As one of the key initiatives promoted by the Chinese government, precision poverty alleviation aims to lift information-blocked areas out of poverty and ensure their sustainable economic development. Yunnan Province, characterized by its combination of old, young, border, and poor areas, is the province with the most diverse types of poverty, the widest poverty coverage, and the deepest poverty levels in the country. Yunnan has carried out anti-poverty work in tandem with the national efforts for 42 years in a planned and organized manner, ultimately achieving the goal of zero absolute poverty. In this process, digital rural development has played a very important role. Based on the current experience of digital construction in developed regions, completing regional digitalization requires meeting the needs of information resources, information environment, and information supply and demand. Through keyword search, text analysis, and field visits, we summarized the factors considered by local governments in policy formulation. We also attempted to map out the path for rural governments to build digital villages. With the ultimate goal of bridging the urban-rural gap, the study of digital rural development in Yunnan will provide an effective case.

The reference urban plan is an urban planning tool often used to orient the development of Chadian cities. However, expanding Chadian urban centers, such as Sarh, face challenges in implementing urban planning orientations of their urban plans within the set deadlines. The objective of this study is to identify the factors impeding the effective implementation of the reference urban plan for Sarh town. The methodology employed encompasses a literature review, individual interviews with urban planning experts, geographic information system (GIS) data, household surveys and statistical analysis. The results revealed that less than a quarter (19.72%) of the households surveyed were aware of the reference urban plan. The applied logistic regression model identified age, occupation and level of education as the main factors influencing public participation in the preparation of the reference urban plan. On average, 33.33% of the urban planning guidelines and 21.74% of the projected urban projects were implemented, with a difference of 1631.28 hectares (ha) between the projected plan and the actual plan for the town. Five factors were identified as contributing to the failure to implement the reference urban plan for Sarh town, including low funding, inadequate land management, a lack of political will, weak governance and poor communication. Consequently, participatory and inclusive planning approaches, effective financial mobilisation, strong governance, and the use of modern technologies such as GIS tools are recommended to enhance the implementation of urban planning tools.

This study aims to identify and the implementation of ASN Management policies on career development aspects based on the merit system in the West Java Provincial Government and 6 Regency/City Governments in West Java Province. The failure of the institutionalization of the meritocratic system in ASN career development is partly triggered by the symptoms of the appointment or selection of officials in the central and regional levels not based on their professionalism or competence except for subjective considerations, political ties, close relationships and even bribery. This study uses a qualitative method with a descriptive approach. The operationalization concept in this study uses Merilee S. Grindle’s Policy Implementation theory which consists of dimensions of policy content and its implementation context. The factors that cause the implementation of the policy to be less than optimal include: 1. Uneven understanding of meritocracy; 2. Slowness/unpreparedness in synchronizing central and regional rules/policies; 3. The information integration system between the center and regions has not yet been implemented; 4. Limited supporting infrastructure; 5. Limited permits for related officials; 6. Transparency; 7. Collaboration across units/agencies; 8. External intervention; 9. Use of information systems/technology. To optimize these factors, an Accelerator of Governmental Unit’s Success (AGUS) model was created, which is a development of the Grindle policy implementation model with the novelty of adding things that influence implementation, including top leader’s commitment and wisdom, effectiveness of talent placement, on-point human development, technology savvy, cross-unit/agency collaboration, and monitoring and evaluation processes.

Use of technologies and online presence is now almost inevitable in language learning. The practice of virtual exchanges (VEs) has been receiving a lot of attention among educators at all levels over the past years. This research paper sheds light on 13 VEs carried out in pre-service teacher education in the last six years and proposes its own VE design based on recommendations from the literature with the future perspective of designing a specific VE for the research. The aim of the systematic review was at first to determine the exchange and interaction set-ups and the potential gains in the terms of pre-service teachers’ skills development. Afterwards, we identified areas for improvement and proposed our design of a VE between pre-service teachers of English in Slovakia and Turkey. Some of the expected contributions of the proposed VE design are development of a linguistic and intercultural communicative competence, digital literacy, and other competences relevant for development of VEs.

The growth of buildings in big cities necessitates Design Review (DR) to ensure good urban planning. Design Review involves the city community in various forms; however, community participation remains very limited or even non-existent. There are indications that the community has not been involved in the Design Review process. Currently, DR tends to involve only experts and local government, without including the community. Therefore, this research aimed to analyze the extent of opportunities for community participation by exploring DR analysis in developed countries and related policies. In-depth interviews were also carried out with experts and Jakarta was selected as a case study since the city possessed the most intensive development. The results showed that the implementation of DR did not consider community participation. A constructivist paradigm was also applied with qualitative interpretive method by interpreting DR data and community participation. The strategy selected was a case study and library research adopted by examining theories from related literature. Additionally, the data was collected by reconstructing different sources such as books, journals, existing research, and secondary data from related agencies. Content and descriptive analysis methods were also used, where literature obtained from various references was analyzed to support research propositions and ideas.