Information and the technology that supports its collection, communication and analysis is a core concern of modern government, making e-government (meaning electronically enabled government) fundamental to the ongoing "reinvention" of public administration. But the quest for e-government opens up a range of issues - whether to take a "big bang" or an incremental approach to computerization, how to deal with security and privacy concerns, how to reconfigure the machinery of government to f...

This book investigates the experiences of older people who remain at home with care. It examines the transition points for the important life changes faced by family members who take on a greater care-giving role.The book draws on demographic analyses and qualitative fieldwork to explore the shift from independence to increasing dependence, and suggests that this transition constitutes movement into a new stage of life, that of an Age of Supported Independence. Applying the anthrop...

For the last two decades, major Asian economies have successfully kept their economic growth momentum going. Now, as these economies are entering a new phase of economic growth, more attention is being paid to their respective states of social development, especially the provision and the expansion of social security and, in particular, health care. Academic study of the development of health care in developing countries has been for the most part neglected by the literature, and in-depth ...

This book addresses the global need for more comparative studies on health policy and health care systems, given the rise in recent decades of societal aging, modern mass diseases, economic globalization, and resulting permanent fiscal austerity of governments which have fundamentally altered the status quo of health care systems.The book examines the healthcare experiences of the most developed countries in Asia (Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore) and compares these with fo...