Operating as a commercial company since October 1991, Telkom has grown into the largest communications services provider in Africa based on operating revenue and assets. The Group, consisting of the fixed-line company Telkom and a 50 per cent shareholding in mobile operator Vodacom. Telkom has changed its vision to the following: “To be a leading customer and employee centric ICT solutions service provider”. The company has been retrenching staff since 1999 and the staff numbers have reduced significantly from approximately 65 000 people to 25 575 people in 2006. The focus has been on increasing shareholder value and the staff feel that their value has not been recognised. The research paper focused on the extent that employees engaged to build a performance culture in Telkom’s NCC division. The following research methodology was followed: - A literature survey to determine factors or behaviours that will enhance employee engagement in building a performance culture and what Telkom NCC can do to build the workplace that will foster higher levels of employee engagement. - A survey was conducted to determine what the engagement levels of employees are at Telkom NCC, what stops the employees from doing their best and what Telkom NCC division can do to show they care and value their staff as according to their employees by means of a questionnaire. - The findings from the literature study and empirical study would be used to determine to what extent are employees engaged to build a performance culture in Telkom’s NCC division. A self administered questionnaire was used to collect the data required for this research. In conclusion it was said that employee engagement is a partnership between the company and the employees where everyone works together to achieve the business objectives of the company and the personal aspirations of employees. The organization has the responsibility to create the conditions for this to happen (Understanding Employee Engagement, 2004: 2). It was recommended that in order for NCC to enhance their employees attitudes toward the promoters’ team especially in terms of pride, strong attachment, feeling part of the family and motivating employees to do well promoters must concentrate on building relationships with their teams and individual members of the team. Employees must also be given decision making power for implementing the idea. NCC should educate their leaders on the value of recognition and the best way to go about it. In order for employees to grow and be promoted into higher positions, NCC must consider that if positions become available that they first be advertised in the NCC division before it be made available to the rest of the company.

The pharmaceutical industry is one of the fastest growing and developing industries in the world today. With the ever advancing technology and manufacturing techniques, quality assurance has become the focus of regulatory bodies all over the world. The implementation of quality management systems (QMS) that ensures that quality is built into every step of the design and manufacturing process has been the focus of many pharmaceutical companies. With the implementation of quality systems, employee’s perception of those systems and overall quality standards of the organisation is very important in establishing the quality culture of the organisation. To benefit from sustainable quality systems the organisations must ensure that employees understand the importance of the systems and that employee’s take personal responsibility for ensuring that their functions are performed correctly the first time. FKMSA has invested in a QMS that seeks to integrate all quality issues. The quality system includes documentation, deviations, corrective and preventative action (CAPA), change controls and quality risk management (QRM) in the entire facility. This system is administered by the quality control department, but each department takes ownership for their quality issues with support and guidance from the quality unit. FKMSA also firmly believes that quality cannot merely rely on the quality control test results; every step of the production process has a quality aspect built in to ensure that quality standards are adhered to. Every employee is trained, assessed and deemed competent before they can perform their duties; this is to ensure that human errors are kept to a minimum. Employee’s perception of quality is an integral part of quality assurance and it is important for the organisation to know what the employees believe to be the company’s standards of quality.

Data quality is an important aspect of an organisation’s strategies for supporting decision makers in reaching the best decisions possible and consequently attaining the organisation’s objectives. In the case of public organisations, decisions ultimately concern the public and hence further diligence is required to make sure that these decisions do, for instance, preserve economic resources, maintain public health, and provide national security. The decision making process requires a wealth of information in order to achieve efficient results. Public organisations typically acquire great amounts of data generated by public services. However, the vast amount of data stored in public organisations’ databases may be one of the main reasons for inefficient decisions made by public organisations. Processing vast amounts of data and extracting accurate information are not easy tasks. Although technology helps in this respect, for example, the use of decision support systems, it is not sufficient for improving decisions to a significant level of assurance. The research proposed using data mining to improve results obtained by decision support systems. However, more considerations are needed than the mere technological aspects. The research argues that a complete data quality framework is needed in order to improve data quality and consequently the decision making process in public organisations. A series of surveys conducted in seven public organisations in Abu Dhabi Emirate of the United Arab Emirates contributed to the design of a data quality framework. The framework comprises elements found necessary to attain the quality of data reaching decision makers. The framework comprises seven elements ranging from technical to human-based found important to attain data quality in public organisations taking Abu Dhabi public organisations as the case. The interaction and integration of these elements contributes to the quality of data reaching decision makers and hence to the efficiency of decisions made by public organisations. The framework suggests that public organisations may need to adopt a methodological basis to support the decision making process. This includes more training courses and supportive bodies of the organisational units, such as decision support centres, information security and strategic management. The framework also underscores the importance of acknowledging human and cultural factors involved in the decision making process. Such factors have implications for how training and raising awareness are implemented to lead to effective methods of system development.

