Academic literature on the topic 'ICT enabling services'

The chapter begins by reviewing the existing evidence base for services for personality disordered offenders within secure settings, outlining approaches used both in the UK and internationally. The chapter goes on to describe the implementation of the Offender Personality Disorder (OPD) strategy in secure services, setting out the commissioning context and the focus on social environments, including Psychologically Informed Planned Environments (PIPEs) and Enabling Environments. It reviews the approach chosen by the London Pathways Partnership in terms of service model (residential, day programme, and outreach) and the intensity of the interventions used. The delivery of the services is then described in detail, including the development phase; referrals and assessment; intervention; and pathway progression. The chapter reviews the progress of the services over the first four years, including what worked and what didn’t, and concludes with an outline of evaluations of the services and proposals for future developments.

Three techniques for accessing strategic resources and talent on a worldwide basis are outsourcing, offshoring, and innovation. Offshoring is the process of manufacturing in foreign locations of strategic significance. It can enable global organizations to create strategic centers for providing services in locations where there is significant cost advantage. The strategy of outsourcing white collar jobs to foreign locations in an attempt to reduce overall costs is a regular practice for large global organizations. Offshore outsourcing enhances global competitiveness by enabling small- and medium-scale enterprises to reduce costs, expand relational ties, serve customers, free up scarce resources, and leverage the capacities of joint venture and strategic alliance partners. Given that these strategies are increasingly common, the chapter devotes a significant amount of attention to their discussion. The technique of innovation for improving products and services on an ongoing basis is discussed, with attention to the factors that foster innovation.

This chapter deals with the issue of energy in the context of legal integration in Africa. It gives a background of the main experiences of legal integration in Africa in the area of commercial law, showing their main characteristics and outcomes so far. Considering the critical importance of energy for national and sustainable development, and how energy issues constitute one of the main subjects of international commercial transactions in Africa, it examines the pros and cons of including energy law in legal integration processes. It further emphasizes the importance of an enabling legal and regulatory environment that promotes transparent access to modern energy services and highlights possible obstacles to that inclusion.

When two parties quarrel, the third rejoices, according to a well-known proverb. This book highlights the role of rejoicing “profiteers” in political efforts to expand market-based competition. Marketization appears puzzling if it is conceptualized as a political struggle between the established incumbents and their challengers, or between producers and consumers. Challengers and consumers often lack the resources to overcome barriers to market entry, and collective action problems afflict both groups. Why, then, do incumbents fail to protect their turf? The present book resolves this puzzle by casting light in a new direction, toward those who profit from a contest while remaining above the fray. The rejoicing band of profiteers grows alongside the arena of competition. Once the suppliers of market support services have established themselves on the sidelines of a contest, they accumulate resources that help them expand that arena further. Political struggles surrounding the gradual marketization of corporate control in Britain, Germany, and France from the 1860s onward provide empirical illustration. The book maps and analyzes the path-dependent evolution of support for shareholder rights relating to takeover bids among key interest groups, including managers, creditors, shareholders, and takeover service providers, as well as among political parties. By comparing the self-reinforcing and self-undermining policy feedback of market-enabling and market-restraining rules, it helps explain why market containment is an uphill struggle, while market expansion becomes easier with time.

This chapter examines how efforts to corral network systems and services for the purpose of increased profitability introduced a new chapter in the geopolitics of information—one marked by intensifying struggles over control of the extraterritorial internet and of the industries that continued to pyramid around it. More specifically, it describes the emergence of extraterritorial internet connectivity as a site of sustained political contestation. It also explains how internet connectivity had been woven into the global political economy, enabling new commodities, altering state policy, and revamping the ways in which ordinary people worked, played, and communicated. It also considers rival efforts to shape the destiny of the overall political economy and U.S. capital's influence over both domestic and many transnational markets through preemptive appropriations of internet connectivity and an assertively helpful state.

This chapter examines the role of the Indian private sector in shaping the country’s foreign policy. It argues that the private sector has limited experience and capacity to influence the course of foreign policy. Barring certain areas such as Information Technology and IT enabled services, the private sector has not impacted much on India’s engagement with other countries and international institutions. Although the private sector plays an increasing role in Track II initiatives, its role in shaping policy remains limited. The chapter analyses the reasons for this and contends that the private sector needs to enhance its own capacity before it call pull its weight on matters of foreign policy. In any event, as India’s economy integrates ever more deeply with the global economy, the Indian private sector will play an increasingly important role in framing and enabling India’s external relations.

