We examine the role of the North Aceh Government in implementing the Law on the Governing of Aceh (LoGA) as a legal structure in development policy. As a symbol of peace, the LoGA is a reference for accelerating development to alleviate poverty, including North Aceh as a conflict region. However, until now, the area remains the poorest in the province of Aceh. This research used descriptive qualitative methods, evaluating the local government’s performance as policymakers based on the Law by reconstructing policy theory (Easton) and legal system (Friedman). Our findings indicated that the local government needed help implementing LoGA to form development policies to solve poverty. This research suggested the importance of providing legal certainty in the distribution of authority, capacity building, and strengthening of political will for local government conducting its role.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has had a substantial economic and psychological impact on workers in Saudi Arabia. The objective of the study was to assess the effects of the COVID-19 epidemic on the financial and mental well-being of Saudi employees in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Purpose: The COVID-19 epidemic has resulted in significant economic and societal ramifications. Current study indicates that the pandemic has not only precipitated an economic crisis but has also given rise to several psychological and emotional crises. This article provides a conceptual examination of how the pandemic impacts the economic and mental health conditions of Saudi workers, based on contemporary Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) models. Method: The current study employed a qualitative methodology and utilized a sample survey strategy. The data was gathered from Saudi workers residing in major cities of Saudi Arabia. The samples were obtained from professionals such as managers, doctors, and engineers, as well as non-professionals like unskilled and low-skilled laborers, who are employed in various public and private sectors. A range of statistical tools, including Descriptive statistics, ANOVA, Pearson’s Correlation, Factor analysis, Reliability test, Chi-square test, and regression approach, were employed to analyze and interpret the results. Result: According to the data, the pandemic has caused a wide range of economic problems, including high unemployment and underemployment rates, income instability, and different degrees of pressure on workers to find work. Feelings of insecurity (about food and environmental safety), worry, dread, stress, anxiety, depression, and other mental health concerns have been generated by these challenges. The rate of mental health decline differs among demographics. Conclusions: The COVID-19 pandemic has universally affected all aspects of our lives worldwide. It resulted in an extended shutdown of educational institutions, factories, offices, and businesses. Without a question, it has profoundly transformed the work environment, professions, and lifestyles of billions of individuals worldwide. There is a high occurrence of poor psychological well-being among Saudi workers. However, it has been demonstrated that both economic health and mental health interventions can effectively alleviate the mental health burden in this population.

This article aims to examine the impact of fiscal decentralization on the performance of local government expenditure in Vietnam. By using a dataset including 63 provinces from 2012 to 2021, the research shows the more expenditure-based fiscal decentralization occurs, the better is the performance of local expenditure. Moreover, the level of provincial literacy and the size of the private sector have positive impacts on the local expenditure index, while the opposite effect can be seen in the case of the ratios of local citizens to total citizens of the country. Besides this, the study also provides some recommendations which are strictly related to the mechanism of fiscal decentralization to improve local expenditure performance of Vietnamese provinces, such as more effective decentralization of budget expenditures to local government, improving the vertical budget imbalance at local budget level, increasing local government budget autonomy, and establishing stronger mechanisms to control public spending.

eGovernment projects are capital intensive and have high probability of failure because of the dynamic and technological laden environment in which they operate. The number of skilled labour and technicalities required are often not available in quantity needed to sustain such project. There is always the need to have in place adequate risk assessment framework to guide the execution and monitoring of eGovernment projects. Several studies have been conducted on the critical success factors relating to risk assessment of eGovernment projects to understand the reasons for the high rate of failure. Therefore, there is need to review these articles and categorize them into different research domain in project risk assessment so as to reveal domain with more or less research and those that need to understand the future research directions in risk assessment for eGovernment projects. Using the positivism paradigm, this study utilized the Systematic Literature Review methodology to collect 147 articles from the following academic databases namely IEEE, Preprints, WorldCat Discovery, ArXiv. Ohio-state University databases, Science Direct, Scopus, ACM, NWU digital library, Usenix, Jise database, Sagepub, MDPI Academia published between 2013 to 2023. Different inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied pruning to 48 articles that were used for the study. The results show the classification of articles in risk assessment for eGovernment projects into those that discusses project analysis, review, framework, maturity and model tools, implementation, and integration, applied methodology and evaluation with the percentage of articles published in each domain with the past 10 years. The various critical success factors that should be considered in the development of a robust risk assessment framework were discussed and future research directions in eGovernment risk assessment were given based on the reviews.

This paper presents an overview of the policies and efforts of the Provincial Government of Bali, Indonesia, to tackle the development of HIV/AIDS. This study considers the socio-cultural context and analyzes the factors that are most likely to influence its spread, the response of the community, and the local government’s efforts to form Provincial AIDS commission whose movement is supported by the village government and the community to suppress the spread of HIV/AIDS. The authors observe the micro factors that most determine this program, such as attitudes, behaviors, and desires of policy-making actors, stakeholders, implementing organizations, adequacy of human resources, financial funds, information, education, communication, advocacy, regional languages, the role of students, and field workers, and local culture in preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS. Therefore, this research does not focus on just one dimension in efforts to deal with this outbreak. Following the application of the public policy theory, all potential contributing elements must be addressed simultaneously. This requires a truly interdisciplinary and multisectoral approach that requires to be comprehended by policymakers in other provinces where the prevalence of HIV/AIDS is quite high. This effort also requires commitment and strong political will from levels of government.

This study explores the attributes of service quality for overseas residents provided by island county governments, using the example of the Kinmen County Government’s service center in central Taiwan. This research aims to identify key service elements that can enhance the satisfaction of Kinmen overseas residents. Drawing upon the SERVQUAL scale and a comprehensive literature review, service quality is divided into five dimensions: “administrative service,” “life counseling,” “information provision,” among others, comprising 24 service quality elements. A total of 311 valid questionnaires were collected through a survey, and Kano’s two-dimensional quality and IPA analysis were used to classify service factors. The Kano two-dimensional quality analysis revealed that “employment counseling,” “entrepreneurship counseling,” and “setting up service counters at airports and terminals during festivals” belong to attractive quality. Nine elements were classified as “one-dimensional quality” and “must-be quality,” including “one-stop service,” “exclusive consultation hotline,” and “exclusive website reveals information.” Through Quality Function Deployment (QFD), service elements that align with Kano’s two-dimensional quality and IPA priority improvement were selected for detailed study, including “financial assistance in emergencies,” “subsidy for transportation expenses back home,” “subsidies for education allowances,” and “various subsidy application information.” Following expert discussions and questionnaire surveys, eight strategies for improving key service quality elements were identified. This research not only provides actionable insights for the Kinmen County Government but also offers valuable strategies that can be applied to similar contexts globally, where remote and rural populations require specialized governmental support.