Fiscal Decentralization in Pakistan: A Case Study of Punjab Provincial Finance Commission

The success of federalism in multiethnic societies greatly depends on fiscal decentralization. It empowers the provincial governments along with the local bodies at the grass root level. In this perspective fiscal decentralization needs structural arrangements in order to ensure revenue generation and appropriate expenditures. It helps to strengthen the national grid to avoid inter-provincial or intra-provincial discrepancies. This study illustrates the relationship between fiscal devolution and symmetrical horizontal economic development. It envisages the devolution plan (2001) introduced by former General Pervez Mushraff in Pakistan under which the Provincial Finance Commissions were established. This research would focus on Punjab as a case study to analyze the working of Provincial Finance Commission. This research tends to address the questions like what have been the patterns of fiscal decentralization in Pakistan? Did National Finance Commission and Provincial Finance Commission promote the principles of equitable devolution of resources in the divisible pool on the basis of need assessment? Could PFC be able to mitigate the intra-provincial disparities in Punjab? Did PFC take efficiency advantage in Punjab through the empowerment of local governments? This study would encompass the analysis of the resource allocation formula opted by the successive governments in the past till present and the counter arguments by the academia and the local body members. Qualitative and quantitative both methods would be used while incorporating primary as well secondary sources. This research concludes with the proposition that empowered local bodies and effective finance commission are the sine qua non of fiscal decentralization in democratic state like Pakistan.

Joint Key Authentication Model for Situation Variant in E-Health Systems

Health of patient is important in every aspect of life. Technology has played a vital role in providing the solutions for health. Many of E-Health software have been designed to provide benefit in the field of E-Health technology. E-Health is considered to be the critical and confidential domain because the record might be misused. E-Health technologies can be considered as the effective, reasonable and result oriented framework. The designed E-Health software are mostly focusing on the areas like record keeping, diagnostic, treatment, and medication. The mentioned areas are important too but the security and privacy of the patient record is the core significant aspect. Authentication schemes are specifically designed to give user access privileges and secure patient`s confidential medical records. Many authentication schemes have been used with embedded E-Health software to give access to trained operators for the purpose of providing better cure against diseases. A large number of single and multi-factor authentication schemes are functioning but multi-factor authentication schemes are more secure than the single factor, which are unfortunately rare in use. The main objective is to propose an appropriate solution for the scheme in E-Health systems, for its formal use. The beauty of this scheme is the combination of most frequently used factors like Identity, password, smart card, mobile device and biometric characteristics of the user. The user has all these security and privacy measures along with strongly integrated factors which are contributing for the better availability and usage of the given scheme. It also takes care against different attacks like online or offline password guessing attack, stolen verifier attack, man-in-the-middle attack. Proposed scheme tested and verified by one of the trust worthy software engineering tools and techniques called formal methods and high level protocol specification language using AVISPA tool. Results guarantee the security, reliability, efficacy and effectiveness of proposed authentication scheme. For this purpose, system accessibility, user privileges would be flexible, feasible and controllable according to the prospective of application users. End users of E-Health systems could be patients, doctors, para-medical staff and administration. Due to its variety of login credentials on the basis of criticality of different users, organizations include government, semi-government and private healthcare centres develop their information security and accessibility policies according to context of socio-economic benefit. Joint authentication model for situation variant is the best choice for E-Health software.