Social policies in the United States often favor families and encourage reproduction—but not for infertile persons. When the infertile want to have children, health care funding policy, legal rules, and popular sentiments generally are not very sympathetic. Infertile couples typically must rely on their own resources to procreate, without reimbursement by their health insurance; the law may erect barriers to assisted reproductive services, as with prohibitions against surrogate motherhood; and infertile couples may not find much concern for their plight from friends or even some family members. Such discounting of the needs of the infertile is unjust and reflects a misunderstanding of the nature of infertility. Infertility is a disability—and a very serious one for some people—yet it is often misperceived as not a real handicap or even as enabling. Respect for the fundamental interest in reproduction justifies changes in social attitudes and reforms in the law to ensure fair treatment for the infertile.

This book draws on a wealth of material, much of it previously available only in Hebrew, to trace the history of Jewish hymnography from its origins in the eastern Mediterranean to its subsequent development in Western Europe (Spain, Italy, Franco-Germany, and England) and Balkan Byzantium, on the Grecian periphery, under the Ottomans, and among the Karaites. Focusing on each region in turn, the book provides a general background to the role of the synagogue poets in the society of the time; characterizes the principal poets and describes their contribution; examines the principal genres and forms; and considers their distinctive language, style, and themes. The copious excerpts from the liturgy are presented in transliterated Hebrew and in English translation, and their salient characteristics are fully discussed to bring out the historical development of ideas and regional themes as well as literary forms. The book is a valuable source-book for students of synagogue liturgy, Jewish worship, and medieval Hebrew poetry. It provides new perspectives for students of religious poetry and forms of worship more generally, while enabling the general reader to acquire a much-enriched appreciation of the synagogue services.

The European debt crisis has rekindled long-standing debates about the power of finance and the fraught relationship between capitalism and democracy in a globalized world. This book unravels a striking puzzle at the heart of these debates—why, despite frequent crises and the immense costs of repayment, do so many heavily indebted countries continue to service their international debts? The book provides a sweeping investigation of the political economy of sovereign debt and international crisis management. It takes readers from the rise of public borrowing in the Italian city-states to the gunboat diplomacy of the imperialist era and the wave of sovereign defaults during the Great Depression. The book vividly describes the debt crises of developing countries in the 1980s and 1990s, and sheds new light on the recent turmoil inside the Eurozone—including the dramatic capitulation of Greece's short-lived anti-austerity government to its European creditors in 2015. Drawing on in-depth case studies of contemporary debt crises in Mexico, Argentina, and Greece, the book paints a disconcerting picture of the ascendancy of global finance. It shows how the profound transformation of the capitalist world economy over the past four decades has endowed private and official creditors with unprecedented structural power over heavily indebted borrowers, enabling them to impose painful austerity measures and enforce uninterrupted debt service during times of crisis—with devastating social consequences and far-reaching implications for democracy.

AbstractPhone-based applications, Internet connectivity, and big data are enabling climate change adaptations. From ICT for development and agriculture perspectives, great interest exists in how digital platforms support climate information provision for smallholder farmers in Africa. The vast majority of these platforms both private and public are for delivering climate information services and for data collection. The sheer number of digital platforms in the climate information sector has created a complex information landscape for potential information users, with platforms differing in information type, technology, geographic coverage, and financing structures and infrastructure. This chapter mapped the existing climate information services and examined their impact on policy and practices in smallholder farming development in Africa, with a focus on Ghana. Specifically, the chapter provides highlights of digital platforms available to smallholder farmers and agricultural extension agents, analyzes the public and/or private governance arrangements that underpin the implementation of digital climate information delivery, and assesses the potential of these platforms in scaling up the use of climate information. The chapter contributes to understanding the dynamics of climate information delivery with digital tools in Africa, and suggests a future research agenda.