In this dissertation we seek to identify ways in which the systems development life cycle (SDLC) can be augmented with improved software engineering practices to measurably address security concerns that have arisen relating to security vulnerability defects in software. By proposing a general model for identifying potential vulnerabilities (weaknesses) and using runtime monitoring for verifying their reachability and exploitability during development and testing reduces security risk in delivered products. We propose a form of contract for our monitoring framework that is used to specify the environmental and system security conditions necessary for the generation of probes that monitor security assertions during runtime to verify suspected vulnerabilities. Our assertion-based security monitoring framework, based on contracts and probes, known as the Contract-Based Security Assertion Monitoring Framework (CB_SAMF) can be employed for verifying and reacting to suspected vulnerabilities in the application and kernel layers of the Linux operating system. Our methodology for integrating CB_SAMF into SDLC during development and testing to verify suspected vulnerabilities reduces the human effort by allowing developers to focus on fixing verified vulnerabilities. Metrics intended for the weighting, prioritizing, establishing confidence, and detectability of potential vulnerability categories are also introduced. These metrics and weighting approaches identify deficiencies in security assurance programs/products and also help focus resources towards a class of suspected vulnerabilities, or a detection method, which may presently be outside of the requirements and priorities of the system. Our empirical evaluation demonstrates the effectiveness of using contracts to verify exploitability of suspected vulnerabilities across five input validation related vulnerability types, combining our contracts with existing static analysis detection mechanisms, and measurably improving security assurance processes/products used in an enhanced SDLC. As a result of this evaluation we introduced two new security assurance test suites, through collaborations with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), replacing existing test suites. The new and revised test cases provide numerous improvements to consistency, accuracy, and preciseness along with enhanced test case metadata to aid researchers using the Software Assurance Reference Dataset (SARD). / Graduate

A business process is a defined collection of linked structured tasks, activities, and decisions performed together to produce a desired set of results in order to achieve business goals on behalf of the organization. Companies are increasingly moving their business processes online using Business Process Management (BPM) tools and technologies. With BPM, online business processes are defined by an explicit business process model that flexibly combines and orchestrates forms delivered through a web browser to integrate tasks performed by people, and web services accessible through Internet protocols to integrate tasks performed by software. Often the approach to quality assurance for online business processes is similar to what would be done with any other web application. This is insufficient since it only provides rudimentary verification of single user behavior whereas the orchestration of tasks across many users and software systems can be quite complex. As well, a simple web application testing approach does not leverage the defined model for a business process to ensure consistency, completeness and enable automation. Nor will such an approach validate that a business process is contributing towards the achievement of business goals. A more systematic approach is required. This thesis proposes a quality assurance framework to provide a repeatable, systematic, cost-efficient approach to quality assurance for BPM. A prototype framework was implemented and evaluated using two case studies, including one case study that was developed in collaboration with a local hospital to support a business process for cancer care assessment.

The purpose of this study was to describe critical care nurses' perceptions of their experiences with nursing quality assurance activities. Using an exploratory, descriptive design, data were collected in a survey, utilizing a self-administered questionnaire. A convenience sample of critical care nurses, who are members of the Canadian Association of Critical Care Nurses, was used. The results showed that these particular nurses knew what comprised the components of a nursing quality assurance program, however, their participation in these activities was low. In addition, the majority identified that the primary purpose of nursing quality assurance activities was to meet the accreditation requirements of the hospital. Finally, the results also identified that all of this particular group of nurses felt that nursing quality assurance activities involved them, and the majority felt that these activities were part of their professional responsibilities. / Applied Science, Faculty of / Nursing, School of / Graduate

This thesis deals with the quality assurance of software developed within a small business and also it covers software testing as a means for checking the quality of software. The goal of this thesis is to reveal weaknesses in quality assurance of software developed with particular small business and weaknesses in quality of developed software itself. The real benefit of this thesis is to provide solution to discovered weaknesses by defining appropriate activities and tools of software quality assurance. The main purpose of these suggested activities is to improve the product quality to fulfill the expectations of users and developers. At first, it is necessary to determine the factors influencing the quality of the software and the causes leading to a decline in quality. This issue, together with the theoretical bases of software quality assurance is covered in the first part of thesis. The current state of quality assurance in the company is analyzed in the second part of the thesis. Appropriate measures, activities and tools that will help improve the software quality, are recommended based on the results of this analysis in the final section of this thesis.

