The business of recovery: embedding health in economies after COVID-19

As the UK rebuilds and recovers after the COVID-19 pandemic, tackling socioeconomic inequalities will become increasingly pertinent. The link between health and wealth has been long established, with those at the highest risk of illness also being less likely to access healthcare. The pandemic has highlighted these disparities, with higher morbidity and mortality rates seen in deprived areas, as well as among ethnic minority communities. Leaders and clinicians across the NHS and social care have called for a ‘reset’ in the way healthcare is planned, commissioned and delivered in the UK. There is a growing need for a holistic approach to disease prevention, and it is crucial that government agencies take a strong role in addressing the wider determinants of health.

Coproduce Conservation Technology With Conservation Decision Makers and Practitioners to Increase Its Impact

Addressing the biodiversity crisis will mean developing and adopting new resources and methods that effectively improve public conservation efforts. Technologies have a long track record of increasing the efficiency of carrying out time-consuming tasks or even making new feats possible, and if applied thoughtfully, can serve as a key means of strengthening conservation outcomes. Yet technology development sometimes proceeds without clear mechanisms for application and scaling, or key adopters like government agencies are not able to use the technologies. To overcome these discrepancies, we recommend the use of a coproduction model of conservation technology development that starts from detailed knowledge of conservation laws, regulations, policies, and their implementation; identifies choke points in those processes amenable to technological solutions; and then develops those solutions while integrating existing users and needs. To illustrate the model, we describe three tools recently developed to help improve the efficiency and effectiveness of implementing the U.S. Endangered Species Act. We also highlight several outstanding questions and challenges that the broad conservation technology and policy communities may help address.

Handmaidens of the legislature? Understanding regulatory timing

When does legislation trigger regulation? The US Congress regularly passes laws that authorise government agencies to write legally binding regulations. Yet, when this occurs, agencies may take years to act – or, at times – may never act at all. We theorise that the breadth of the congressional statutory delegation drives the timing of agency policy production. In particular, when Congress expressly tells an agency to promulgate a rule, we expect agencies to do so quickly. Yet, when Congress provides greater policymaking discretion to agencies, we expect other factors – and especially, internal agency considerations – to drive regulatory timing. We use data from almost 350 statutes spanning four decades, which are then matched up with thousands of regulations, to assess the argument. Using innovative methods, we find support for our hypotheses. Overall, we produce a deeper understanding of the link between delegation and discretion: suggesting when it occurs, as well as, importantly, why.

Book Review: From the inside out: The fight for environmental justice within government agencies by Jill Harrison

In From the Inside Out: The Fight for Environmental Justice within Government Agencies (MIT Press, 2019), Jill Harrison offers a nuanced study of why U.S. state agencies fail at implementing robust environmental justice (EJ) policies. Through a rigorous interview and ethnographic based methodology Harrison details the discourses, ideologies, and everyday practices and through which government agency staff, daily, undermine and even outright reject EJ policies and programs. The book is a richly empirical study that makes valuable contributions to academic and activist understandings of the government's failure to respond meaningfully to environmental injustices, and offers specific recommendations for how to reform government agencies. It is a timely monograph as EJ advocates seek to reimagine government agencies in the wake of the Trump administration, and in the context of an expanded public consciousness of racism following the killing of George Floyd and subsequent uprisings during the summer of 2020.

Evaluation of Community Livability Using Gridded Basic Urban Geographical Data—A Case Study of Wuhan

The evaluation of community livability quantifies the demands of human settlement at the micro scale, supporting urban governance decision-making at the macro scale. Big data generated by the urban management of government agencies can provide an accurate, real-time, and rich data set for livability evaluation. However, these data are intertwined by overlapping geographical management boundaries of different government agencies. It causes the difficulty of data integration and utilization when evaluating community livability. To address this problem, this paper proposes a scheme of partitioning basic geographical space into grids by optimally integrating various geographical management boundaries relevant to enterprise-level big data. Furthermore, the system of indexes on community livability is created, and the evaluation model of community livability is constructed. Taking Wuhan as an example, the effectiveness of the model is verified. After the evaluation, the experimental results show that the livability evaluation with reference to our basic geographic grids can effectively make use of governmental big data to spatially identify the multi-dimensional characteristics of a community, including management, environment, facility services, safety, and health. Our technical solution to evaluate community livability using gridded basic urban geographical data is of large potential in producing thematic data of community, constructing a 15-min community living circle of Wuhan, and enhancing the ability of the community to resist risks.

Developing an Effective Strategy for the Enforcement of the Constitutional Mandate of the Senate Committee on Ethics, Code of Conduct and Public Petitions

The Senate Committee on Ethics, Code of Conduct and Public Petitions (ECCPP) is one of the committees of the Senate of Nigeria’s National Assembly. The Committee was one of the earliest Special committees established under Order XIII of the Senate Standing Orders 2015, as amended (SSO 2015). It is one of the committees through which the Senate conducts legislative investigations in fulfilment of its constitutional and statutory role under section 88 of the 1999 Constitution, as altered. The major challenge of the ECCPP Committee in the exercise of its investigation power is the refusal by some chief executives of government agencies and corporate organisations to honour its invitation. This study finds that among the reasons for this are the absence of ethical prescriptions in the SSO 2015 to guide the conduct of honourable members against unethical conduct that undermine their integrity, and absence of prescribed fine for failure to honour the Committee’s summons. To strengthen the enforcement capacity of the Committee, the study recommends, among others, that members of the Committee eschew unethical tendencies that undermine their integrity and conduct the business of the Committee in a manner that avoids conflicts of interest or its appearances.

AN ANALYSIS OF EXPERIENCES AND PROBLEMS FACED BY THE DENTISTS DURING COVID-19 PANDEMIC: A QUESTIONNAIRE-BASED SURVEY

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 pandemic started in December and spread around the globe in a few months. Nosocomial transmission of this virus shut down the dental clinics and creates many problems for patients. This study was designed to assess the experiences and problems faced by the dentist during the pandemic. The was a cross sectional questionnaire-based survey conducted in different dental sectors of Lahore. The questionnaire was distributed through online Microsoft form and total of seventy-eight complete responses were received out of 156 dentists contacted.69.2 % of participants reported that they stop taking appointments during the peaks of pandemic or have planned to stay at home till the end of the pandemic where 27% claimed to perform only emergency procedures. 86% of dentists reported having difficulty finding PPE and 97% had to buy it at a much higher cost. Dentists (96%) also reported that they are facing a significant decrease in income and needed some other source of income. Regarding financial issues they did not get any government support.The COVID-19 pandemic has a significant impact on dentistry. Most dental clinics remained closed, placing a financial burden on the dental profession. This burden was further increased as a result of the scarcity and high cost of PPE. There is a need for standardized protocols to prevent the spread of infection, and government agencies should also consider private clinics for funding and provision of low-cost PPE.

Commune-level civil servants’ work capability in Vietnam

Commune-level civil servants are those who work at the lowest level of government in the Vietnamese administrative system. They directly deal with the people's requests and protect their legitimate rights and interests prescribed by the law. Civil servants and government agencies' performance depends much on their qualities and capabilities, including work capability, sense of responsibility for work, the attitude of serving the people. In this study, the author focuses on analyzing the commune-level civil servants' work capability under some contents like the ability to operate independently and the ability to operate jointly. He created a survey form and conducted a poll of 300 people on commune-level public employees' work capability at their residence based on the theoretical framework of criteria for commune-level civil servants' work capability. The survey area includes six provinces representing three regions of Vietnam such as Thai Binh, Nam Dinh (Northern); Nghe An, Quang Nam (Central); Binh Duong, and Ca Mau (Southern). The survey is performed carefully, with only those who have transacted with the commune government at least five times in the previous five years interviewed.