AbstractThe Once-Only Principle requires the public administrations to ensure that citizens and businesses supply the same information only once to the Public Administration as a whole. Widespread use of the Once-Only Principle has the potential to simplify citizens’ life, make businesses more efficient, and reduce administrative burden in the European Union. The Once-Only Principle project (TOOP) is an initiative, financed by the EU Program Horizon 2020, to explore the possibility to enable the cross-border application of the Once-Only Principle by demonstrating it in practice, through the development of selected piloting applications for specific real-world use cases, enabling the connection of different registries and architectures in different countries for better exchange of information across public administrations. These piloting ICT systems are designed as a result of a pan-European collaboration and they adopt a federated model, to allow for a high degree of independence between the participating parties in the development of their own solutions. The main challenge in the implementation of an OOP solution is the diversity of organizations, procedures, data, and services on all four main levels of interoperability: legal, organizational, semantic, and technical. To address this challenge, TOOP is developing and testing the TOOP Reference Architecture (TOOPRA) to assist organizations in the cross-border implementation of the OOP. The paper outlines the TOOPRA users, principles, and requirements, presents an overview of the architecture development, describes the main views of TOOPRA, discusses architecture profiling, and analyses the TOOPRA sustainability issues.

Half of the world's population live in rural areas and majority of them are in developing countries. The rural population face many challenges in their life compared to their urban counterparts. Some of these challenges include high unemployment rate, limited employment opportunities in their areas, high brain drain to more developed cities, lack of access to education and healthcare facilities. Information and communication technology has been identified as the enabling technology that can be used to overcome the present day problems. There are several ICT projects implemented across the world with the objective of helping these rural masses. But many of these projects face sustainability challenges due to lack of resources. In this chapter, the author takes an in depth look at how cloud computing can be leveraged successfully to address the sustainability problem of current rural ICT implementation.

Half of the world's population live in rural areas and majority of them are in developing countries. The rural population face many challenges in their life compared to their urban counterparts. Some of these challenges include high unemployment rate, limited employment opportunities in their areas, high brain drain to more developed cities, lack of access to education and healthcare facilities. Information and communication technology has been identified as the enabling technology that can be used to overcome the present day problems. There are several ICT projects implemented across the world with the objective of helping these rural masses. But many of these projects face sustainability challenges due to lack of resources. In this chapter, the author takes an in depth look at how cloud computing can be leveraged successfully to address the sustainability problem of current rural ICT implementation.

Medical practice, monitoring and control guidelines enable standardization, assessment and quality improvement in healthcare. This often implies collecting and analyzing electronic medical records (EMRs) in order to calculate compliance metrics and support evidence-based decision-making. However, for these benefits to materialize a set of challenges must be overcome, including the complexity required to represent guidelines in such a way that compliance can be automatically determined with the aid of software; the combination of both structured and unstructured (narrative text) data; and cultural or political barriers. In this chapter, we present a strategy to overcome these challenges using three case studies in chronic disease for a developing country. As such, this work contributes an approach to enable the use of ICT-supported medical guideline evaluation, in order to contribute to a more reliable and context-dependent way of improving healthcare in developing countries in particular.

This chapter introduces the concept of Ambient Intelligence (AmI) with regard to the enabling technologies and how they are combined to assist e-entrepreneurs. AmI is a new paradigm in the area of Information and Communication Technology (ICT). AmI allows for seamless interaction between the human and technology. The AmI system provides the human user with information and decision support tailored to their specific needs. To achieve seamless interaction between the human and technology requires the environment that surrounds the human to be embedded with technology in everyday objects. These technologies gather information that the AmI system uses to adapt its responses to the human user. The aim of the chapter is to provide a better understanding of the AmI process and knowledge of the AmI system and tools. To this end three of the enabling technologies are discussed: semantic web, multi-modal services, and radio frequency identification tags. These technologies are then examined within the AmI reference model. The reference model provides an understanding of how the technologies can be combined to achieve different AmI features for the human users. This toolkit can be used by a new venture in the area of e-entrepreneurship to provide AmI to service providers, new businesses and traditional industries.

The adoption of information and communication technology (ICT) is one of the most critical areas of innovation for third-party logistics service providers (3PLs). ICT is seen as tool for achieve service differentiation and improving connectivity with other supply chain partner. Nevertheless, many logistics service companies had failed to use ICT to gain competitive advantage as the implementation of technology innovation is a challenging and risky process involving huge resources. In the context of small 3PLs, technology adoption is particularly critical and ICT investments need to be carefully planned. The objective of this chapter is to investigate ICT adoption in small 3PLs through a case study analysis conducted in the Italian logistics service market. The role of technology in supporting service customization together with inhibitors and enabling factors influencing technology innovation are explored. Implications are derived from the research and supply chain innovation perspectives.

In recent years, Indonesia has introduced reforms to its bureaucracy in response to critiques of the quality of government policy design and delivery. The Grand Design of Bureaucratic Reform strategy seeks to reduce the number of civil servants employed in administrative or managerial positions (structural appointments) in favour of skills-based recruitment into ‘functional’ positions. Specifically, the introduction of the ‘policy analyst’ position as a functional position in the civil service has sought to improve evidence-based policy making and the quality of policy outcomes, by incorporating merit-based recruitment, appointment and promotion. The role of functional policy analysts (Jabatan Fungsional Analis Kebijakan or JFAKs) is to assist policy makers in identifying policy issues, analyse evidence available on these issues, and ultimately make policy recommendations. This report overviews the recent experiences of different policy analyst cohorts since the role’s creation in 2015. It investigates these experiences to better understand the extent to which policy analysts are playing the role intended for them, and the factors enabling or inhibiting this.

Channel Island National Park (CHIS), incorporating five islands off the coast of southern California (Anacapa Island, San Miguel Island, Santa Barbara Island, Santa Cruz Island, and Santa Rosa Island), has an outstanding paleontological record. The park has significant fossils dating from the Late Cretaceous to the Holocene, representing organisms of the sea, the land, and the air. Highlights include: the famous pygmy mammoths that inhabited the conjoined northern islands during the late Pleistocene; the best fossil avifauna of any National Park Service (NPS) unit; intertwined paleontological and cultural records extending into the latest Pleistocene, including Arlington Man, the oldest well-dated human known from North America; calichified “fossil forests”; records of Miocene desmostylians and sirenians, unusual sea mammals; abundant Pleistocene mollusks illustrating changes in sea level and ocean temperature; one of the most thoroughly studied records of microfossils in the NPS; and type specimens for 23 fossil taxa. Paleontological research on the islands of CHIS began in the second half of the 19th century. The first discovery of a mammoth specimen was reported in 1873. Research can be divided into four periods: 1) the few early reports from the 19th century; 2) a sustained burst of activity in the 1920s and 1930s; 3) a second burst from the 1950s into the 1970s; and 4) the modern period of activity, symbolically opened with the 1994 discovery of a nearly complete pygmy mammoth skeleton on Santa Rosa Island. The work associated with this paleontological resource inventory may be considered the beginning of a fifth period. Fossils were specifically mentioned in the 1938 proclamation establishing what was then Channel Islands National Monument, making CHIS one of 18 NPS areas for which paleontological resources are referenced in the enabling legislation. Each of the five islands of CHIS has distinct paleontological and geological records, each has some kind of fossil resources, and almost all of the sedimentary formations on the islands are fossiliferous within CHIS. Anacapa Island and Santa Barbara Island, the two smallest islands, are primarily composed of Miocene volcanic rocks interfingered with small quantities of sedimentary rock and covered with a veneer of Quaternary sediments. Santa Barbara stands apart from Anacapa because it was never part of Santarosae, the landmass that existed at times in the Pleistocene when sea level was low enough that the four northern islands were connected. San Miguel Island, Santa Cruz Island, and Santa Rosa Island have more complex geologic histories. Of these three islands, San Miguel Island has relatively simple geologic structure and few formations. Santa Cruz Island has the most varied geology of the islands, as well as the longest rock record exposed at the surface, beginning with Jurassic metamorphic and intrusive igneous rocks. The Channel Islands have been uplifted and faulted in a complex 20-million-year-long geologic episode tied to the collision of the North American and Pacific Places, the initiation of the San Andreas fault system, and the 90° clockwise rotation of the Transverse Ranges, of which the northern Channel Islands are the westernmost part. Widespread volcanic activity from about 19 to 14 million years ago is evidenced by the igneous rocks found on each island.

