Implementing public sector accruals in OECD member states: Major issues and challenges

Drawing on extended new institutional theory, this paper has striven to make heard the voices of accountants, budget officers, and policy makers involved in implementing public sector accruals in different OECD member states. Such voices of the organisational actors and the challenges that they are encountering in the process of implementing accrual accounting and budgeting in their specific settings are missing in the existing public sector accruals literature. The empirical findings of the study demonstrate that the political and technical ambiguities in implementing public sector accruals across countries are much broader than outlined in the academic work and presented in the reports and studies of the proponents. Such challenges, when cascaded down to the organisational level, have brought about vast uncertainty and confusion amongst most of the budget and treasury officers who deal with public sector accruals in their specific jurisdictions, threatening the legitimacy at the organisational level. More communication and collaboration amongst the actors at institutional, organisational-field and organisational levels are therefore needed to build a coherent body of knowledge in facilitating public sector accruals reforms across countries

Neuropeptide changes and neuroactive amino acids in CSF from humans and sheep with neuronal ceroid lipofuscinoses (NCLs, Batten disease).

Item does not contain fulltextAnomalies in neuropeptides and neuroactive amino acids have been postulated to play a role in neurodegeneration in a variety of diseases including the inherited neuronal ceroid lipofuscinoses (NCLs, Batten disease). These are often indicated by concentration changes in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). Here we compare CSF neuropeptide concentrations in patients with the classical juvenile CLN3 form of NCL and the classical late infantile CLN2 form with neuropeptide and neuroactive amino acid concentrations in CSF from sheep with the late infantile variant CLN6 form. A marked disease related increase in CSF concentrations of neuron specific enolase and tau protein was noted in the juvenile CLN3 patients but this was not observed in an advanced CLN2 patient nor CLN6 affected sheep. No changes were noted in S-100b, GFAP or MBP in patients or of S-100b, GFAP or IGF-1 in affected sheep. There were no disease related changes in CSF concentrations of the neuroactive amino acids, aspartate, glutamate, serine, glutamine, glycine, taurine and GABA in these sheep. The changes observed in the CLN3 patients may be progressive markers of neurodegeneration, or of underlying metabolic changes perhaps associated with CLN3 specific changes in neuroactive amino acids, as have been postulated. The lack of changes in the CLN2 and CLN6 subjects indicate that these changes are not shared by the CLN2 or CLN6 forms and changes in CSF concentrations of these compounds are unreliable as biomarkers of neurodegeneration in the NCLs in general