On July 16, 2013, during my confirmation hearing, I made a commitment to Chairman Tester, Ranking Member Portman, and members of the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs to work with my senior management team to create a plan for modernizing information technology (IT) at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) within 100 days of assuming office. I further c…
In this Recommendation, the expression "Administration" is used for conciseness to indicate both a telecommunication administration and a recognized operating agency. Compliance with this Recommendation is voluntary. However, the Recommendation may contain certain mandatory provisions (to ensure e.g. interoperability or applicability) and compliance with the Recommendation is achieved when …
There has been discussion of proposals to engage in the collection of traffic flow measurement information for monitoring and to support charging and accounting. Some suggest that network interconnection points, such as the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) connections between networks operated by administrations and operating agencies authorized by national governments, would be suitable points to…
What keeps corporate tax department executives up at night? How about the risk of signing off on an incorrect tax return? Or worse yet, what about a career-threatening, tax-related restatement? As corporate tax complexity increases, so does the risk of mistakes, penalties, and missed opportunities. For instance, 14 percent of U.S. firms reported material weakness or significant deficiency from …
The role of financing to support company strategies to introduce new products and processes in the economy has long been recognised as key. More than a hundred years ago, Joseph Schum peter pointed out the crucial function of banks in stimulating economic growth and innovation, as well as identifying and financing new investments in production. He also emphasised the differences between co…
For several decades, institutions in developing countries and development assistance agencies have supported the evolution of information infrastructures in developing countries. This encompassed the establishment or strengthening of information services at all levels corporate, local, national, regional, and international as well as facilitating access to the world s information resources, …
The Concise Guide to Economics came about for the same reason that Frédéric Bastiat wrote so passionately and dedicated his entire life to spreading the truths of economics. Some people, economist Jim Cox among them, are rightly seized with the desire to get the message out to the largest possible number of people. This way they will be intellectually prepared to combat bad ideas when th…
The Hawaiian Islands are situated in the North Pacific Ocean and lie between longitudes 154° 40' and 160° 30' West, and latitudes 22° 16' and 18° 55' North. They are thus on the very edge of the tropics, but their position in mid-ocean and the prevalence of the northeast trade wind gives them a climate unequalled by any other portion of the globe—a perpetual summer without an enervating h…
Web Services made the web programmable. They enabled the developers to look at the Internet as a class library or an object model. Protocols like Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), Representational State Transfer (REST), JavaScript Object Notation (JSON) and Plain Old XML (POX) fueled the growth of APIs on the web. Today every popular search engine, social networking site and syndi…
C# 4.0 further enhances Microsoft’s flagship programming language with much- requested features—including support for dynamic programming, type parameter variance, and optional and named parameters. At the same time, the CLR and .NET Framework have grown to include a rich set of features for parallel programming, code contracts, and a new code security model. The price of this growth is tha…
Business intelligence (BI) means different things to different people. For some, it means advanced analytics. For others, it is self-service report creation. A few see it as a prelude to Big Data. For many users, however, BI is much more accessible than any of these things. It is quite simply the regular production of clear and meaningful reports and dashboards that translate data into actionab…
It is a matter of common observation that during the opening years of the twentieth century there has been, in many portions of the civilized world, a substantial quickening of interest in the principles and problems of human government. The United States is happily among those countries in which the phenomenon can be observed, and we have witnessed in recent times not only the organization of …
Traditionally, cost accounting is considered as the technique and process of ascertaining costs of a given thing. In sixties, the definition of cost accounting was modified as ‘the application of costing and cost accounting principles, methods and techniques to the science, art and practice of cost control and ascertainment of profitability of goods, or services’. It includes t…
AFTER an unequivocal experience of the inefficacy of the subsisting federal government, you are called upon to deliberate on a new Constitution for the United States of America. The subject speaks its own importance; comprehending in its consequences nothing less than the existence of the UNION, the safety and welfare of the parts of which it is composed, the fate of an empire in many respects …
Talking after the meeting, Sue and Sally realize they need to explore the intersection among Big Data, mobile and cloud, and business intelligence (BI) so they can propose a solution that will engage the organization in these technologies. They ponder this intersection knowing that the budget process is about to be upon them. They need to jump- start their understanding so they can justify thei…
Alex’s clients include the U.S. Coast Guard (he helps keep its leadership training innovative and at the forefront of management practice) and a lengthy list of companies, government agencies, nonprofit boards, and more. He’s helped the U.S. Senate work on its collaborative problem-solving skills and brought new assessment tools to the finance department of the City of New York. His creativ…
Economic development is fundamentally a process of structural transformation1. This involves the reallocation of productive factors from traditional agriculture to modern agriculture, industry and services, and the reallocation of those factors among industrial and service sector activities. If successful in accelerating economic growth, this process involves shifting resources from low- t…
The level of debate and confusion in many areas of our lives makes many things hard to see, yet also makes one thing perfectly clear. The intensity of debate and confusion are proof in them- selves that big changes are under way. We have arrived at what has been variously called a ‘‘tipping point’’ or an ‘‘inflection point’’ or a ‘‘perfect storm.’’ Tried-and-true formul…
The book, an English translation of which is here republished, was first issued in Germany in 1845. The author, at that time, was young, twenty-four years of age, and his production bears the stamp of his youth with its good and its faulty features, of neither of which he feels ashamed. It was translated into English, in 1885, by an American lady, Mrs. F. Kelley Wischnewetzky, and published in …
Welcome to the world of Rich Internet Applications (RIA) and Silverlight. A world in which the user experience is paramount, and easy to use yet powerful applications are what we strive to create. Silverlight brings .NET developers into the RIA space in a big way, providing the controls we know with web and Windows development and allowing us to define a custom experience to best benefit the us…