This report maps the African landscape of Open Science – with a focus on Open Data as a sub-set of Open Science. Data to inform the landscape study were collected through a variety of methods, including surveys, desk research, engagement with a community of practice, networking with stakeholders, participation in conferences, case study presentations, and workshops hosted. Although the majority of African countries (35 of 54) demonstrates commitment to science through its investment in research and development (R&D), academies of science, ministries of science and technology, policies, recognition of research, and participation in the Science Granting Councils Initiative (SGCI), the following countries demonstrate the highest commitment and political willingness to invest in science: Botswana, Ethiopia, Kenya, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, and Uganda. In addition to existing policies in Science, Technology and Innovation (STI), the following countries have made progress towards Open Data policies: Botswana, Kenya, Madagascar, Mauritius, South Africa and Uganda. Only two African countries (Kenya and South Africa) at this stage contribute 0.8% of its GDP (Gross Domestic Product) to R&D (Research and Development), which is the closest to the AU’s (African Union’s) suggested 1%. Countries such as Lesotho and Madagascar ranked as 0%, while the R&D expenditure for 24 African countries is unknown. In addition to this, science globally has become fully dependent on stable ICT (Information and Communication Technologies) infrastructure, which includes connectivity/bandwidth, high performance computing facilities and data services. This is especially applicable since countries globally are finding themselves in the midst of the 4th Industrial Revolution (4IR), which is not only “about” data, but which “is” data. According to an article1 by Alan Marcus (2015) (Senior Director, Head of Information Technology and Telecommunications Industries, World Economic Forum), “At its core, data represents a post-industrial opportunity. Its uses have unprecedented complexity, velocity and global reach. As digital communications become ubiquitous, data will rule in a world where nearly everyone and everything is connected in real time. That will require a highly reliable, secure and available infrastructure at its core, and innovation at the edge.” Every industry is affected as part of this revolution – also science. An important component of the digital transformation is “trust” – people must be able to trust that governments and all other industries (including the science sector), adequately handle and protect their data. This requires accountability on a global level, and digital industries must embrace the change and go for a higher standard of protection. “This will reassure consumers and citizens, benefitting the whole digital economy”, says Marcus. A stable and secure information and communication technologies (ICT) infrastructure – currently provided by the National Research and Education Networks (NRENs) – is key to advance collaboration in science. The AfricaConnect2 project (AfricaConnect (2012–2014) and AfricaConnect2 (2016–2018)) through establishing connectivity between National Research and Education Networks (NRENs), is planning to roll out AfricaConnect3 by the end of 2019. The concern however is that selected African governments (with the exception of a few countries such as South Africa, Mozambique, Ethiopia and others) have low awareness of the impact the Internet has today on all societal levels, how much ICT (and the 4th Industrial Revolution) have affected research, and the added value an NREN can bring to higher education and research in addressing the respective needs, which is far more complex than simply providing connectivity. Apart from more commitment and investment in R&D, African governments – to become and remain part of the 4th Industrial Revolution – have no option other than to acknowledge and commit to the role NRENs play in advancing science towards addressing the SDG (Sustainable Development Goals). For successful collaboration and direction, it is fundamental that policies within one country are aligned with one another. Alignment on continental level is crucial for the future Pan-African African Open Science Platform to be successful. Both the HIPSSA ((Harmonization of ICT Policies in Sub-Saharan Africa)3 project and WATRA (the West Africa Telecommunications Regulators Assembly)4, have made progress towards the regulation of the telecom sector, and in particular of bottlenecks which curb the development of competition among ISPs. A study under HIPSSA identified potential bottlenecks in access at an affordable price to the international capacity of submarine cables and suggested means and tools used by regulators to remedy them. Work on the recommended measures and making them operational continues in collaboration with WATRA. In addition to sufficient bandwidth and connectivity, high-performance computing facilities and services in support of data sharing are also required. The South African National Integrated Cyberinfrastructure System5 (NICIS) has made great progress in planning and setting up a cyberinfrastructure ecosystem in support of collaborative science and data sharing. The regional Southern African Development Community6 (SADC) Cyber-infrastructure Framework provides a valuable roadmap towards high-speed Internet, developing human capacity and skills in ICT technologies, high- performance computing and more. The following countries have been identified as having high-performance computing facilities, some as a result of the Square Kilometre Array7 (SKA) partnership: Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Mauritius, Namibia, South Africa, Tunisia, and Zambia. More and more NRENs – especially the Level 6 NRENs 8 (Algeria, Egypt, Kenya, South Africa, and recently Zambia) – are exploring offering additional services; also in support of data sharing and transfer. The following NRENs already allow for running data-intensive applications and sharing of high-end computing assets, bio-modelling and computation on high-performance/ supercomputers: KENET (Kenya), TENET (South Africa), RENU (Uganda), ZAMREN (Zambia), EUN (Egypt) and ARN (Algeria). Fifteen higher education training institutions from eight African countries (Botswana, Benin, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa, Sudan, and Tanzania) have been identified as offering formal courses on data science. In addition to formal degrees, a number of international short courses have been developed and free international online courses are also available as an option to build capacity and integrate as part of curricula. The small number of higher education or research intensive institutions offering data science is however insufficient, and there is a desperate need for more training in data science. The CODATA-RDA Schools of Research Data Science aim at addressing the continental need for foundational data skills across all disciplines, along with training conducted by The Carpentries 9 programme (specifically Data Carpentry 10 ). Thus far, CODATA-RDA schools in collaboration with AOSP, integrating content from Data Carpentry, were presented in Rwanda (in 2018), and during17-29 June 2019, in Ethiopia. Awareness regarding Open Science (including Open Data) is evident through the 12 Open Science-related Open Access/Open Data/Open Science declarations and agreements endorsed or signed by African governments; 200 Open Access journals from Africa registered on the Directory of Open Access Journals (DOAJ); 174 Open Access institutional research repositories registered on openDOAR (Directory of Open Access Repositories); 33 Open Access/Open Science policies registered on ROARMAP (Registry of Open Access Repository Mandates and Policies); 24 data repositories registered with the Registry of Data Repositories (re3data.org) (although the pilot project identified 66 research data repositories); and one data repository assigned the CoreTrustSeal. Although this is a start, far more needs to be done to align African data curation and research practices with global standards. Funding to conduct research remains a challenge. African researchers mostly fund their own research, and there are little incentives for them to make their research and accompanying data sets openly accessible. Funding and peer recognition, along with an enabling research environment conducive for research, are regarded as major incentives. The landscape report concludes with a number of concerns towards sharing research data openly, as well as challenges in terms of Open Data policy, ICT infrastructure supportive of data sharing, capacity building, lack of skills, and the need for incentives. Although great progress has been made in terms of Open Science and Open Data practices, more awareness needs to be created and further advocacy efforts are required for buy-in from African governments. A federated African Open Science Platform (AOSP) will not only encourage more collaboration among researchers in addressing the SDGs, but it will also benefit the many stakeholders identified as part of the pilot phase. The time is now, for governments in Africa, to acknowledge the important role of science in general, but specifically Open Science and Open Data, through developing and aligning the relevant policies, investing in an ICT infrastructure conducive for data sharing through committing funding to making NRENs financially sustainable, incentivising open research practices by scientists, and creating opportunities for more scientists and stakeholders across all disciplines to be trained in data management.

