Masters in Public Administration - MPA / This study is an exploration of best social audit practices in public service delivery from selected countries: Lessons for the South African local government. The study is vital in that the end of apartheid ushered in new sets of challenges in the country and one of these was the need for transformation which saw the birth of the 1996 Constitution which introduced Local government in South Africa which consists of the municipalities. Local government then emerged as the sphere of government closest to the people providing basic services. This is consistent with Part B of Schedule 4 of the 1996 Constitution, which mandates municipalities the responsibility for basic services. This is also supported by the White Paper on Local Government of 1998, the Municipal Structures Act, of 1998 and the Systems Act of 2000 which all explain on the need for the municipality to deliver services, yet many residents are not being served leading to service delivery protest to ensure that service are delivered and others turning to social accountability mechanism such as social audits to improve governance and accountability. This study aims to discover knowledge of best social audit practices from selected countries, aims to describe the best social audit practices and methods of selected countries practicing social audits such as Canada, India and Kenya; outline the challenges of social audits from selected countries and discusses the significance of social audit and methods of selected countries. To achieve this goal the study employed a qualitative research approach and collected data from websites, journals, articles and information on local government in South Africa. The study is both descriptive and exploratory and does not intend to provide conclusive evidence but helps us to have a better understanding of the social audit concept. The study found that the social audit concept yielded considerable and positive results in the selected countries and led to an increase in accountability, participation and transparency, led to an improved service delivery and were effective in detecting corruption and irregularities. It also found that there were challenges relating to social audits like the lack of access to reliable information, the intensive nature of the audit process, the threatening of social auditors and the lack of cooperation within the social audit process. This study suggests that the South African local government sector, explores the social audit concept and process, learn from the challenges relating to social audits, amend its legislation to align with international standards and further strengthen legislation in order to ensure that enabling legislation exists for social audits to operate within. This research provides insights into the social audit concept and its application in selected countries as lessons for the South African local government sector.

The first cycle of quality assurance (QA) was conceptualised and developed between 2001 and 2004 as reflected in the policy documents of the Higher Education Quality Committee (HEQC). The HEQC as the national QA agency was created as the permanent sub-committee of the Council on Higher Education (CHE) to take care of the QA responsibility in 2001. The national QA agency had to operate within the divisions created in higher education under apartheid, which often created perceptions based on prejudice about the distribution of quality. The South African higher education landscape has been exposed to the first cycle of the Higher Education Quality Committee QA cycle during which conducted 34 institutional audits, accredited approximately 5000 new programmes, subjected 85 programmes to national reviews, trained approximately 550 institutional auditors and 1500 programme evaluators and conducted many workshops and training opportunities for higher education institutions (HEIs). The main aim posed by this study was to determine the response of HEIs to the recommendations in the HEQC audit reports. The sub-questions of the research are (i) What process was followed to develop the quality improvement plan? (ii) Who were the role-players in the development of the quality improvement plan? (iii) What influenced their actions in the development of the quality improvement plan? (iv) What value did the quality improvement plan development have for the institution? (v) How does the quality improvement plan fit into the comprehensive quality management system of the institution? To answer the research questions, interviews were carried out on six participants. The findings were that the primary research question has been addressed conclusively by the three institutions through the experience of participants. The responses indicate how they have embraced improvement at the respective institutions which in turn have grown as a result of the HEQC audit process. The conclusion was an in depth response to the recommendations in the audit reports, illustrating ownership of quality improvement plan processes within the institutions. From the results of the secondary research questions it is concluded that the participants’ responses provided the richness of the quality improvement plan process in the audit process. The responses reflected and confirmed the processes followed in developing the quality improvement plans and the role and influence of role- players in the quality improvement plan process. The responses reflected the value of this process and revealed how it had been incorporated into the comprehensive annual planning processes of the institutions. The study concludes that the participating institutions responded differently and effectively to the recommendations in the HEQC audit reports, with the improvement reflected in the manner and approach institutions displayed when responding to recommendations, reflecting systematic processes. Copyright / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Science, Mathematics and Technology Education / unrestricted

