Many governments in the world have created e-government initiatives including developed and developing countries. In order to better understand e-government evolution, different maturity models have been developed by many authors. In this paper the most cited e-government maturity models are analyzed using the meta-synthesis approach. As a result, five stages of e-government maturity are identified. The comparative results show the supported stages by each e-government initiative as important elements in the decision making process. This paper is attempting to show that (...) although there are many models for measuring e-government maturity, they all converge on one common model. The contribution of this paper is in simplifying work for researchers when choosing the right maturity model. (shrink)

Enterprise Resource Planning systems are used by universities to handle the academic services and business processes while providing enhanced experience and services to students. This study begins with a background review of ERPs in higher education institutions, the impact on the business processes through optimization and the importance of critical success factors for easier implementation. Secondly, Academic Planning, a core part of the student module of ERPs for higher education, is analyzed in this paper from the prism of data integration, (...) business process workflow, and process optimization. The issues that arise with development of a module are addressed through a case study at SEE-University. The data and business process workflows are based on an actual study by real implementation at this institution. The findings from this study will serve other universities who are in the process of implementation of an ERP to ease their development process and improve the efficiency of the services provided. Main contribution of this study is that it reduces the gap in literature and practice for issues and solutions that arise with the development of a new system, especially in higher education institutions, which in turn are very scarce in nature. (shrink)

In the standard tradition of both Albanian studies and Western scholarship, including either any interested religious and political activism or less 'interested' lay people, endeavours of historical and textual fact-finding have been relevant only to re-confirm and indeed perpetuate the very meaning of a myth, according to which the thinking of Naim Frashëri was formed and dominated by Bektashism and his 'Albanianism' had a Bektashi foundation. In an earlier paper this myth was shown to be unreliable by arguing that Frashëri's (...) religious thinking was shaped by religious dualism. This paper argues further that Naim Frashëri went far beyond Bektashism in his heterodoxy, not only in a kind of liberation theology, but also by embracing a comprehensive pantheism which generated an active and all-inclusive attitude to Albanian identity, not necessarily limited in any special way to Bektashism. Methodologically, such a new picture must arise if the analysis of the historical and literary contextualization of Frashëri's major works is submitted to the perspective of social theoretical approaches to religion developed in sociology and anthropology. (shrink)

Road accidents have increased rapidly in recent years for a variety of reasons. Analyzing and visualizing road accidents through heatmaps can help improve policies for their prevention by informing about areas with a high-risk of road accidents. The purpose of this research is to build a model for the analysis and visualization of road accidents through heatmaps. Information about road accidents is extracted from the news of the main online media portals through scripts in the Python language and Web Scraping (...) techniques. From the extraction of about 30,000 articles from news portals for one year, only 829 were selected in the end that provided information about road accidents. As a result, and contribution of this research, a corpus was built with the geographic coordinates of road accidents and on this data our model was applied for the analysis and visualization of high-risk areas of road accidents using heatmaps. The visualization of heatmaps was done through a Python script, where it was applied to the geographic coordinates of road accidents. (shrink)

Background: Frontline healthcare providers are consistently exposed to potentially traumatic events while assisting patients with COVID-19. Post-traumatic growth happens when a person can transform trauma and use adversity in one’s advantage. In response to limited studies on positive outcomes that may occur from the pandemic; this study aimed to elucidate the positive impact of coping with COVID-19 outbreak on mental health, such as PTG.Methodology: The study comprised a sample of 691 healthcare providers 59% female, including physicians and nurses, working in (...) public health facilities in Kosovo, with an average age of 41.6 years. They were asked to complete a questionnaire with four parts: Socio-demographic, GHQ-28, COPE and PTGI. A deterioration of mental health with somatic symptoms leading to the escalation due to COVID-19 outbreak was found.Results: Female healthcare providers reported more clinical symptoms as well as higher coping skills scores than men. The domains in which positive changes were most frequently observed were Relating to Others, New Possibilities and Personal Strength. There was no significant direct effect of mental health on PTG in the mediation model, though a significant indirect effect was observed for coping skills.Conclusion: The results suggest that levels of mental health exacerbation do not play a conclusive role in determining levels of PTG, as long coping mechanisms are in place. The development and implementation of interventions to minimize COVID-19-related mental health consequences, by fostering PTG among healthcare providers could be highly beneficial in pandemic response work. (shrink)

The article deals with contemporary war history, the aesthetics of resistance, and the politics of affect in the context of the post-Yugoslav space. Looking back at the armed wars of the 1990s, as well as the numerous wars still being waged by other means, it becomes clear that there is still no peace in this exhausted zone of geopolitical discomfort. The politics of (non)belonging to this space has oscillated for decades between conflicting affects, liminal zones, and the (im)possibilities of overcoming (...) the permanent production of war through lasting peace. This ambivalent feeling of (non)belonging has led to various twists and shifts in post-Yugoslav art that have solidarized within the old and new geopolitical zones of discomfort and war(s). Using the post-Yugoslav art-based research of Adela Jušić and Blerta Heziraj, who are now involved with the Antifašistički front žena—AFŽ (Women’s Antifascist Front), as well as a long-durée activist performance by Žene u crnom (Women in Black), the text accordingly points to a common ground of politics and art that uncompromisingly resist the governing (post-)Yugoslav discourses of never-ending wars. (shrink)