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My thesis addresses to matters of rising connectedness of Accounting and Information Technologies. It describes history of forms and techniques used in Accounting and also the possibilities and trends of Applied Informatics used nowadays in this field. The text accents to efforts of making the process of accounting more effective by reducing the cost, improving the quality and by shortening the time it can be done. The part of my thesis also mentions the level of regulation of the techniques used for processing the accounting from the point of view of national norms and also of International standards.

E-government, electronic Public Administration, has led to streamlined work processes within and between government departments. As theories of administration and management seek to improve processes, electronic administration seeks to improve electronic processes in an effort to provide efficient services. The unique contribution of this study on Public Administration and the related e-government initiatives of the Government Employees Pension Fund is that none of this research has been documented before. Whilst e-government is not new, its application to the Government Employees Pension Fund is novel. E-government espouses integrated partnerships between governments and e-citizens by creating an understanding of electronic relationships between and within organisations. The thesis considers electronic Public Administrative service delivery in the Government Employees Pension Fund as it relates to civil pensions administration. Successful e-government needs a critical mass of users that is central to ensuring its sustainable and successful utilisation. If a critical mass of users is not ensured then e-government initiatives will not be successful. Attempts by the Government Employees Pension Fund to develop a customer relationship management approach are assessed. Sustainable and successful e-service delivery is about providing multi-nodal access to clients. An interactive web site, amongst others, will allow clients to access services remotely. Seamless government is developed around customers’ needs and is outward looking since it provides a single access point for all services offered by government. Gaining access to information and communications technologies is a challenge that many face, hence the digital divide is a stymieing factor in providing seamless, successful e-government services. Not all e-government initiatives are successful. Information and communications technology initiatives are not always implemented according to planned timelines and budgets. The case of the Government Employees Pension Fund proved to be no different given that not all the e-government initiatives embarked upon were successful. / Thesis (PhD (Public Affairs))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / School of Public Management and Administration (SPMA) / unrestricted

In the context of an international carriage of goods by sea contract, the consignees and endorsees are the two important categories of the parties whom their rights and liabilities have not been legislated for in any international carriage of goods by sea convention until the adoption of the Rotterdam Rules. The truth is that, in contrast to the rights and the correlative liabilities and obligations of the shippers and carriers, the rights and liabilities of the consignees and endorsees have always been dealt with by the domestic and national laws. However, the Rotterdam Rules, with the goals of promoting legal certainty, improving the efficiency of international carriage of goods and harmonization and modernization of the carriage rules, for the first time at an international level, have attempted to regulate the provisions governing the rights and liabilities of the latter parties. Thus, the application of the Rotterdam Rules, in case they gain the force of law, will be broader than any other international maritime convention. Therefore, this has compelled the necessity of carrying out a profound and detailed critical analysis of the new, and somewhat innovative, regulations, since the impact of the application of the Convention on the existing carriage of goods by sea rules, both nationally and internationally will be crucially significant. The UK as one of the major actors of the maritime industry has a long-established set of rules particularly in the field of rights and liabilities of the parties, both in the common law and statutory senses, governing the carriage of goods by sea affairs for centuries. This thesis aims to evaluate the relevant provisions of the Rotterdam Rules by way of comparison with their corresponding rules of the English law in order to find out whether these new sets of regulations can establish a reliable source of reference for the consignees and endorsees who wish to ascertain their rights and become aware of their obligations and liabilities. In other words, the main objective of this study is to examine whether the Rotterdam Rules clearly define and specify the rights and liabilities of the consignees and endorsees to a contract of carriage of goods by sea. Further, it is going to investigate whether the Convention succeed in achieving its goals with respect to the rights and liabilities of these parties. Also, ratification of the Rotterdam Rules is believed to have a significant impact on the English maritime law and therefore, the question whether it is reasonable for the UK to ratify the Convention will be answered in this research. It is suggested that the findings of this thesis in addition to the solutions proposed to solve the difficulties, ambiguity and complexity of the existing rules, will be of assist to the UK authorities as well as the legislative bodies in other jurisdictions in order to obtain a more effective decision on the adoption of the Rotterdam Rules. This study ends with illustrating an alarming vision of the future of maritime law which will be largely affected by the evolution of smart technologies in the shipping industry.