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are seen as backbone for economic growth because they are regarded as catalyst for entrepreneurial skills, innovation and employment. Since in Sweden approximately 99.89% of enterprises are SMEs, they take an important role in country’s economic development.        Most of the countries especially EU nations have abolished the statutory audit provision for (SMEs). The new Swedish legislation of statutory audit exemption came into effect on 1st November, 2010. In accordance with this new legislation, (SMEs) within two out of three following criteria; turnovers 3 million Swedish Kronor, balance sheet total 1.5 million Swedish Kronor and 3 total numbers of employees are exempted from statutory audit requirement. Despite the fact that audit exempted SMEs are voluntarily conducting financial statements audited.                       As per above matters, this study finds the expected benefits of audit exempted SMEs in Sweden when they go for voluntary audited financial statements. In order to attain our research findings, this study chooses to conduct qualitative research method by semi- structured interviews with respondents from SMEs. Besides that, bankers’ opinion on audited financial statements and voluntary audits are discussed in order to complement our main research finding.  When it comes to collect empirical data, we use convenient data sampling from Sweden, particularly in Umeå due to the cost and time limitations.            According to our empirical results, the expected benefits for audit exempted SMEs in Sweden voluntarily conducting their financial statements audit are as follow: Security with the audited financial information Right amount of tax paid to tax authorities Easy to get bank loan                 Better relation with creditors, investors and suppliers   In accordance with empirical results of bankers, we can confirm that bank will grant loan easily to clients who have their financial accounts audited. As a contribution of new knowledge we find that in Sweden, banks used credit scoring lending technique when it comes to grant bank loan. The interest rate determination is also relied on credit rating of companies. Companies who have good credit rating will be granted loan with lower interest rate. As for small companies who would like to get external financing from banks, the requirement criteria could describe as; audited financial statements, collaterals, business plan, owners’ grantee for loan repayment and good credit history.

Taxes are major source of public funds to finance government expenditures. Tax authorities impose different kind of taxes and employ many agents to collect taxes effectively. Some dutiful taxpayers will undoubtedly pay their tax liabilities while many others will not. The Internal Revenue Service in the United States reports that the estimate of income tax liability not collected is about 17, which translates into 345 billion for 2001. It is important to make a distinction between tax evasion and tax avoidance. The distinguishing characteristic of evasion is illegality. Whether the reason for not paying tax liability is avoidance or evasion, economic models of taxation need to be changed in the light of these realities. In this study, I analyze some of the economic problems of tax evasion/avoidance. In the first chapter, I discuss the relationship between number of tax audits, tax administration reform and tax compliance in Turkey. In recent years, many developing countries have carried out reforms in their tax administration to increase their efficiency in collecting taxes. In 2005, the tax authority in Turkey established Tax Office Directorates (T.O.D.s) in 29 provinces for the purpose of controlling the underground economy, improving taxpayer assistance, and increasing auditing efficiency. By using the panel data on province level tax returns, my analysis answers two questions. First, I examine the effect of audits on reported income and reported tax liability. By controlling for the detectibility of evasion and other socioeconomic variables, I find that audits have the same effectiveness in increasing reported income and reported tax liability. Second, I investigate the effect of establishing T.O.D.s in 29 provinces on compliance in those provinces. I find that T.O.D.s are effective at the extensive margin rather than the intensive margin. Thus, establishing T.O.D.s had no significant effect on the compliance level of existing taxpayers while it increased the number of tax returns significantly. In the second chapter, I analyze the excess burden on income tax when tax avoidance matters. I present a simple static labor supply model with endogenous asset choice. Then, I examine how tax avoidance through asset trading a ects the labor supply response and the excess burden of income tax. Furthermore, I discuss the implications of the tax policy analysis and show that a failure to account for avoidance responses may lead to errors when estimating how tax reform affects labor supply, tax revenue, and the welfare cost of taxation. Because of tax avoidance through tax arbitrage, the progressivity of a given tax system will be less than what the formal tax system implies. In the third chapter,we study the Marginal Cost of Funds in the existence of tax evasion. We develop a general equilibrium model of tax evasion, including the expected utility of taxpayers and three different revenue-raising government policies. In this rich model environment, we analytically derive the marginal cost of funds (MCF) for the alternative policy instruments. We consider two main fiscal reforms: the revision in the nonlinear tax scheme and the changes in enforcement mechanism (the audit and penalty rates). First, we derive the MCF for the tax reform and find its key determinants. The derived MCF is greater than the previous ones since it includes a "risk-bearing cost" as well as tax distortion. The reform in enforcement mechanism generates MCFs in different forms. Two more MCFs with respect to audit and penalty rates are presented. Finally, we compare these three different MCFs in numerical example and provide some policy implications. / text

Master of Science / Department of Architectural Engineering / Julia Keen / Conserving energy and minimizing utility consumption are primary focuses in educational facilities because annual budgets are often limited. Consequently, building energy audits are an effective tool to assist in evaluating existing buildings and identify methods of reducing annual energy use. Therefore, this report describes what building energy audits are, how they can be performed, and how to discover energy saving measures from the results. Specifically, the research considers physical building features and building operations and evaluates them for possible modification to reduce energy use. Proposed solutions vary from no-to-low cost options to larger capital investments. The research also analyzes building components for economic viability using the net present cost and payback period as the basis of comparison, permitting recommendations. The audit procedure and the economic analyses are presented in a manner that allows individual educational facility managers to assess their own buildings.

