Property tax is recognised as a crucial financial tool for local governments to support development initiatives. Its administration - that is, the identification, valuing, taxing, and collecting revenue from real property within a jurisdiction - however, remains problematic. Recently, some scholars have asserted that this problem can be resolved through the introduction of technology, which many governments have now adopted. Unfortunately, the problems of property tax administration (PTA) continue to persist. This persistence can be attributed to the relationship between central and local governments, where the former keeps constraining the latter's ability to function as the administrators of property tax through omissions and commissions. Using Ghana as a case study, the article asks: How does the central-local government relationship impact PTA in developing countries despite the introduction of technology in this endeavour? From a political economy perspective, the article argues that the persistence of this issue stems from the failure to examine tension in the central-local government relationship and how it affects PTA. It proposes ways to resolve the tension between the two levels of government.
Die Förderung von Diversität an Hochschulen hat in den letzten Jahren an Bedeutung gewonnen. Doch trotz zahlreicher Initiativen und Programme bleibt die Umsetzung oft hinter den Erwartungen zurück. Dieser Beitrag untersucht aus einer rechtssoziologischen Perspektive die Potenziale und Grenzen der rechtlichen Steuerung von Gleichstellungs- und Diversitätsstrukturen. Er diskutiert die Notwendigkeit einer transformativen Weiterentwicklung von Hochschulgovernance aus intersektionaler Perspektive und identifiziert die Bedingungen für eine wirksame Partizipation und kollaborative Entscheidungsprozesse.
This paper highlights the Free and Open-Source Software (FOSS) datasets, analytical tools and workflows used for co-creating localised national-scale machine learning classification models in Digital Earth Pacific (DE Pacific). The case study includes the participatory workflows used within the DE Pacific Land Cover Assessment Skills Transfer (LCAST) Workshop in the Kingdom of Tonga in 2023. The FOSS tools used were QGIS, QField, GeoPandas, ODC STAC-, Xarray, Pandas, Scikit-Learn, NumPy and Folium through the DE Pacific Analytical Hub Jupyter environment. These workflows supported participatory processes to gather inputs into the calibration and validation of machine learning workflows as seen in the Land Use Land Cover (LULC) examples of the LCAST workshop. The workshop held over one week in July 2023 included representatives from seven Ministries of Tonga. The methods covered the ‘full-cycle’ of workflows for generation of LULC models, from field survey data collection to computer labs for data processing and analyses. The results highlight the LULC mapping products, accuracy assessments, the workshop evaluation as well as the broader lessons learned about the intrinsic value of the participatory mapping processes. Since 2023, these workflows have been used in LCAST and similar country-driven workshops with more than 240 participants across 10 Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICTs) or Large Ocean States (LOS) including Fiji, Republic of the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu, Palau, Cook Islands, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, the Solomon Islands and the Kingdom of Tonga. These FOSS approaches may contribute to the long-term continuity of two-way learning processes and inputs needed for the co-creation, calibration and validation for modelling and mapping as well as the building of local capacity and capabilities in earth observations in the Pacific. The paper outlines these workflows in detail through a visual flowchart and provides access to GitHub for replication of results.
Zusammenfassung Der Ständige Ausschuss Reisemedizin (StAR) der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Tropenmedizin, Reisemedizin und Globale Gesundheit (DTG) gibt jährlich Empfehlungen zu Reiseimpfungen. Diese Empfehlungen werden von unabhängigen Experten erstellt. Sie umfassen international verpflichtende sowie länderspezifische und gefährdungsbasierte Impfstrategien. Sie dienen als Entscheidungshilfe für medizinisches Fachpersonal und berücksichtigen Empfehlungen u. a. der WHO, des ECDC, der STIKO und nationaler Gesundheitsbehörden.