The IID seminar titled “Building Profitable and Sustainable Community Owned Connectivity Networks”, was hosted on 31 August 2020 on Zoom Webinar. The 2019 White Paper on science, technology and innovation (STI) recognise the pivotal enabling role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in realising an inclusive and prosperous information society and knowledge economy. One of the Department of Science and Innovation (DSI)’s key role is to catalyse the digital ecosystem and develop scalable models for community owned connectivity networks to replicate in other areas. Rural areas provide challenging environment to implement communication infrastructure for data and Internet based services, including high cost of network implementation and lack of customer base, low-income streams, highly scattered and low population density. The DSI has thus partnered with the University of Western Cape (UWC), the Mankosi Village community, with support from the Technology Innovation Agency (TIA) to scaleup the Zenzeleni Community Owned Connectivity Networks (COCN). The Zenzeleni COCN has been in existence since 2012 and provides timely, reliable and affordable Wi-Fi connectivity to the remote rural areas of Mankosi and Zithulele in Mthatha. The webinar, facilitated by Ms Ellen Fischat from Story Room aimed to look at how rural and township wireless connectivity models, including Zenzeleni COCN can be scaled-up to increase the number of people connected in the rural settings, more so in light of the COVID-19 crisis. It is evident from the proceedings the need for community networks to provide access to connectivity and also more importantly, what connectivity enables. Subsequent discussions would need to focus on the users and owners of these community networks to understand how their lives have improved through the deployment of the technology. This will shed light of the financial feasibility and benefit.