M.Tech. / In this age of ever-increasing competition, organisations are facing unprecedented pressure to meet the combined obligations of showing returns to shareholders, and staying ahead of the competition. To meet these obligations, organisations have become increasingly dependent on technology, as an enabler. This dependency suggests that technology projects have become strategically more important than ever for organisations; yet the success of technology projects remains questionable. Furthermore, organisations do not have simple mechanisms to allow them to quickly and accurately trace the causes of IT project management failures. One of the causes of project management failures is the inability and/or unwillingness of project managers to adhere to project management best practices adopted by their organisations. This research proposes a simple and repeatable model to help organisations determine whether they are indeed following the project management best practices which they purport to follow. The research methods consisted firstly of a wide review of relevant literature on auditing, project management, and IT governance. Secondly, empirical data was collected and analysed. Thirdly, modelling was used to develop a conceptual model for auditing IT project management. The empirical study is based on a semi-structured interview, involving ten project managers in charge of IT projects. The findings from this research confirm that project managers do not adhere to project management best practices which they purport to follow. Consequently, this dissertation concludes that IT project managers must adhere to best practices adopted by their organisations, regardless of how impractical or inconvenient that may seem; the proposed model for auditing IT project management helps them achieve just that.

M.Inf. / The research study investigates the importance of information as a resource in academic institutions. The study serves to answer questions appertaining to management of information as a resource, such as, what is information resource management? How should information as a resource be managed in academic institutions? How should information be audited? Which stages should be followed in developing information policy? The interrelationships of information as a resource, information auditing and information policy as managerial components are discussed. Information audit and information policy become the major components of management of information as a resource. Information in various enterprises is becoming increasingly recognized as a resource. The study purports to indicate that information as a resource can be managed like other traditional resources such as labour, entrepreneurship, capital and natural resources to use it for competitive advantage. The aims of information audit and information policy are to serve as fundamental development of an information managerial strategy. The information audit enables the information service to pursue the most significant strategic marketing of its information resources. The necessary breadth of information auditing techniques, such as Burk and Horton's "Infomap" are required to fulfill a wide variety of objectives. They analyze the effective methodology for auditing information resource controls and help to identify relevant and accurate information resources for the purpose of learning, teaching and research. The purpose of developing information policy is prompted by the objective of which the information enterprise would successfully like to achieve. It is more appropriate to develop a set of information policies, each of which is concerned with a specific area of operation or focussed on other topics of interest and informational value within the academic institution. At the ultimate end the University of the North is singled out as a model for the development of information policy.

This study examines what is significant for high quality of jeans, and what processes and factors affects the intrinsic quality of the jeans. Based on this, compilations of reclaim statistics was made and interviews and quality testing was conducted to see if high quality requirements is key to both produce jeans of good quality and to reduce the number of complaints.Quality management is an important part of the day-to-day business of a company and should permeate the entire organization and all processes. In order to create jeans withhigh quality, quality testing is an important part of a quality management. Quality tests are made to ensure that the products meet the demands and expectations on its properties. Quality tests also play an important role in the compilation and analysis of customer reclaims. Despite the quality and quality tests, there is a risk that dissatisfiedcustomers reclaim products they are not happy with. To relate customer claims against the quality of tests is a good way to evaluate what the problem is, or if it even is a problem.The study showed that high quality could be the solution to ensure the production of jeans with high quality. However, the problem is complex and therefore, the solution to reduce claims and high quality products to be something else or part of the solution. That goes for any company to be familiar with the underlying quality dimensions and based on that analyze where the critical points are found in their product development and manufacturing process.For the company of this study, the authors consider that the solution does not lie in raising quality requirements, but rather that the sewing should be improved and more quality control over garment measurement lists should be made. Quality tests cannot prove a lack of quality material and thus the authors consider that much of the claims are due to good will. / Program: Textilingenjörsutbildningen

Irregularidades técnicas verificadas em medidores de energia elétrica, que caracterizam fraude, são responsáveis por grande parte das perdas de energia para o setor de distribuição de energia elétrica, ocasionando, também, perda de receita para o Estado referente aos tributos não recolhidos. O custo da energia furtada é repassado a todos os consumidores sob a forma de perdas não técnicas. Este trabalho foi motivado pela necessidade de mecanismos efetivos que auxiliem no combate a fraudes em medidores de energia elétrica para, assim, reduzir perdas no setor. Para isso, propõe-se um modelo de sistematização do reconhecimento de irregularidades que caracterizam fraude em medidores de energia elétrica, com a emissão de relatórios periciais. A partir dessa sistematização, busca-se a redução das perdas não técnicas de energia mediante o fortalecimento dos mecanismos de punição de fraudadores. Seu desenvolvimento foi estruturado por meio da automação de informações aplicada à padronização de serviços de perícia técnica, com foco na determinação do erro de medição e na inspeção técnica funcional dos medidores. A sistematização proposta foi baseada em um banco de dados hierarquicamente padronizado e em informações de verificações metrológicas que garantam a confiabilidade dos resultados. O modelo proposto foi testado em amostras de medidores fraudados fornecidas por concessionárias distribuidoras de energia elétrica da região sul do Brasil. Como principal resultado, destaca-se o REPEM, software que sistematiza o serviço de perícia técnica aplicada a medidores de energia elétrica e que possibilita a produção de relatórios periciais. A partir da análise dos medidores verificados com o uso do REPEM, foi possível o estabelecimento da capacidade de produção de relatórios periciais e o conhecimento dos valores de perdas ocasionadas pelas irregularidades pesquisadas. / Technical irregularities found in electrical power meters due to tampering, which are classified as fraud, are responsible for the most part of the energy loss experienced in the sector of electrical power distribution. These frauds also cause revenue losses to the society due to tax evasion. The cost of energy theft is shared with all consumers in the form of nontechnical losses. This work suits that context, by means of combating fraud in electric power meters in order to reduce losses due to the strengthening of effective punishment of cheaters. For that is proposed a systematization model of the process for verification of irregularities in electric power meters and the respective issuance of audit reports. Its development is based on the automation of information gathering applied to the standardization of such audits services, therefore focusing on the determination of the measurement error and on the technical audit of meters. The proposed systematization is based on a standardized database which were hierarchically arranged and also from information obtained from metrological calibration audits, thus ensuring the reliability of the results obtained. The proposed model was tested in samples of the power meters tampered provided by the electrical distribution companies in southern Brazil. A main outcome of this research is REPEM, a custom built software that organizes the procedures of technical audit in a legally binding basis as applied to power meters. From the results of analysis conducted on sample power meters audited by REPEM, it was possible to settle the software's report generation functions and the values of the losses arising from the irregularities investigated.

[pt] O objetivo dessa pesquisa é identificar fatores que influenciem na determinação de gastos com auditoria e consultoria por parte das empresas abertas no mercado brasileiro. A principal motivação do presente estudo foi a falta de pesquisas sobre gastos com auditoria e consultoria no Brasil, enquanto que esse assunto já vem sendo explorado há anos em outros países. Cabe ressaltar que essa escassez de dados no Brasil é devido ao fato de que, só a partir de 2009, tornou-se obrigatória a divulgação das quantias despendidas com serviços de auditoria e consultoria de forma separada. A divulgação desses dados possibilita a análise dos determinantes dos valores pagos pelas empresas por tais serviços. Os resultados indicam que as despesas de auditoria estão positivamente relacionadas com o tamanho da companhia, price-to-book, qualidade da governança corporativa e com o fato de a empresa de auditoria ser uma Big Four e negativamente relacionadas com a alavancagem da firma. Já quanto aos gastos de consultoria, existe uma relação positiva com o tamanho da empresa e negativa com a presença estatal no controle da companhia contratante dos serviços. / [en] The objective of the present study is to identify factors that have an impact on the determination of audit and non-audit fees paid by Brazilian publicly traded companies. The main motivation of the present study was the lack of research in Brazil about audit fees and non-audit fees, while the subject has been discussed for many years in other countries. It is important to highlight that this shortage of research is due to the fact that, only in 2009, it become mandatory the disclosure of money spent in each type of service. Such transparency allows the analysis of the determinants of the values paid by enterprises for these services. The results indicate that the audit fees are positively related to firm size, price-to-book, corporate governance quality and the fact that the auditor is a Big Four, and negatively related to leverage. In terms of non-audit fees, there is a positive relation with firm size and they are lower in State-owned firms.