Definition Of Voting System Information Technology Essay

Definition Of Voting System Information Technology Essay Using an electronic voting system has become more and more popular worldwide and is replacing traditional paper voting methods. However, with wider adoption it has been increasingly criticized for not being secure enough and has had some controversy over the fact that the voters need to put their trust in a system they have no idea how works and is often closed black box device. However, although users demand a transparent and secure voting system, they also demand fast and reliable results, and that is something that only an electronic voting system can provide. In the last decade many organizations and governments have started electronic voting. Some companies have also specialized in electronic voting systems, and some of them have had a lot of criticism19 2 Definition of voting system a voting system is not just the equipment necessary to cast a vote. the voting system standards (VSS) has two definitions, addressing the physical and functional components of a voting system. the physical aspect defines a voting system as comprising all the hardware and software, procedures, manuals, and specifications . http://homepages.nyu.edu/~tsc223/ElectronicVoting.pdf Voting system means, a method of casting and processing votes that functions wholly or partly by use of electromechanical, or electronic apparatus or by use of paper ballots and includes, but is not limited to, the procedures for casting and processing votes and the programs, operating manuals, tabulating cards, printouts and other software necessary for the systems operation. A voting system consists of a configuration of specific hardware and software components, procedures and expendable supplies; configured into a system which allows votes to be cast and tabulated. No single component of a voting system, such as a precinct tabulation device, meets the definition of a voting system. Sufficient components must be assembled to create a configuration, which will allow the system as a whole to meet all the requirements described for a voting system in this publication. http://election.dos.state.fl.us/voting-systems/pdf/dsde101Form.pdf Properties of voting systems Researchers in the electronic voting field have already reached a consensus pack of four core properties that an electronic voting system should have (Cranor and Cytron 1997): Accuracy: (1) it is not possible for a vote to be altered, (2) it is not possible for a validated vote to be eliminated from the final tally, and (3) it is not possible for an invalid vote to be counted in the final tally. Democracy: (1) it permits only eligible voters to vote and, (2) it ensures that eligible voters vote only once. Privacy: (1) neither authorities nor anyone else can link any ballot to the voter who cast it and (2) no voter can prove that he voted in a particular way. Verifiability: anyone can independently verify that all votes have been counted correctly. Accuracy, democracy and verifiability are, in most cases of todays electoral systems, assured by the presence of representatives of opposite parties. The privacy property is currently assured by the existence of private voting booths, allowing voters to cast their votes in secrecy. 50 Voting system life cycle Many discussions of voting system security vulnerability fail to consider the entire voting system. In addition to the hardware and software that make up the voting equipment, the system includes election workers, voters, and is deployed in a variety of physical environments. Election workers are often volunteers whose skill with technology can vary widely. Similarly, voting technology that assumes a level of technological literacy on the part of the individual voter will potentially be susceptible to error. A security assessment of election equipment that only considers hardware and software without examining its use in real contexts may conclude that the equipment is satisfactory. Considering the larger system including election workers and voters will require analysis of procedures with a focus on fair voting criteria anonymity, confidentiality, integrity, and audit ability. http://www.ejeg.com/volume-2/volume2-issue3/v2-i3-art4-lauer.pdf Voting Places Voting at polling places [8] : The department can provide the reliable, no virus, and easy-handled voting machine in the polling places. The voters can be authenticated by the traditional protocol and the technological authentication of voters might not be necessary. It provides the highest security compared to other electronic voting place. Voting at home with voters computer [8]: Voters can cast their votes by using their own computers at home. It is hard to prevent the third partys advertisement appearing on the screen while voting. It is much more difficult to secure the voters computer from the attacks of hackers and virus. Voting at anyplace with mobile devices [8]: The voters can use their devices to get access to internet in any place and cast a vote through the electronic voting system. Not only can the laptop be used to vote, the PDA, cell phone, and any other mobile devices might also be used to vote in the future. But there are many harsh problems need to overcome. The security is the most serious problem. It is vital to make sure that the computer and network in which the voters get access is not monitored, intercepted, or tampered by any attackers. http://homepages.nyu.edu/~tsc223/ElectronicVoting.pdf Voting in Egypt Voting in Egypt is like any other country; most of countries still using the conventional voting technique in government election, but now Egyptian government think to electronic voting system rather that conventional voting to avoid the problems they faced on it. There is a lot of problem in conventional voting in Egypt: 1- There is no good relationship between the government and popular, popular cant trust the government and depend on it, voter here is like a blind person that must rely on the other person to vote for him. 2- Sometimes, government coerced and carries on the voters to vote for a particular candidate, and eliminate them from voting freely. 3- Some candidates trying to win by buy the votes from the voters. 4- Government can cheat by substitute the original ballot by derivative ones. So there must be another way to solve these problems or reduce it as possible, and give the voters the confidence to believe of the system, form this point we think to use a new technology to improve the election by building a new system that is convenience for environment of our country Egypt. A novel in e voting in Egypt http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=vq=cache:0tkjSklsJf0J:citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download%3Fdoi%3D10.1.1.96.19%26rep%3Drep1%26type%3Dpdf+electronic+voting+system+diagramhl=engl=ukpid=blsrcid=ADGEESg4A60cHXQU91yKcqMtBvIK_QDFE30y-uM9olPWwuYpBHDS3k8QAmQIPJ_Nrm_aeGkQIaxMoxq3mTREZsaEZvCCdW3GsOQGS61G15RFdCai5s2KbqO728FXRmPkFgmGU_UwQWHbsig=AHIEtbSKAxn_DBTwcaIIcGPif-nYac-epA How voting works In the United States, voting is a local issue. The Federal government certainly has a lot of say about voting through the Federal Election Commission, but in the end, its state and local officials who administer elections. In most states, the secretary of states office runs an elections office that sets rules and administers statewide elections. The actual elections themselves are usually the purview of the county clerk. Moreover, counties and municipalities bear the majority of the cost of managing elections. In 2000, the total county election expenditures were estimated at over $1 billion, or about $10 per voter. Voting is more complicated than simply tallying votes. In fact, most of the work in an election occurs long before the voter ever steps into the booth. Voter registration requires large databases of voters, their addresses and geographic calculation of precinct and district information. Ballot preparation is a long process that is complicated by myriad rules and regulations. The election itself must be administered, usually with the help of a large, volunteer workforce that gets to practice about once per year. All of these activities, in addition to vote tallying, are part of a voting system. http://www.extremedemocracy.com/chapters/Chapter%2011-Windley.pdf