Digitalization has been reshaping the media landscape in recent years, often conveying an implicit promise of becoming less dependent on physical resources. At the same time, the current understanding of digital reading goes beyond dedicated e-readers or definable digital media products such as magazines or newspapers. In fact, it must be perceived as a function or service obtained from existing and ever-expanding “digital ecosystems”. There is furthermore a clear and unambiguous trend that relatively small and mobile devices are on the rise for consuming all kinds of media. Next to potentially enabling environmental gains compared to traditional paper-based media consumption, there are agreeing indications of a shift from overall electricity consumption dominated by end-user devices towards an increasing importance of less tangible data transmission networks and data centers. Therefore, a bottom-up analysis is deemed to compliment more general top-down observations and assessments. To this end, an elaborated reference scenario is proposed as to bridge the mere analytical method of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) with behavioral aspects based on German market observations and surveys. The prevailing aim of this study is to detect environmental hot-spots and absolute impacts linked to the service of accessing text-based content via connected electronic devices. In doing so, this study takes the position that both types of media consumption – digital and paper-based - are incommensurable due to the very evident differences in provided functions, markets, and industries. Therefore, an attributional and stand-alone LCA is considered appropriate. The perceived current situation (reference scenario) evolves around substantiated estimates and assumptions concerning production of devices, use of devices as well as operation of essential data transmission network components. Looking at potential hot-spots, electricity consumption linked to data transmission could be a decisive factor for the environmental performance of digital reading. However, the actual importance of data transmission infrastructures depends on both methodological choices and a range of parameters or trends. For instance, the relative importance is shifted when more recent estimates of electricity intensities are incorporated. Depending on actual and localized electricity intensity of data transmission, the amount of data required to provide an expected function may inhibit environmental potentials of digital media consumption. Postulating average annual consumption of digital contents and assuming actual substitution of equivalent printed media products, about 50 kg CO2-equivalents. could potentially be avoided. This theoretical potential is based on the calculated global warming potential (GWP) associated with digital reading according to the reference scenario which amounts to about 29 kg CO2-equivalents. Therefore, this study supports findings from previous studies that indicated environmental benefits of digital reading. Compared to other functions or services (e.g. video/music streaming, podcasts, audio books) embedded in the same “digital ecosystems”, reading requires little amount of data. If allocation of upstream effects is based on time, the relative importance of data transmission networks could be gauged and compared by adopting a “data-to-service time” ratio. Taking the reference scenario as a starting point, a perceivable ratio for digital reading is 0.015 GB/h, including systemic inefficiencies. In contrast, streaming of high-definition video contents can easily consume 3 GB/h, a 200-fold increase. The audience of this study comprises providers of digital reading services and/or other media services as well as end-users as integral element in “digital ecosystems”. Besides, the report proposes a conceptual assessment framework which can be applied to other contemporary digital services or functions. / De senaste åren har digitalisering omformat medielandskapet, med ett implicit löfte om att minska beroendet av fysiska resurser. Dessutom finns det tydliga trender som pekar mot en ökad användning av små, mobila enheter för att konsumera alla sorters media. En uppdaterad bottom-up analys bedöms komplettera mer generella observationer och bedömningar. Om man antar årliga genomsnittliga konsumtionsmönster i Tyskland, så är tillverkningen av elektroniska slutanvändarenheter – oavsett om de är till för enskilda ändamål (e-läsare) eller om de är multifunktionella (smartphone, surfplatta) – onekligen en miljömässigt kritisk punkt för digitalt läsande. Elförbrukningen, som sker i samband med dataöverföringen, kan också vara en avgörande faktor för den övergripande miljöpåverkan av digital läsning. Dock beror den faktiska påverkan av dataöverförningsinfrastrukturer dels på metodologiska val men även på ett antal andra parametrar och trender. Genom att undersöka indikatorn för global uppvärmning kan denna studie konstatera att resultaten stödjer tidigare forskning, som redan pekar på de miljömässiga vinsterna av digitalt läsande. Målgruppen för denna studie innefattar både distributörer av digitala läs-tjänster och/eller andra media tjänster såväl som slutanvändare som ett integrerat element i ”digitala ekosystem”.