With its annual Payment Systems Report, Banco de la República offers a complete overview of the infrastructure of Colombia’s financial market. Each edition of the report has four objectives: 1) to publicize a consolidated account of how the figures for payment infrastructures have evolved with respect to both financial assets and goods and services; 2) to summarize the issues that are being debated internationally and are of interest to the industry that provides payment clearing and settlement services; 3) to offer the public an explanation of the ideas and concepts behind retail-value payment processes and the trends in retail payments within the circuit of individuals and companies; and 4) to familiarize the public, the industry, and all other financial authorities with the methodological progress that has been achieved through applied research to analyze the stability of payment systems. This edition introduces changes that have been made in the structure of the report, which are intended to make it easier and more enjoyable to read. The initial sections in this edition, which is the eleventh, contain an analysis of the statistics on the evolution and performance of financial market infrastructures. These are understood as multilateral systems wherein the participating entities clear, settle and register payments, securities, derivatives and other financial assets. The large-value payment system (CUD) saw less momentum in 2019 than it did the year before, mainly because of a decline in the amount of secondary market operations for government bonds, both in cash and sell/buy-backs, which was offset by an increase in operations with collective investment funds (CIFs) and Banco de la República’s operations to increase the money supply (repos). Consequently, the Central Securities Depository (DCV) registered less activity, due to fewer negotiations on the secondary market for public debt. This trend was also observed in the private debt market, as evidenced by the decline in the average amounts cleared and settled through the Central Securities Depository of Colombia (Deceval) and in the value of operations with financial derivatives cleared and settled through the Central Counterparty of Colombia (CRCC). Section three offers a comprehensive look at the market for retail-value payments; that is, transactions made by individuals and companies. During 2019, electronic transfers increased, and payments made with debit and credit cards continued to trend upward. In contrast, payments by check continued to decline, although the average daily value was almost four times the value of debit and credit card purchases. The same section contains the results of the fourth survey on how the use of retail-value payment instruments (for usual payments) is perceived. Conducted at the end of 2019, the main purpose of the survey was to identify the availability of these payment instruments, the public’s preferences for them, and their acceptance by merchants. It is worth noting that cash continues to be the instrument most used by the population for usual monthly payments (88.1% with respect to the number of payments and 87.4% in value). However, its use in terms of value has declined, having registered 89.6% in the 2017 survey. In turn, the level of acceptance by merchants of payment instruments other than cash is 14.1% for debit cards, 13.4% for credit cards, 8.2% for electronic transfers of funds and 1.8% for checks. The main reason for the use of cash is the absence of point-of-sale terminals at commercial establishments. Considering that the retail-payment market worldwide is influenced by constant innovation in payment services, by the modernization of clearing and settlement systems, and by the efforts of regulators to redefine the payment industry for the future, these trends are addressed in the fourth section of the report. There is an account of how innovations in technology-based financial payment services have developed, and it shows that while this topic is not new, it has evolved, particularly in terms of origin and vocation. One of the boxes that accompanies the fourth section deals with certain payment aspects of open banking and international experience in that regard, which has given the customers of a financial entity sovereignty over their data, allowing them, under transparent and secure conditions, to authorize a third party, other than their financial entity, to request information on their accounts with financial entities, thus enabling the third party to offer various financial services or initiate payments. Innovation also has sparked interest among international organizations, central banks, and research groups concerning the creation of digital currencies. Accordingly, the last box deals with the recent international debate on issuance of central bank digital currencies. In terms of the methodological progress that has been made, it is important to underscore the work that has been done on the role of central counterparties (CCPs) in mitigating liquidity and counterparty risk. The fifth section of the report offers an explanation of a document in which the work of CCPs in financial markets is analyzed and corroborated through an exercise that was built around the Central Counterparty of Colombia (CRCC) in the Colombian market for non-delivery peso-dollar forward exchange transactions, using the methodology of network topology. The results provide empirical support for the different theoretical models developed to study the effect of CCPs on financial markets. Finally, the results of research using artificial intelligence with information from the large-value payment system are presented. Based on the payments made among financial institutions in the large-value payment system, a methodology is used to compare different payment networks, as well as to determine which ones can be considered abnormal. The methodology shows signs that indicate when a network moves away from its historical trend, so it can be studied and monitored. A methodology similar to the one applied to classify images is used to make this comparison, the idea being to extract the main characteristics of the networks and use them as a parameter for comparison. Juan José Echavarría Governor