in China. Furthermore, the barriers emerged in the following three main themes: institutional barriers, data integrity and quality barriers, and user participation barriers.

This paper reports on one of the early research efforts into the problems of releasing OGD in China. Although this study focusses on Chinese context and issues, the findings and lessons learnt can be shared across international borders.

Revenue stability has been an important policy objective for state government administrators. This study explores whether the effect of revenue diversification on revenue volatility varies in terms of the instability of a state’s economic base. To empirically answer the question, an econometric model that explores a series of factors that could affect revenue stability is estimated using panel data on 47 state governments during the years 1986-2004. The findings indicate that revenue diversification reduces revenue instability for states that are economically stable. However, the revenue-stabilizing effect of diversification diminishes as the economic instability of a state increases. Although revenue diversification has been advocated as a desirable practice for sub-national governments, this study indicates that the benefits of revenue diversification are not always clear and its practice should be moderated by the conditions of a state’s economic base.