Qualitative Results Of The Ncdmbs Financial Accountability

10.6.5 Qualitative results of the NCDMB’s financial accountability A number of important themes have arisen from qualitative analysis related to the board’s financial accountability in managing resources. These themes were: (1) transparency and accessibility of financial information (2) honesty and professionalism (3) monitoring, auditing and verification of performance, and (4) stakeholder engagement. These points are discussed below. 10.6.5.1 Transparency and accessibility of financial information Results have shown stakeholders’ mixed reactions on the NCDMB’s transparency of financial information. Contrary to the quantitative findings, many issues have been raised concerning how the board manages the two funds in its custody.†¦show more content†¦This may contradict the results obtained in section 10.6.4 above. Although Hufbauer et al. (2013) claimed that the modalities of the fund had remained vague, stakeholders have surprisingly shown a good understanding of the divisions of the fund into 30% developmental interventions and 70% commercial interventions (S. 70(h) NOGICD; UBA PLC and BGL Capital, 2014; see also chapter four). Stakeholders’ calls for reporting of the NCDF as evident from the empirical data were in line with several calls from civil society groups about the board’s transparency and the accessibility of the fund (Nigerian Tribune, 2015). It was reported that these stakeholders â€Å"want a clearer and less cumbersome process of accessing the Nigerian Content Fund† according to a civil society group. It was pointed out that the difficulty in accessing the fund came at the time when companies were in a pressing need to develop capacity and finance projects. Since the fund was meant to encourage local employment, training, local sourcing, etc, stakeholders h ave also shown interest in traceable records to that effect, or else, the value addition expectations of the fund would be vitiated. From the perceptions of stakeholders it seemed that none were aware of the actual financial position of the fund as none had responded to such question. This re-affirmed that stakeholders were

Adultery in The Lady with The Pet Dog and The Storm

Infidelity is depicted as an extremely negative thing in the United States, and is often blamed for trust issues, psychologically damaging the spouse and their children, tearing apart marriages and families and more. People who commit adultery are often shamed and told how wrong what they did is and what a terrible person they are for doing it. According to the Journal of Martial and Family by the Associated Press, however, 41% of â€Å"marriages where one or both spouses admit to infidelity, either physical or emotional.† Clearly, while infidelity is generally viewed negative by society, many people either decide that it is not as negative as it is portrayed, or do not care and do it anyway. â€Å"The Lady with the Pet Dog† and â€Å"The Storm† both go†¦show more content†¦While it is not unheard of now to file a divorce from your spouse and begin a relationship with the person whom you cheated with, sometimes resulting in marriage and a family, this st ory was written in 1899. During that time period, divorce was a very taboo and uncommon thing to do, so Dmitri and Anna could not simply leave their spouse to be with each other. In â€Å"The Storm†, Chopin uses a unique approach through a third person point-of-view as the narrator, which allows us to experience and identify with exactly what each of the five characters felt after the storm had passed. Sometimes, she is unclear and we are unsure whose point of view the portion of the passage is coming from, such as the following: â€Å"Oh! she remembered; for in Assumption he had kissed her and kissed and kissed her; until his senses would well nigh fail, and to save her he would resort to a desperate flight. If she was not an immaculate dove in those days, she was still inviolate; a passionate creature whose very defenselessness had made her defense, against which his honor forbade him to prevail. Now – well, now – her lips seemed in a manner free to be tasted, as well as her round, white throat and her whiter breasts.† In this case, it is unclear whether this is from the perspective of Calixta or Alcee, and we hear from both of t hem in another paragraph prior. Chopin’s use this perspective allows the reader to not only gain insight and perspective from each