Submitted by Fabio Sobreira Campos da Costa (fabio.sobreira@ufpe.br) on 2017-07-17T16:14:10Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 811 bytes, checksum: e39d27027a6cc9cb039ad269a5db8e34 (MD5) Dissertação_Camila F. Wanderley de C. B. Moraes_versão Final.pdf: 2535411 bytes, checksum: d1c049b373557622907f11095871b5d0 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-07-17T16:14:11Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 811 bytes, checksum: e39d27027a6cc9cb039ad269a5db8e34 (MD5) Dissertação_Camila F. Wanderley de C. B. Moraes_versão Final.pdf: 2535411 bytes, checksum: d1c049b373557622907f11095871b5d0 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-02-27 / O crescimento da energia eólica no Mundo vem fomentando a geração de uma grande quantidade de dados observacionais oriundos de torres anemométricas. Tais dados são imprescindíveis a várias aplicações, entre as quais se destacam: a análise de viabilidade com respeito à implantação de centrais eólicas (na fase de prospecção) e avaliação do desempenho dos aerogeradores (na fase de operação da central eólica). Por exemplo, os dados observacionais do vento em superfície são empregados para a parametrização, calibração e validação dos modelos utilizados na avaliação do recurso eólico. Portanto, a análise de viabilidade para implantação de centrais eólicas é fortemente dependente da qualidade dos dados observacionais. Porém, apesar da importância de tais dados, são ainda extremamente escassas as publicações sobre garantia e controle de qualidade aplicados a dados anemométricos. De maneira a tentar mitigar esta lacuna do setor eólico, propõe-se, neste trabalho, um procedimento objetivo (automático) para a garantia da qualidade que permita o tratamento de quantidades massivas de dados observacionais, quantidades para as quais se tem como inviável o emprego de procedimentos subjetivos (baseados, por exemplo, no “olho treinado” de um meteorologista) ou mesmo semiobjetivos (semiautomáticos). O procedimento objetivo proposto está baseado em uma sequência de testes organizados em duas grandes classes: testes globais (que avaliam a qualidade de uma série temporal como um todo) e testes locais (que avaliam a qualidade de conjuntos de dados e mesmo dados individuais), sendo 3 as principais inovações deste trabalho: a introdução de uma análise paramétrica objetiva no teste do limite, a realização de um teste objetivo de consistência espacial para a verificação de dados individuais e (a mais relevante) a aplicação de um método objetivo para inferir os parâmetros dos testes. O procedimento objetivo proposto para a garantia da qualidade foi experimentado sobre os dados observacionais de velocidade média do vento (integrados em 10 min) oriundos de quatro torres anemométricas localizadas no litoral do Rio Grande do Norte. Tanto o procedimento como os resultados são aqui apresentados e discutidos. / The world wind power growth has been responsible for the generation of a huge amount of observational data from anemometrical masts. Such data are essential to several applications, being highlighted some of them: the feasibility analysis with respect to the deployment of wind farms (in the exploration phase) and the performance evaluation of wind turbines (during the wind farms operation phase). For example, surface wind observational data are used for parameterization, calibration and validation of models used for the wind resource assessment. Therefore, the feasibility analysis concerning the installation of wind farms is strongly dependent on the observational data quality. However, despite the importance of such data, publications on quality assurance and quality control applied to observational wind data are extremely scarce. In order to try to mitigate this gap in the wind sector, this work aims to establish an objective (automatic) procedure for quality assurance which addresses the treatment of a massive amount of observational data considering that for such amount it is unfeasible the employment of subjective procedures (for example, based on the "trained eye" of a meteorologist) or even a semi-objective (semi-automatic) procedure. The proposed objective procedure is based on a sequence of tests organized into two classes: the global tests (which evaluate the quality of a time series as a whole) and the local tests (which evaluate the quality of data clusters and even individual data), being the main innovations the addition of a parametric analysis in the range test, the addition of an objective spatial consistency test for verifying individual data and the (most important) the employment of an objective method to infer parameters of the tests. The proposed objective procedure for quality assurance was tested on 10 min-averaged wind speed observational data from four anemometrical masts located in the coastal region of the state of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil. Both the procedures and the results are presented here.

This essay is about how I explore and above all reflect on my future assignment as a teacher. The purpose of the text is to examine what is in the governing document for the after-school center and thus the assignment for an after-school center teacher. The primary questions that are asked is what type of conditions are important for an after-school center teacher, in order for the after-school center teacher to be able to comply with the National Agency for Education's intention with chapter 4 in the curriculum. As a research method, I look at previous research in the subject and take in perspectives from professional role, profession and leadership. I will link to theory about the pedagogical leadership and who is responsible for quality assurance of the leisure center. The results of the survey will show the complexand difficult task that an after-school teacher has with collaboration in school and the leisure pedagogical task in the after-school center. An assignment that currently is hard to navigate and may be interpreted differently by an after-school teacher or principal in which the conditions are paramount.

The advancement in technology has revolutionized the role of software in recent years. Software usage is practically found in all areas of the industry and has become a prime factor in the overall working of the companies. Simultaneously with an increase in the utilization of software, the software quality assurance parameters have become more crucial and complex. Currently the quality measurement approaches, standards, and models that are applied in the software industry are extremely divergent. Many a time the correct approach will wind up to be a combination of di erent concepts and techniques from di erent software assurance approaches [1]. Thus, having a platform that provides a single workspace for incorporating multiple software quality assurance approaches will ease the overall software quality process. In this thesis we have proposed a theoretical framework for distributed software quality assurance, which will be able to continuously monitor a source code repository; create a snapshot of the system for a given commit (both past and present); the snapshot can be used to create a multi-granular blockchain of the system and its metrics (i.e.,metadata) which we believe will let the tool developers and vendors participate continuously in assuring quality and security of systems and in the process be accessible when required while being rewarded for their services.