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This article examines how electronic funds transfers and electronic benefit transfers have become integral components of digital government. These technologies have forwarded many of the principles of the Winter Commission, including the development of lean, responsive government. The greater efficiency and cost savings for the federal and most state governments have not been achieved without encountering and dealing with serious matters related to customer service, contracting, collaboration, management, and implementation. These issues arise in the normal daily use of electronic payment technologies, but they are magnified in crisis situations, as demonstrated by disaster relief operations during Hurricane Katrina.

Incorporating currencies, payment methods, and protocols that computers use to talk to each other, digital currencies are poised to grow in use and importance. Taking a cross-country perspective, its comprehensive view of the field includes history, technicality, IT, finance, economics, legal, tax and regulatory environment. This book discusses all major strategies and tactics associated with digital currencies, their uses, and their regulations; presents future scenarios for the growth of digital currencies; is written for regulators, crime prevention units, tax authorities, entrepreneurs, micro-financiers, micro-payment businesses, cryptography experts, software developers, venture capitalists, hedge fund managers, hardware manufacturers, credit card providers, money changers, remittance service providers, exchanges, and academics. --

Ethereum enables the development of efficient, smart contracts that contain code. These smart contracts interact with other smart contracts to make decisions, store data, and send Ether to others. This book begins with an introduction to Ethereum and then a detailed step-by-step process required to building advanced Ethereum Projects.

Blockchain is a distributed database that enables permanent, transparent, and secure storage of data. The blockchain technology is the backbone of cryptocurrency and it is gaining popularity with people who work in the finance, government, and arts sectors. This book is an up-to-date, one-stop guide to this leading technology and its.

Objectives. To understand the experiences of families with low income in California with pandemic safety net support expansions and retractions, including barriers to program access. Methods. Using open-ended questions, we explored the self-reported experiences of pandemic-era safety net expansions and expirations between January and June 2023 among a group of caregivers of young children (n = 44). We used the Immersion-Crystallization technique to analyze the data, creating a codebook and identifying themes as they emerged. Results. We identified 4 main themes, including appreciation for safety net expansions, varied experiences because of the timing of supports, challenges meeting basic needs after expirations, and administrative burdens significantly impairing program access. Conclusions. The study themes highlighted how expansions to policies like the Child Tax Credit and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program improved food and housing security, and that unpredictable benefits, although appreciated, also added stress. Public Health Implications. State and federal policymakers should consider the poverty reduction and food and housing security benefits of expansions to pandemic-era supports that have expired when crafting future policy. They should pay special attention to addressing administrative barriers to reduce poverty-related health inequities. ( Am J Public Health. 2025;115(11):1836–1847. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2025.308201 )

Many local food policy councils (FPCs) worked to increase food access during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our objective was to determine whether households living in states with higher FPC coverage were less likely to experience food insufficiency during COVID-19 compared to households in states with lower local FPC coverage, and to analyze associations by race, ethnicity, and household income. We used a modified Poisson regression approach to estimate the prevalence of household food insufficiency in states with high and low FPC coverage as of 2020, adjusting for age and gender of the survey respondent, and percent of the state’s population living in a rural area (N = 1,909,647). Longitudinal food insufficiency was measured via the US Census Household Pulse Survey (May 2020 – May 2023). Lower income households in states with low FPC coverage were more likely to experience food insufficiency during the pandemic than households in states with high FPC coverage (food insufficiency prevalence ratio: 1.05, 95% CI 1.04–1.07, p < 0.001). Lower FPC coverage was associated with significantly more food insufficiency among lower-income non-Hispanic Black (1.05, 95% CI 1.02–1.09, p = 0.003) and white households (1.02, 95% CI 1.00–1.04, p = 0.01). Presence of FPCs may have been a protective factor against food insufficiency for low-income Black and white households during the COVID-19 pandemic. Local FPCs may have potential for promoting resilience and racial equity within food systems.

Leverage the power of Hyperledger Fabric to develop Blockchain-based distributed ledgers with ease Key Features * Write your own chaincode/smart contracts using Golang on hyperledger network * Build and deploy decentralized applications (DApps) * Dive into real world blockchain challenges such as integration and scalability Book Description BBlockchain and Hyperledger technologiesare hot topics today. Hyperledger Fabric and Hyperledger Composer are open source projects that help organizations create private, permissioned blockchain networks. These find application in finance, banking, supply chain, and IoT among several other sectors. This book will be an easy reference to explore and build blockchain networks using Hyperledger technologies. The book starts by outlining the evolution of blockchain, including an overview of relevant blockchain technologies. You will learn how to configure Hyperledger Fabric and become familiar with its architectural components. Using these components, you will learn to build private blockchain networks, along with the applications that connect to them. Starting from principles first, you'll learn to design and launch a network, implement smart contracts in chaincode and much more. By the end of this book, you will be able to build and deploy your own decentralized applications, handling the key pain points encountered in the blockchain life cycle. What you will learn * Discover why blockchain is a game changer in the technology landscape * Set up blockchain networks using basic Hyperledger Fabric deployment * Understand the considerations for creating decentralized applications * Learn to integrate business networks with existing systems * Write Smart Contracts quickly with Hyperledger Composer * Design transaction model and chaincode with Golang * Deploy Composer REST Gateway to access the Composer transactions * Maintain, monitor, and govern your blockchain solutions Who this book is for The book benefits business leaders as it provides a comprehensive view on blockchain business models, governance structure, and business design considerations of blockchain solutions. Technology leaders stand to gain a lot from the detailed discussion around the technology landscape, technology design, and architecture considerations in the book. With model-driven application development, this guide will speed up understanding and concept development for blockchain application developers. The simple and well organized content will put novices at ease with blockchain concepts and constructs.

Blockchain technology is giving birth to new business models, inspiring communities to build economies on a decentralized network. This book will be your practical guide to get you up and running with concepts of building your very own Blockchain network. You will get a thorough understanding of how a decentralized network is built and deployed.

Solidity is a new contract-oriented programming language popular for creating smart contracts and distributed applications. Writing smart contracts targeting Ethereum and other blockchain platforms is an emerging skill. This book will enable you to write robust, secure, object-oriented contracts that extend blockchain with business functionality.

Pricing incentives may reduce disparities in obesity among Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) participants by increasing fruit and vegetable purchases. However, few studies have evaluated the feasibility and effectiveness of those incentives in supermarkets, as opposed to farmers markets. In 2015 and 2016, as part of a US Department of Agriculture (USDA) pilot program, a dollarmatching program in Michigan provided SNAP participants with a subsidy on fresh produce purchases. Using data on millions of individual transactions from thirty-two stores, we found that SNAP participants' spending on fresh produce was significantly higher at stores that implemented the subsidy than at control stores during both intervention periods (7.4 percent and 2.2 percent higher in 2015 and 2016, respectively). Our results highlight the effectiveness and feasibility of dollar-matching programs for fruit and vegetable purchases by SNAP participants who shop at supermarkets, and they support the USDA's expansion of existing programs to that setting in additional states.