The South African property process is cumbersome, tedious, and complex mainly since it is a manual paper-based system that involves numerous activities of many disparate firms and organisations in the private sector as well as business processes of regulatory agencies, public sectors departments and other institutions. Although much effort had been made by private organisations to automate pockets of the process, the integration efforts are still founded in paper documents. The purpose of this study was to investigate the conveyancing end-to-end process in South Africa in order to develop a conceptual framework that could be used to eliminate paper and dematerialise the land registration process. The study was guided by the following research question: How can the end-to-end property transfer process be integrated among the different role players to dematerialise property transfers? Seated in the interpretative paradigm, an exploratory study was undertaken. The study followed a multidisciplinary approach which incorporated aspects of records management, supply chain management, land administration management, information technology and payment systems. Nineteen in-depth, semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with major organisations and societies (i.e. stakeholders) involved in property exchanges in South Africa. These included the South African Reserve Bank, The South African Deeds Registry, National Treasury, The Law Society of South Africa, The Surveyor General and various vendors which operate within the property sphere. These interviews were analysed using content analysis, and documentary evidence were used to triangulate the data collected. The study revealed that private organisations and banks are more ready to embrace dematerialisation than governmental institutions. The main findings of the study were that a need existed for the integration of information and data from the onset of the property application, dematerialisation in addition to digitisation should be incorporated into e-DRS, there is a need for a centralised information sharing capability, same-day, irrevocable payments must be implemented and biometric information can be used to validate parties involved in each transaction. The findings were used to develop a framework for a dematerialised electronic deeds registration in South Africa, which were further generalised for use in other industries. It is recommended that key supply chain partners are integrated into a land administration system that is hosted by the deeds office. This study is of value to all organisations involved in the property land management administration processes, both in a private and governmental capacity, as well as indigenous tribunals. Recommendations for future studies were made. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2017. / Information Science / PhD / Unrestricted

The purpose of this thesis is to explore how to enable forward traceability of textile and fashion products at product level, using BC based traceability solutions. The study finds that within TC industry, forward traceability using available technologies (RFIDs, NFCs, QR codes ) is technically possible, however there could be impending regulatory, legal, technical implications of using these technologies. These implications may result in a slew of added compliance requirements, risk assessments and resources allocations from brands and retailers. As a result, this study uncovered that using QR codes with BC technology offers a suitable forward traceability solution which has the potential to set off most of the implications explored during this study. Moreover, to attain forward traceability at product levels, a complete mechanism involving readiness from customers, suppliers and all other stake holders is required. All these stake holders need to be connected to the central BC network, where data is protected and made tamper proof. Lastly, forward tracing at product levels is a futuristic concept, as TC industry is still majorly focused on the backward traceability, however this study finds that forward traceability at product levels may pave its way as a beneficial component of overall sustainability.

The monetary policies of states and systems built upon them do not naturally allow transactions of a very small value, as the transaction costs exceeds the actual value of the transaction. These types of transactions are called micropayments. This is problematic as it removes the possibility to monetize content that has a valuation that is so low that the costs of the transaction exceeds the value of the content. In this thesis we aim to create a system that allows micropayments to monetize low value content. We do so by developing a design theory based on Gregor and Jones conceptual model for design theories within Information Systems research. The system that we develop will use the end users computational power to generate a value, by running a cryptocurrency miner. We present the background knowledge required to fully understand the presented design theory. Within the design theory, we present a theoretical framework to base systems on that enables micropayments through cryptocurrency mining. We also present a developed proof of work prototype that proves the validity of the theoretical framework. Lastly we discuss our design theory. We conclude that the design theory enables transactions of a very low value, such as 0,0001 \$ cents. Transactions of such small value is not possible with systems built upon states monetary policies. We also conclude that the proposed design theory can be further developed to function independently of cryptocurrency mining. Instead the value for the transaction could be generated through solving complicated problems if institutions are willing to pay for computational power to solve them.