Voting systems design criteria Authentication: Only authorized voters should be able to vote. Uniqueness: No voter should be able to vote more than once. Accuracy: Voting systems should record the votes correctly. Integrity: Votes should not be able to be modified without detection. Verifiability: Should be possible to verify that votes are correctly counted for in the final tally. Audit ability: There should be reliable and demonstrably authentic election records. Reliability: Systems should work robustly, even in the face of numerous failures. Secrecy: No one should be able to determine how any individual voted. Non- coercibility: Voters should not be able to prove how they voted. Flexibility: Equipment should allow for a variety of ballot question formats. Convenience: Voters should be able to cast votes with minimal equipment and skills. Certifiability: Systems should be testable against essential criteria. Transparency: Voters should be able to possess a general understanding of the whole process. Cost-effectiveness: Systems should be affordable and efficient. http://www.terena.org/activities/tf-csirt/meeting7/gritzalis-electronic-voting.pdf 3 Definition of e-voting system An electronic voting (e-voting) system is a voting system in which the election data is recorded, stored and processed primarily as digital information. Electronic voting is a means of having a paperless voting system. Electronic voting is a term used to describe any of several means of determining peoples collective intent electronically. Electronic voting includes voting by kiosk, internet, telephone, punch card, and optical scan ballot (a.k.a. mark-sense). Thefreedictionary.com 17 An electronic voting system (on-line voting, internet voting) is an election system which uses electronic ballot that would allow voters to transmit their secure and secret voted ballot to election officials over the internet [2]. With the prosperity of internet over the years, inventers start to make the use of electronic voting in order to make the voting process more convenient and raise the participation of the civic. From now on, engineers have repeatedly created new technology to improve the feasibility of electronic voting system. http://www.terena.org/activities/tf-csirt/meeting7/gritzalis-electronic-voting.pdf electronic voting refers to use of computer or computerized voting equipment to cast ballots in an election. this term, sometimes, is used more specifically to refer to voting that take place over the internet. electronic system can be used to register voters, tally ballots, and record votes. http://profsite.um.ac.ir/~kahani/doc/ejisdc05.pdf 3.1 Type of e voting system E-Voting is a type of voting that includes the use of a computer rather than the traditional use of ballot at polling centres or by postal mail. It encompasses various types of voting: kiosks, the Internet, telephones, punch cards, and marksense or optical scan ballots. http://jatit.org/volumes/research- papers/Vol2No1/4vol2no1.pdf there is two types of e-voting: polling place voting and Internet voting. Polling place voting. In a polling place, both the voting clients (voting machines) and the physical environment are supervised by authorized entities. Depending on the type of polling place (precinct or kiosk [6]), validation may be either physical (e.g. by election officials) or electronic (with some kind of digital identification). Casting and tallying are electronic: the voting clients may be Direct Recording Electronic. Internet voting. The vote is cast over the Internet and the voting client is unsupervised during voting (the voting client may be at home, at work, in a library, etc). Registration may be either physical (at the elections office) or electronic (with some form of digital identification). Validation, casting and tallying are electronic. I-voting requires a much greater level of security than e-commerce. While checking the eligibility of voters, and that no voter casts more than one vote, is no more difficult than meeting the security requirements of an e-commerce application, ensuring this and meeting other requirements such as privacy, a universally verifiable audit trail and uncoercibility, has been difficult to achieve in a practical and affordable way. http://euro.ecom.cmu.edu/program/courses/tcr17-803/Burmeister.pdf Advantage The advocate of electronic voting claims that the convenience, mobility, tally speed, less cost, and flexibility are the main advantages. Following are the descriptions of the advantages. Convenience: With the well-designed software and system, the voters can simply use his voting equipment with the minimal time and skill to finish the voting process [2]. Mobility: Voters can cast their votes at a specific polling place, home, or any place in which they can get access to the internet. People can even use the mobile device such as cell phone or PDA to vote. There is no restriction on the location [2]. Tally Speed: [3] Once the voting time is over, the computer can immediately calculate the result of the election. It is much faster than the traditional ballot counting method operated by people. Less Cost: [3] Compared to paper ballot voting, electronic voting saves money from reducing the personnel expense, expense for location management and administration fee, etc. In the beginning, the investment expense of building up the electronic voting system would be very high. But after the system is built up, the total expense would be reduced to be much lower than paper ballot voting. Flexibility: Electronic voting system can be designed to support a variety of ballot question formats [2]. It can be used to collect public opinions or election. Voter participation: With convenience and mobility of the system, it would motivate people who are not interested in voting or unable to vote originally. It would increase the participation of voters. http://homepages.nyu.edu/~tsc223/ElectronicVoting.pdf 2.5 Disadvantage Despite the particular advantages to electronic voting system, critics of electronic voting argue about the security issue and the unequal access chance to the internet are the main drawbacks to the system. Inequality problem: It is apparent that the people with low salary might not be able to afford the equipment for electronic voting. And some people who are not able to use the computer facility might lose their privilege in voting. Vulnerable to Security: The security issue is the main drawback of the electronic voting system. So far, there are still many kinds of attacks which are hard to prevent completely. The attacks might be happened from the webpage, network, to the extent of servers database. Denial of Service attack: A denial of service is characterized by that an attacker prevents legitimate users from using resources. An attacker may attempt to flood a network and thus reduce a legitimate users bandwidth, prevent access to a service, or disrupt service to a specific system or a user [4]. Now it is very hard to completely avoid this kind of attack. Nevertheless, people can adopt some methods such as Filtering Routers, Disabling IP Broadcast, Disabling Unused Services, and Performing intrusion Detection [4] to make the network more secure. Virus: Virus such as Trojan horse would do great damage to the system. The server can be easily protected from the attack of virus by using some specific kinds of operating system. But the client such as personal computers might not secure enough and are easily infected with virus. These viruses might attack computer from http://www.vvk.ee/public/dok/Yldkirjeldus-eng.pdf E-voting system concept The e-voting concept is similar to the envelope method used during advance polls today to allow voting outside of polling place of voters residence: * the voter identifies himself/herself to polling commission, * the voter fills the ballot and puts it in an inner envelope, * that envelope is put into another envelope on which the voters data is then written, * the envelope is transported to the voters polling station, the voters eligibility is verified, and if the voter is eligible, the outer envelope is opened and the anonymous inner envelope is put into the ballot box. The e-voting follows the same scheme. E-voter creates during the voter procedures an inner envelope (which is essentially an encrypted vote) and an outer envelope (which is essentially a digital signature). The following considerations speak in favour of the envelope method: * simplicity and understand ability of the scheme, possibility to draw a parallel with traditional elections; * simplicity of system architecture the number of components and parties is minimal; * full use of digital signature. http://www.vvk.ee/public/dok/Yldkirjeldus-eng.pdf 2. Votes cannot be known before the official ballot reading; 3. Only registered voters will be able to vote; 4. Each voter will have one and only one vote; 5. Vote secrecy is guaranteed; it never will be possible to link a voter to his/her vote; 6. The voting website will resist any denial of service attack 7. The voter will be protected against identity theft; 8. The number of cast votes will be equal to the number of received ballots; 9. It will be possible to prove that a given citizen has voted; 10. The system will not accept votes outside the ballot opening period; 11. The system will be audible. Character of e-voting system discusses the following characteristics of a good electronic voting system: accuracy, democracy, privacy, verifiability, convenience, flexibility, and mobility. Each account includes the characteristic of accuracy, but the authors define accuracy in different ways. For example, Schneier defines accuracy as direct mapping from intent to counted vote. Standard defines accuracy as the extent to which a given measurement agrees with an accepted standard for that measurement and includes significant discussion of acceptable error rates in the body of the document. For Cranor, A system is accurate if (1) it is not possible for a vote to be altered, (2) it is not possible for a validated vote to be eliminated from the final tally, and (3) it is not possible for an invalid vote to be counted in the final tally. Combining these definitions produces: An accurate voting system counts all valid votes with minimal processing error such that the intent of eligible voters is reflected in the final tally. Each account also discusses the requirement that voters be able to cast their vote in secret, without a link between the voter and the cast ballot. This characteristic is referred to as anonymity, confidentiality, or privacy. Both characteristics, accuracy and privacy, are essential in an ideal voting system. Yet, it is a non-trivial matter to achieve both simultaneously. For example, how do we insure that the intent of eligible voters is reflected in the final tally, without a back-channel to the voter after the vote has been counted but, wouldnt a back-channel to the voter compromise privacy. Each account also discusses the requirement that voters be able to cast their vote in secret, without a link. http://brahms.emu.edu.tr/rza/An%20Introduction%20to%20Electronic%20Voting.pdf characteristics, such as security, reliability, ease of use, and cost effectiveness http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d07576t.pdf Basic Principles of E-voting The main principle of e-voting is that it must be as similar to regular voting as possible, compliant with election legislation and principles and be at least as secure as regular voting. Therefore e-voting must be uniform and secret, only eligible persons must be allowed to (e-)vote, every voter should be able to cast only one vote, a voter must not be able to prove in favour of whom he/she voted. In addition to this the collecting of votes must be secure, reliable and accountable. According to Estonian election legislation e-voting takes place from 6th to 4th day before Election Day and the following requirements are laid out: (1) On advance polling days, voters may vote electronically on the web page of the National Electoral Committee. A voter shall vote himself or herself. (2) A voter shall identify himself or herself using the certificate entered on his or her identity card which enables digital identification. (3) After identification of the voter, the consolidated list of candidates in the electoral district of the residence of the voter shall be displayed to the voter on the web page. (4) The voter shall indicate on the web page the candidate in the electoral district of his or her residence for whom he or she wishes to vote and shall confirm the vote by signing it digitally using the certificate entered on his or her identity card which enables digital signing. (5) A notice that the vote has been taken into account shall be displayed to the voter on the web page. (6) Voter may change his or her electronic vote during the advance voting period from 6th to 4th day before Election Day: 1) by voting electronically; 2) by voting in polling station. http://www.vvk.ee/public/dok/Yldkirjeldus-eng.pdf E-Voting Procedures In this section we will describe in greater detail the behaviour of the components present in the general architecture of the system during different stages of e-voting. 6.1. Key Management The key management procedures and the security scheme used are one of the most critical points of the system on which the fulfilment of the main requirements of the system (privacy and secrecy of voting) depends. What follows is not a final description of the measures and procedures, but we will outline the main concept, main risks and possible solutions. The main tool to guarantee the secrecy of voting in the system is asymmetric cryptography. A system key pair is generated, the public component of which is integrated into client software and is used to encrypt the vote. The private component of the key pair is used in the Vote Counting Application to decrypt the vote. It is of utmost importance that the use of private key is possible only for counting the votes in the VCA (at 19.00 on election day and, if necessary, during recount). When the period for filing complaints has expired, the private key will be destroyed The privacy and secrecy of an e-voter can be compromised by a simultaneous occurrence of two security hazards: a party appears in the system (or outside the system) who has access to both the private key of the system as well as the digitally signed votes. Even though this data is separated in the system, the risk remains. A one and only private key is probably a lot easier to protect than the digitally signed e-votes the latter pass through several system components (Voter, VFS, VSS) and data transfer channels, consequently, the danger of leaked e-votes is higher. Thus fo r ensuring the security the main focus should be on key management. The private key is subject to two dangers: * Compromise or becoming publicly available. The occurrence of this would enable the parties in possession of digitally signed e-votes to determine who cast a vote in favour of whom, thus compromising the privacy of the voter. * Corruption. The private key carrier may be destroyed, lost or be corrupted because of a technical error. When this occurs it becomes impossible to decrypt the e-votes and all the electronically cast e-votes are lost. This is a critical danger and therefore two key pairs should be used simultaneously in the system. The key pair is generated in a Hardware Security Module (HSM) in such a way that the private component never leaves the module. The generation of the key pair and use of private key is maintained by key managers, there should be several of them. A scheme N out of M is recommended, for National Electoral Committee four members out of seven should be present in order to perform security critical operations. Key managers have physical (for example a keycard) as well as knowledge-based (PIN-code) authentication devices for communicating with the HSM. The procedures of key management, meaning the generation of the key pair and PINs, delivery of the public component to the vendor of client application, preservation of the private component, its backup and delivery to the VCA must be subject to audit supervision and should be described in a separate document. http://www.vvk.ee/public/dok/Yldkirjeldus-eng.pdf Paper voting system Paper-based voting: The voter gets a blank ballot and use a pen or a marker to indicate he want to vote for which candidate. Hand-counted ballots is a time and labour consuming process, but it is easy to manufacture paper ballots and the ballots can be retained for verifying, this type is still the most common way to vote http://crypto.nknu.edu.tw/publications/200805ICIM_eVoting.pdf In paper voting, the conformation to these principles is achieved via voter identification, supervised voting and distributed counting procedures. People are admitted to the polling station only once, and they only get one opportunity to cast their vote. It is also hard to add invalid ballots to or remove valid ballots from the ballot box unseen. The paper system uses separate counting sessions in the different districts, and allows any citizen to attend the counting process, and thereby verify the result. Moreover, since voting is done under supervision of the election officials, you will be guaranteed a private voting environment. This is a warrant for the secrecy of your vote. Via these aspects, paper voting has acquired a large deal of trust in the experience of citizens. Still, the ease with which this system has been replaced in the Netherlands suggest that there are other factors involved as well. One may argue that the electronic voting machines currently in use have been accepted based on passivity rather than trust. When these machines were introduced in the Netherlands, there has not been much debate about the conformation to the aforementioned principles. Instead, their introduction has been more or less tacitly accepted in spite of decreased transparency which is typical of passivity. http://www.win.tue.nl/ipa/archive/falldays2005/Paper_Pieters.pdf Paper voting has earned a large amount of trust in the experience of citizens, partly due to the well organised social context. Progress in technology should not lead to problems with democratic progress in society, which may easily become the result of distrust in the election system. If voting technology mediates the relation between people and democracy in such a way that the experience of trust and stability is reduced, for whatever reason, the actions that are invited are political passivity on the one hand, and protest and obstruction on the other. http://www.win.tue.nl/ipa/archive/falldays2005/Paper_Pieters.pdf Voting by Paper Ballot In colonial America, early voters substituted beans, kernels of corn, seashells, or rocks for the multi-colored balls used in Greece, as well as using a show of hands and voice to conduct elections (Rusk 313). In 1629, the first vote credited with using paper ballots took place in a Salem, Massachusetts church and by the Civil War only Kentucky and Virginia were still voting by voice.6 In 1800, the Northwest Territory enacted a law stating that elections should be held by ballot. http://josephhall.org/arnold_ca_vs_hist.pdf Paper-based E-voting system In a paper based e-voting system, a touch screen is used in voting. After the voter has finished casting his votes, the unit prints out a hardcopy of the ballot which the voter has to pass to the election officer in charge so that it can be counted in a centralized location. The ballots will then be counted through optical-scan voting systems. This system has the advantage of a paper trail as every persons votes are recorded on a piece of paper. However, holes that are not properly aligned in a punch card or stray marks on an optical-scan card may lead to a vote not being counted by the machine. Moreover, physical ballots can still be lost during or after transit to the counting stations. http://www.topbits.com/e-voting.html Direct recording electronic systems A DRE (Direct Recording Electronic) voting system consists of a computer with a touch-screen monitor, a permanent storage medium such as a write-once memory card, software, and, in some systems, a ballot printer. The computer is much like a home computer. A touch-screen monitor allows the user to touch a marked spot on the monitor surface with his finger, thus entering data as if the screen were a keyboard; you have seen one if you have ever used an Automatic Teller Machine. The software consists of two parts: 1) An Operating System that supports the voting software and directly controls the monitor, the permanent storage, and any other device that forms part of the computer system. 2) The voting system itself, which runs as an application on the Operating System. It manages the user interface, guards against certain user errors e.g., it refuses to accept a vote if the user votes for more candidates than there are offices to be filled and records the vote of each user on the users command. The voting system also counts the votes and records the counts, or else cooperates with a central computer to produce these results. The ballot printer, if there is one, produces a document that may look like a ballot; it shows the choices made by the user. After the user has examined it, he may direct the system to record his vote or he may ask for another chance to vote. When the voter has made his choice, the system disposes of this document in one of a number of ways, which will be described later. Most of the DRE systems installed in the United States today do not have these printers. Direct Recording Electronic Voting Systems This is essentially voting through a comput

Growth of Telecommunications Systems

Books Wright, Michael and Mukul Patel. 2000. Scientific American – How Things Work Today. London: Marshall Publishing Ltd. B. 1 The world is currently in the middle of a communications revolution as dramatic as the Industrial Revolution that created our modern society two centuries ago. The growth of telecommunications systems, the arrival of the Internet, and the proliferation of computers in every aspect of our lives are transforming both industrial and knowledge-based economies round the world. Higher disposable incomes and increased leisure time are also fuelling demand for luxury electronic goods and new forms of entertainment.Since the British inventor Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone in 1877, telephony has become the most important form of distance communication. The telephone network is now truly global, with submarine cables and communications satellites linking every continent. This globe-spanning network handles phone calls, fax transmissions, and intern et traffic. The long-distance â€Å"backbones† of the telephone network are high capacity optical-fiber cables. Lower-capacity copper cables connect individual phones to the network. The analog signal from an ordinary phone is sampled 4,000 times per second and converted into an 8-bit ddigital signal.Several conversations can then be transmitted simultaneously down the same cable, using a technique known as multiplexing, which increases the capacity of the network. Routing calls through the telephone network is done automatically be telephone exchanges. In near future, the telephone network may also carry video and music channels, interactive televisions, videophone calls. Analog signal – Analog electric signals from ordinary phones are carried by copper cable to the local exchange. Base station – The base station receiving the sthrongest signal from a cell phone routes the call to the cell phone exchange.Cell – The cell phone network is divided into hexa gonal cells, each with a base station in the middle. Cell phone exchange – Calls are routed to the main exchange or direct to a base station by the cell phone exchange. Cell phone network – Base stations send ddigital information to the cell phone exchange over optical-fiber or copper cable. Communication satellite – Orbiting satellites are used to route calls between places not linked by a cable. Ddigital signal – Ddigital information is multiplexed, allowing multiple signals to be transmitted simultaneously. Fax machine – Fax transmissions are sent over the telephone network.Line-of-sight microwave link – Digitized call from local exchanges are often routed to the main exchange via terrestrial microwave links. Local exchange – The local exchange digitizes calls for long-distance transmission. Long-distance or international connection – Optical fibers are used to transmit long-distance calls, many optical fiber cables are laid on the seabed. Main exchange – The main exchange handles communications between ordinary phones and the cell phone network and routes long-distance and international calls. Microwaves – Ddigital information is sent from cell phones to base stations using microwave frequencies.Moving cell phone – Mobility is the prime asset of the cell phone. Optical fibers – Transmitting ddigital information by light pulses enables many calls to be sent down one fiber simultaneously. Satellite uplink – Encrypted ddigital information is sent to satellites using microwave frequencies. Seamless reconnection – As the cell phone moves from one cell to another, the call is rerouted from one base station to the next, without the break in the conversation. Urban cell – Cell are smaller in urban areas, giving the network greater capacity. Weakening Signal – As the cell phone moves farther away from the base station, the signal weakens. —- Tanenb aum, Andrew S. and Maareten van Steen. 2002. Distributed Systems Principles and Paradigms. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc. B. 2 A process is often defined as a program in execution, that is, a program that is currently being executed on one of the operating system’s virtual pprocessors. An important issue is that the operating system takes great care to ensure that independent processes cannot maliciously or inadvertently affect the correctness of each other’s behavior. In other words, the fact that multiple processes may be concurrently sharing the same CPU and other hardware resources is made transparen't.Usually, the operating system requires hardware support to enforce this separation. B. 2 Threads in Distributed Systems – An important property of threads is that they can provide a convenient mearns of allowing blocking system calls without blocking the entire process in which the thread is running. This property makes threads particularly attractive to use in distributed systems as it makes it much easier to express communication in the form of maintaining multiple logical connections at the same time. We illustrate this point by taking a closer look at multithreaded clients and servers, respectively. B. 2Clients and Servers – In the basic client-server model, processes in a distributed system are divided into two (possibly overlapping) groups. A server is a process implementing a specific service, for example, a file system service or a database service. A client is a process that requests a service from a server by sending it a request and subsequently waiting for the server’s reply. This client-server interaction, also known as request-reply behavior. B. 2Communication between a client and a server can be implemented by mearns of a simple connectionless protocol when the underlying network is fairly reliable as in many local-area networks.In these cases, when a client requests a service, it simply packages a message f or the server, identifying the service it wants, along with the necessary input data. The message in then sent to the server. The latter, in turn, will always wait for an incoming request, subsequently process it, and package the results in a reply message that is then sent to the client. Page 657 Communication – All communication in the Web between clients and servers is based on the Hypertext transfer Protocol (HTTP). HTTP is a relatively simple client-server protocol; a client sends a request message to a server and waits for a response message.An important property of HTTP is that it is stateless. In other words, it does not have any concept of open connection and does not require a server to maintain information on its clients. The most recent version of HTTP is described in (Fielding et al. , 1999). Page 648 The World Wide Web (WWW) can be viewed as a huge distributed system consisting of millions of clients and servers for accessing linked documents. Servers maintain c ollections of documents, while clients provide users an easy-to-use interface for presenting and accessing those documents.The Web started as a project at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva, to let its large and geographically dispersed group of researchers provide access to shared documents using a simple hypertext system. A document could be anything that could be displayed on a user’s computer terminal, such as personal notes, reports, figures, blueprints, drawings, and so on. By linking documents to each other, it became easy to iintegrate documents from different projects into a new document without the necessity for centralized changes.The only thing needed was to construct a document providing links to other relevant documents (see also Berners-Lee et al. , 1994). Since 1994, Web developments are primarily initiated and controlled by the World Wide Web Consortium, a collaboration between CERN and M. I. T. this consortium is responsible for standar dizing protocols, improving interoperability, and further enhancing the capabilities of the Web. Its home page can be found at http://www. w3. org/. —– London, Sherry. 2000. Illustrator 9 f/x & Design. Arizona: The Coriolis Group, LLC. Page 427 Image resolution seems to be a tricky and complex topic the most people.I usually urge folks to work in pixels inside the Photoshop because pixels are fixed: A 900-pixel-wide image contains 900 pixels, regardless of its ppl. However, if the ppl is set to 300, the 900-pixel image prints at 3 inches wide; if the ppl is set to 100, the 900-pixel image prints 9 inches wide – but it still contains only 900 pixel across. Therefore, I find it much easier to think in pixels. —– Harb, M. 1989. Modern Telephony. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc. Page 9 The Telephone of Today The end user or subscriber is the main concern in any communication link. The subscriber can be either a private part or a business.In all cases, t he telephone set is used to transmit and receive, sequentially or simultaneously. The Telephone Set The telephone set is an instrument used to transmit and receive information or calls sequentially or simultaneously, thus permitting one party to communicate with another. For this communicate to take place, the telephone set must have the following component: a transmitter, a receiver, bell, a dialer, and a switchhook. Page 150-152 Cellular mobile communication is considered to be the breakthrough that could revolutionize the way businesses think about and use the most common of communication tools – the telephone.The cellular mobile telephone is found most often in cars, using low-power radio-frequency carriers to transmit and receive messages in small geographical units called cells. Before the introduction of cellular technology, most North American cities were using high-power radio-frequency transmitters for mobile telephone transmission. Even if a subscriber was lucky en ough to have the service, the number of channels was limited, and consequently the possibility of having access to a free line was very slim. Furthermore, once the subscriber got access to a line, the voice quality was poor and privacy almost nonexistent.This is not the case with the cellular mobile system. With the new technology, subscribers are guaranteed access to a free line 99. 9% of the time. The quality of the voice is comparable to that of regular telephone transmission, and privacy is guaranteed. Cellular mobiles became available in the United States in 1979, when Ameritech Mobile Communications began serving 2000 subscribers in the city of Chicago. By 1985, over 30,000 subscribers in the United Stated were using cellular mobiles, and this number continues to grow in the United States as well as in Canada, the European nations, Japan, and many more.Operation of a Cellular Mobile System Since is not feasible to set up a communication link between two moving cars using a sta ndard telephone line, it is necessary to use a wireless system with a radio antenna to send and receive telephone conversation over the air. The term â€Å"cellular† is derived from the word â€Å"cell. † Cities or towns are divided into geographic areas called cells, each with its own transmitter and receiver. Each cell has a low-power transmission capability, thus making its signal too weak to interfere with other cells with ssimilar frequencies.Generally, the frequency occupied by two subscribers within the same cell cannot be used by any other subscribers within that cell. The diagram of a cellular system shown in Figure 12. 1 demonstrates the process of relaying messages from car telephone (or portable telephone) to the cell site’s low-powered transmitter, to the Cantel switching office or MTSO (mobile telephone switching office), and to the wireline telephone company’s switching office, to allow interconnection with the existing telephone system. Th e message is â€Å"handed off† from one cell site transmitter to the next as the caller crosses a cell boundary, without interruption.A master computer keeps track of which cells are using which frequencies (see Figure 12. 1), and when a subscriber wishes to call a subscriber outside his or her cell, the computer may reassign frequencies. As a subscriber moves from one cell to the next, the assigned frequency may change, but the subscriber will at all times be served without interference (Figure 12. 2). —– Meyers, Mike. 2003. Introduction to PC Hardware and Troubleshooting. Asia: McGraw-Hill / Osborne. Page 390 Much of what makes modern computers so powerful is their ability to connection in small or large groups, or networks, and share files and resources.Every PC tech worth knowing the basics of networking. After all, why get into computing if you can’t while away an afternoon gaming with your buddies, all from the comfort of your computer chair? How Ne tworks Work A network enables two or more computers to share data, hardware such as printers, and even applications. The computers must have some conneactivity, of course: some way for the signal from one machine to reach the other. In addition, the hardware must be compatible and the software set up so that the receiving computer can understand what the sending machine sends.Think of two kids chatting over walkie-talkie as a network for communication to occur, the hardware has to be in range for the signal, and it has to be from the same set, and the kids need to speak the same language. Networks work ssimilarly. Computers connect in two basic ways: In dial-up networks in Local Area Networks. In dial-up connection, your computer uses a telephone line to connect to an Internet Service Provider (ISP), which then gives you access to other computers, perhaps at your office or somewhere on the Internet.Computers in a Local Area Network, on the other hand, are connected to a central box – either by cables or by radio waves – through which they can communicate with each other and, if some machine on the network has the appreciate connection, with other computers on the Internet. Let’s look at how both types of network function before we turn to the nuts and bolts of installing and setting up networks. Dial-Up Networks The most common network connection consists of three pieces: a modem, a working telephone line, and an ISP.The modem enables the computer to communicate via phone lines. The phone line provides the link between the modem and the computers at the ISP. The ISP computers connect to the Big Kahuna of all networks, the Internet. Property installed you to surf, shop, and otherwise explore websites hosted by computers all over the world. Tune in and turn on to dial-up networking. The venerable modem has to recent years been challenged by two new consumer technologies for accessing the Internet so-called â€Å"cable-modems† and DSL (Ddigital Subscriber Line) service.Your computer’s basic need for some kind of pipeline to communicate over hasn’t charged – just the choice of pipeline and the way it’s used. Both technologies take advantage of unused capacity on widely available transmission media. Cable modems use the cables already in place in many homes for receiving cable TV signals as their pipeline to the Internet, rather than the telephone system. The cable TV companies take advantage of the fact that their cable TV signals occupy only a fraction of the capacity of the coaxial cables running into your home.Adding a cable modem to your computer enables it to use the cable TV connection as its pipeline to the Internet. Cable modems aren’t actually â€Å"modems† at all in the sense that the signals they send and receive are entirely ddigital, but because they perform the same function, they go by the same name. you can install an external cable modem to a port (usually USB) on your computer. Page 394 Modem Technology The modem solves one of the problems with the use of analog voice lines to move ddigital data. Modems take incoming analog serial data – in this case, the signal coming over the telephone line- and turn it into ddigital serial data.Likewise, modems turn the signal flowing out of the PC into analog data than can be transferred over the telephone line. This process – called modulation / demodulation – provides the name for the technology: MOdulation / DEModulation, get it! Phone lines have a speed based on a unit called a baud, which is one cycle per second. The fastest rate that a phone line can achieve is 2,400 baud. Modem can pack multiple bits of data into each baud; a 33. 6 kilobits per second (Kbps) modem, for example, packs 14 bits into every baud: 2,400 x 14 = 33. 6 Kbps.It is technically incorrect to say, â€Å"I have a 56 K baud modem. † You should instead say, â€Å"’I have a 56 Kbps modem . † However, people use the term baud instead of bps so other that the terms have become functionally synonymous. Page 415 A network enables two or more computers to share data, hardware such as printers, and even applications. Computers connect in two basic ways: dial-up networks and Local Area Networks. A standard dial-up network connection consists of these pieces: a modem, a working telephone line, and an Internet Service Provider (ISP).To make a LAN work, you need to ensure those things: conneactivity, compatibility, and proper setup of hardware and software. Data is broken up and sent between computers in small chunks called packets and then reassembled. Page 1 Everything in your computer fits into one of two categories: hardware or software. Anything on your computer that you can touch is hardware. However, hardware alone cannot handle all of the PC’s complex activities – it needs the help of software. Software is the technical word for computer programs, the sets of instructions that tell the hardware how to do things.Computer programs are often compared to cooking rrecipes. The recipe tells you how to use the tools to manipulate the ingredients, and if all goes well, you produce something edible. In the same way, software instruct the hardware has it manipulates data to produce the desired results, whether that’s a memo, a ddigital picture, or an email message. Figure 1. 1 shows a sample of program code. —– Stamper, David A. 2001. Local Area Networks – Third Edition. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc. Page 135-137 Classes of Software The reason for having a computing system is to solve problems and accomplish the business’ work.The software that does this is called application software. Ordinarily, application software operates in an environment that makes writing and using the application software easier. The environment-creating software can be separated into network management, development and net work access. Application Software As we mentioned at the beginning of this section, the main reason we use computing system is to solve business or scientific problems. Thus, the computer and its extension, the network, are simply problem-solving tools.Tthroughout history, humankind has constantly built new tools and improved on those already invented. At the beginning of the computer era, computers were quite primitive tools (at least by today’s standards). Programmers at the dawn of the computing age needed to know not only the nuances of the business problem they were solving but also many of the intricacies of the hardware their solution would be running on. In today’s application environment, we have a supporting cast of software that helps to create an application environment that is mostly hardware independent.Operating System Software Today, we are so need to using OSs to create the system environment that we take them for granted. However, we were into the sec ond generation of computers before OSs appeared and into the third generation of computers before OSs became common. You may correctly infer from this that OSs are not absolutely necessary and, in the early years of personal computing, a vvariety of applications run without using the services of an OS. The IBM Personal Computer (PC) came equipped with a BASIC interpreter in a read-only memory.Thus, if you did not have the disk operating system (DOS), you could still use your computer by writing and running BASIC programs. Without DOS, BASIC was the operating environment. Furthermore, a few early programs functioned in a stand-alone mode. These programs where on a diskette and were loaded when the computer was loaded. In this mode, if you wanted to run another program, you swapped disk and rebooted. Without an OS, the application program is responsible for accomplishing many hardware-oriented functions such as input/output (I/O) and memory management.Because these task are common to all applications, software engineers developed OS software. The OS manages the resources of the computer and creates an application environment in which it is easier to develop and use application software because the OS takes care of a vvariety of functions formerly done by applications. Some of these functions are: †¢ Memory management †¢ File management †¢ User interface †¢ I/O interfaces †¢ Resource allocation †¢ Accounting †¢ Protection/security Today, systems running on a LAN are more sophisticated that the early systems that ran without an OS; a LAN node without an OS is unthinkable.Memory Management – When the computer is started, the OS is loaded into memory a certain portion of the available memory is constantly occupied by the resident portion of the OS. The OS manages the remaining memory and allocates it among itself and the requesting processes according to a memory management scheme adopted by the OS designers. Most current OS s use a memory management algorithm called virtual memory. With virtual memory, the disk is used as an extension of real memory. A process may be thought of as consisting of pages of data and code.File Management – A disk is a raw storage device. It has the ability to store bits of data but inherently does not have the ability to organize those bits into files, files into directories, and so on. The OS provides this level of disk organization. it establish the data structure that allows users to create partitions, directories volumes, and other disk subdivisions. Some file management systems allow multiple disks to be combines into one logical disk. The file management system allows users to create, delete, and access files.The file management system maintains the directory structure and store directory and file information such as the date and time last modified, end-of-file pointer, and the file or directories’ locations on disk. Obviously, there are fundamental aspe cts of using a system. User Interface – When a programmer begins to write a program, an environment is created for that user. If you are a programmer, you may need to use a text editor, compiler, link editor, and application program interface (API), which allows you to use OS procedures to carry out activities such as creating a new file, or starting a new process.Sometimes a compiler or interpreter includes the API interfaces. Protection Security – Today, nearly everyone is aware that security is an important aspect of computer usage. The OS provides the base on which security is established. We expect the OS to prevent user programs from crashing the system and to eliminate the intrusion of one program into the memory occupied by another program’s data. In shared systems, we also expect the OS and the file management system to provide certain levels of file security. Commonly, an OS will at least provide capabilities that allow administrators to define which u sers can read, write, or erase a file.

The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

The literary piece â€Å"The Bluest Eye,† written by Toni Morrison and published in circa 1970, has centered on the story of an eleven-year-old female character, Pecola Breedlove (Foerstel, 2002). The central theme that has been apparent in the story is the desire of Pecola to have white skin, blonde hair, and blue eyes. Not only does she want a set of blue eyes but she actually wants the bluest shade of blue that there is.Her desires for this kind of physical appearance stems from her idea that those who are given these physical features are given or are receiving a certain kind of privilege from the society because of the stigma associated with it. Chloe Anthony Wofford, more popularly known as Toni Morrison, is the second of four Black children who belonged to a family who worked their way to living (â€Å"Toni Morrison: Biography,† 1993). She was born in 1931 in Ohio and proceeded to earn her degree in prestigious universities, more specifically Howard and Cornell U niversity (â€Å"Toni Morrison: Biography,† 1993).She has earned her positions in credible institution both in the academic ladder and in writing (â€Å"Toni Morrison: Biography,† 1993). Later on, she made an impact through the novels she made that showed the plight of the Black Americans that contained narratives of different characters’ lives (â€Å"Toni Morrison: Biography,† 1993). With the novels she made, she has earned several awards and recognition from different award-giving bodies in the field of literature that even included the Pulitzer Prize for the year 1988 (â€Å"Toni Morrison: Biography,† 1993).Summary of the Novel In Morrison’s novel, â€Å"The Bluest Eye,† Pecola has shown to be a girl who is born to parents who lived difficult lives in their past. Pecola’s mother, Pauline, has lived in isolation, often beaten up by his husband who she often provokes to do such, and only feels worth at work where she is made t o clean the house of a White woman. On the other hand, Pecola’s father, Cholly, is a drunkard whose current state of misery is blamed to his parents abandoning him when he was still a child.He is made to live with his great aunt and an experience he could not forget is the incident where he felt humiliated when to White men caught him cohabiting and sexually exploited him. Soon, he found where his father is but the latter refused to take him in his life and later on met Pauline. They built a life together but soon, love is lost between them and they have both lost everything they had. Pecola came to their lives but she has also received failures from the personal angst of her parents.She has adopted the desires of being White from her mother as they both think that it is their only way to draw acceptance from the society they live in. It has served as an important part of their lives to desire for the physical features of a White individual because it somehow gives them hopes of being in a better condition than what they have now. However, it gives them frustrations, too, as society continuously rejects them and presses on their being Black as the very reason why they are treated badly. As for the miseries of Cholly, he ends up raping Pecola out of both guilt and emotional feelings for his child.Pecola becomes pregnant but the baby dies and her father decides to rape her for the second time. After this, she becomes lunatic which is the time when she thought that she had the bluest eye there is. Approach to the Novel The novel, during the time of its publication, has taken a different course from the usual ones taken by the Black women writers, who, in their literary works, meant to â€Å"destroy negative stereotypes of Black women, to present the relationship between Black men and women as ‘complimentary,’ and to affirm the Black family and community† (Dubey, 1994, p.33). It has been exceptionally regarded as a literary piece that ha s laid before its audience the problems within the selves of the Black community that requires attention in order for them to proceed into accepting that they are a race equally superior and equally beautiful as the White (Dubey, 1994). While they condemn the disparities between the White and the Blacks, within them are the desires to be among the White people.Their condemnations arise from the issues they have with regard to their acceptance in a society dominated by the White people and they see that assimilation to this particular culture is the means through which they could fight it but is actually not. As shown in the novel of Morrison, it is best to realize the psychological and social impacts of the desires to be White in order to fully acquire an identity for the Black community (Dubey, 1994).Moreover, it should be understood that the work of Morrison requires an understanding of the history of the Black community as they tried to establish a place for their selves in the s ociety where they live in. There is a common factor which should be targeted, which is the presence of direct and indirect discrimination against the Black community. Through time, it has become apparent that there is really a big difference with how White and Black individuals are treated. Moreover, the source for the discrimination felt by the Blacks should be understood in order to understand the novel.This is because the source of the Black characters in the story stems from a real-life dilemma that is not explicitly stated in the text. There is a need to unravel the true cause for the behavior of the characters in order to understand the way they feel and the way they are in terms of their relationship with society. Traditional beliefs, Practices, and Artistic Forms â€Å"The Bluest Eye† also contains elements of traditional beliefs, practices, and artistic forms in the later life of Pecola.When she became pregnant, Claudia and Frieda McTeer, children of the couples whom Pecola lived with, used their money in order to buy marigold seeds. They believed that if this would bear flowers, then the baby of Pecola would live, which is what they wanted despite the opposite stance of the people in their community. The money they used in order to buy the seeds is originally meant for the bicycle they wanted to buy for themselves but because of the importance and great belief they put on this practice, they prioritized the seeds instead of the bike.Their belief on this particular practice is further reinforced as the plant does not bloom and the baby of Pecola dies, which they could correlate because of the incident. Moreover, it has shown that the artistic manner of communication by the Blacks has been adopted by Morrison. The author wants to present the â€Å"aural literature† as she deliberately formed the sentences in such a way that a Black individual will be heard conversing to the audience and to other characters.To a certain extent, it pushes t he approach away from the typical written language but delves more into the spoken language (â€Å"Toni Morrison,† 2009). While there are critics who mentioned that â€Å"her prose is rich,† she claims that it is an inherent quality of the Black language (â€Å"Toni Morrison,† 2009). She treats the manner of speaking observed from the Black people to be a distinct and different set of language that forms a body of its own as modifications and creations have evolved to how they use this language now.Moreover, it is said that the novel and other literary pieces written in the same manner has replaced the role of music played by the Blacks before (â€Å"Toni Morrison,† 2009). However, replacement may not be the term intended for this but rather, they simply shared the same portion and works towards the same goals, because of the same purpose, but uses different means. Preserving the Black Language With the manner by which the author structured the words and the sentences, the Black language has become apparent throughout the text.The rich and poetic form that is embodied in the language of the Blacks is an element that the author wants to retain. This lies beneath the psychological and social themes of incest, racial discrimination, and desires to be White. It tries to preserve the approach of this language developed within this race through the experiences of the characters and the conversations included in the story. It has been mentioned earlier that the different forms of Black music has shared a role with the literary pieces in keeping the culture alive for the Black community.With the onset of popular culture and the desires for assimilation, it is important that the unique characteristics and the distinct nature of the Black culture be preserved together with their history and unique experiences. Adopting other Cultures and Traditions As the author means to direct the entire story towards the Black community, most of the culture s and traditions that have been presented come from that of the Blacks. However, it still relates the Black culture into the White because of the interaction between the two that served as the important aspect of the paper.The only element that is taken from the White culture is the seemingly distorted and limited view of beauty, which requires them to see it within a white-skinned, blonde, and blue-eyed individual. Better treatment and the regard for superiority of people fitting this description has been ingrained into the lives of the Black characters as it is adopted from the White culture. This is seen to be the condition of the people during the time of the narrator’s existence but is constantly changing as we now see it. References Dubey, M. (1994).Black women novelists and the nationalist aesthetic. Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press. Foerstel, H. (2002). Banned in the USA: A reference guide to book censorship in schools and public libraries. (2nd Ed. ). Westp ort, CT: Greenwood Publishing. Toni Morrison: Biography. (1993). Retrieved April 1, 2009, from http://nobelprize. org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1993/morrison-bio. html. Toni Morrison â€Å"The Bluest Eye. † Retrieved April 1, 2009, from http://academic. brooklyn. cuny. edu/english/melani/cs6/morrison. html#black.

Human Resource Cultural Due Diligence Business Essay - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 3 Words: 980 Downloads: 9 Date added: 2017/06/26 Category Business Essay Type Essay any type Did you like this example? 1. Company Organization Management 2. General Human Resource Programs 3. Hiring and Employment Policy 4. Labor Relations Activity 5. Compensation Perquisite Practices 6. Overview of Benefit Programs 7. Retirement, Profit Sharing, Savings Plans 8. Group Insurance 9. Equal Employment Opportunity 10. Occupational Safety Health 11. External Environmental Factors 12. Corporate Culture Company Organization Management 1. Evaluation Factors a) Organization Structure: i) Mission Statement ii) Functional Reporting relationships iii) Position responsibilities iv) Administrative reporting relationships v) Interface with union representatives, government agencies, etc. vi) Regional/plant personnel functions (not reporting to corporate) b) Scope of department responsibilities authority: i) Key sub functions ii) Ad hoc tasks and responsibilities iii) Policy-making capabilities] iv) Bargaining unit negotiations c) Prof iles of key management: i) Personal profiles (names, positions, education, etc.) ii) Skills and talents iii) Attitudes toward achievement iv) Historical data on experience and background v) Areas of responsibility vi) Intention to continue after merger/acquisition vii) Compensation history (cash, equity, and deferred arrangements) viii) Contractual arrangements ix) Personal, noncontractual arrangements d) Employee payroll records e) Payroll history f) Physical office arrangements/sufficient space g) Human Resource operating budget: i) Allocations ii) Performance to plan iii) Historical iv) Planning process 2. Considerations a) Internal external reputation of department management b) Type and strength of management control: i) Centralization ii) Formality iii) Participative decision-making iv) Autonomy c) Leadership qualities d) Necessity for additional management following acquisition e) Competency and adequacy of current management f) Adequacy of department staff members g) Lines of succession h) Morale, work climate, and motivation levels i) Level of work commitment j) Team orientation k) Compatibility of management styles between companies l) Attitude of company management toward risk m) Authority structure and degrees of responsibility at each hierarchical level n) Inter and intra-departmental conflict o) Formal vs. informal organizational structure 3. Data Sources a) Organization charts b) Position descriptions c) Compensation records d) Personnel files e) Management contracts f) Personnel policies and procedures manual g) Operations (policy) manuals h) Operations budget i) Human Resource information systems i) Management reports (turnover, FTE, merit increases, absence, etc.) General Human Resource Programs 1. Evaluation Factors a) Existence of employee development (training) programs: i) 1st 2nd line supervisors ii) Managers iii) Degree of company commitment iv) All employees v) Program documentation b) EEO/Affirmative Action Program (See Section 9) c) