Developing a Nuclear Material Control and Accounting System in Russia

When considering the requirements for a global nuclear material accounting system, Russia’s experience in developing its domestic system deserves special attention for four reasons: First, Russia’s nuclear complex includes all of the types of nuclear facilities and nuclear material handling procedures that would be subject to a global system. Second, Russia has significant experience transitioning from an outdated system to a modern one. Third, Russia has operated its nuclear complex in a financially constrained environment and has relied in part on international assistance. Finally, the Russian nuclear complex is managed by many agencies with their own agendas, priorities, and visions of nuclear material accounting. This experience with an interagency environment may be a model for other countries. As a major nuclear power—in both military and civilian applications—Russia possesses all possible types of nuclear facilities, including all types of nuclear reactors, a complete range of fuel cycle facilities, storage sites, and several types of nuclear ships. Russia also possesses a wide variety of nuclear materials, including all types of uranium and various isotopic compositions of plutonium. These materials exist in both items and bulk accounting forms, as well is in a number of physical forms including metals, oxides, solutions, and salts. These materials are subject to a broad range of operations–at both the industrial scale and in smaller quantities for research purposes. Russia is also heavily involved in the domestic and international trade of nuclear materials. This results in a significant volume of nuclear materials transport—to include changes in ownership and in control and accounting requirements and systems. Russia began transitioning from its Soviet-era nuclear material accounting systems in the early 1990s. The Soviet Union was home to a comprehensive nuclear industry and nuclear materials accounting system. Thus, a modern system based on new standards had to be introduced into an operating nuclear complex. This process has confronted many challenges, in part because of the major cultural change that it required. After nearly 20 years of evolving the Russian system, some important issues remain unresolved

A New Institutional Analysis of IFRS Adoption in Egypt: A Case Study of Loosely Coupled Rules and Routines

This paper examines the symbolic use of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) in an Egyptian state-owned company (AQF Co.) that is partially privatised by drawing on new institutional sociology and its extensions. It explains how the ceremonial use of IFRS is shaped by the interplay between institutionalised accounting practices, conflicting institutions, power relations and the use of IT to institutionalizing accounting rules and routines. The research methodology is based on using an intensive case study. Data were collected from multiple sources, including unstructured and semi-structured interviews, direct and participative observations, discussions and documentary analysis. The findings revealed that the company faced conflicting institutional demands from outside. The Central Agency for Accountancy required the company to use the Uniform Accounting System (as a state-owned enterprise) and The Egyptian Capital Market Authority required the company to use IFRS (as a partially private sector company registered in the stock exchange). To meet these conflicting institutional demands, the company adopted loosely coupled accounting rules and routines and IT was used to institutionalizing existing Uniform Accounting System and preserving the status quo

Experiences in Integrated Multi-Domain Service Management

Increased competition, complex service provision chains and integrated service offerings require effective techniques for the rapid integration of telecommunications services and management systems over multiple organisational domains. This paper presents some of the results of practical development work in this area, detailing the technologies and standards used, the architectural approach taken and the application of this approach to specific services. This work covers the integration of multimedia services, broadband networks, service management and network management, though the detailed examples given focus specifically on the integration of services and service management

A Model-Based Approach for the Management of Electronic Invoices

The globalized market pushes companies to expand their business boundaries to a whole new level. In order to efficiently support this environment, business transactions must be executed over the Internet. However, there are several factors complicating this process, such as the current state of electronic invoices. Electronic invoice adoption is not widespread because of the current format fragmentation originated by national regulations. In this paper we present an approach based on Model-Driven Engineering techniques and abstractions for supporting the core functions of invoice management systems. We compare our solution with the traditional implementations and try to analyze the advantages MDE can bring to this specific domain