Border and Coastal Security Free Essays

Intellectual property theft is a broad term, which encompasses many actions directed towards intellectual property, including trademark counterfeiting, digital piracy, theft of trade secrets, copyright violation and any form of intellectual property infringement. Actual IP theft involves copyrighted works, patented inventions, and many other things. Despite their intangible nature, they can be stolen in their entirety. We will write a custom essay sample on Border and Coastal Security or any similar topic only for you Order Now Simply put: when a pirate steals a sound recording, a computer program, or the chemical composition of a pharmaceutical – he has stolen the product. The pirated product may or may not have the quality of the legitimate product, but the inventiveness, the creativity, and the research costs that make the product unique have been stolen. Technological advances have made actual theft the fastest-growing type of commercial counterfeiting. With the advent of digital technology, pirates can make actual copies of computer software, recorded music, and motion pictures with no loss of quality in successive generations of copies. In contemporary context, copyrights are suffering the greatest losses, in part because of the many new products that have been invented, CDs, DVDs, flash discs and many other products, and because of advances in the means of distribution. Although IP theft, particularly, trademark counterfeiting, was widespread in China throughout the 1990s, the trade dispute that was investigated by the U. S. Trade Representative in 1994-1996 involved works protected by copyright: sound recordings, computer software, and motion pictures. The distribution of works protected by copyright has been revolutionized by the invention of cable television, which involves satellite transmission, and by the Internet, which can involve the digital transmission of copyrighted works such as computer programs, video games, and sound recordings. Previously, the piracy of copyrighted works required the possession of a legitimate product in a fixed or tangible form (i. e. , a book or a music cassette), but these technological advances in the commercial distribution of copyrighted works have offered new avenues for product piracy in intangible form (i. e. , cable programming). Cable piracy, also called signal theft, involves the actual theft of copyrighted material. The cable pirate, who hooks up illegally, is stealing television programming, which is protected by copyright. In the United States, an estimated one in four cable viewers does so illegally; the problem is worse outside the United States, where entire countries engage in signal theft. The ultimate triumph of digital technology is the Internet, where everyone is connected to a cyber universe by computer, DSL modem or broadband. The Internet offers perhaps the ultimate avenue for a counterfeiter, who can e-mail a pirated computer program or music recording anywhere in the world, and keep his identity a secret. The adequate enforcement of IP violations is probably the most effective way to prevent infringement of intellectual property rights. Since from commercial standpoint intellectual property usually represents the core of any business, the IP violations result in enormous financial losses for the companies and threaten the existence of businesses overall. For instance, according to figures presented by the U. S. Department of Justice, companies suffered $250 Billion in IP Theft in 2004 (CypherTrust, 2005), therefore, it is evident that the further enforcement directed towards IP theft should be continued. 2) Fully discuss Executive Order 13133. How can the use or misuse of the Internet affect the economy? Executive Order 13133 attempts to create new ways to censor Internet content, establish control over Internet transactions and prevent Internet fraud. The core of the Order is embedded in three tasks put before the Working group, namely define how effective Federal regulation is in investigation and prosecution of unlawful conduct that involves the use of the Internet, what technology tools, capabilities, or legal authorities needed for effective investigation and prosecution of unlawful conduct that involves the use of the Internet, and finally and what tools and capabilities exist to educate and empower parents, teachers, and others to prevent or to minimize the risks from unlawful conduct that involves the use of the Internet. In other words, Executive Order 13133 aims to accomplish an extremely challenging task of Internet regulation. From the critical standpoint, Internet regulation is a hardly achievable mission, because unlike many other phenomena, Internet has no geographic boundaries, and thus it does not have formal geographical jurisdiction upon it. On the other hand, Internet exhibits the line of unlawful, unethical and fraudulent practices, which should be either heavily regulated or banned. It includes child pornography, illegal distribution of copyrighted materials, such as books, CDs, DVDs, Mp3s, computer software, etc and illegal credit card transactions cased by identity theft. Practically, the misuse of Internet results in significant financial losses for the national economy in several ways, namely due to numerous copyright infringement instances, fraudulent credit card transactions and losses coming from unrealized revenues. According to Forrester Research, an estimated $15 billion in E-commerce revenues for 2001 were unrealized because of consumers’ concerns about their privacy, while 61 percent of Internet users in the United States reported that they do not purchase online because of privacy concerns (Hemphill, 2001:51). Therefore, the task put for the working group in Executive Order 13133 is practically challenging, but still necessary from security, financial and ethical viewpoints. References Intellectual Property Theft Has Never Been Easier (2005). CypherTrust, Inc. Available at http://www. ciphertrust. com/resources/articles/articles/intellectual. php Retrieved on June 7, 2006 Hemphill, T. A. (2001). Identity Theft: A Cost of Business? Business and Society Review, 106 (1): 51-63 How to cite Border and Coastal Security, Papers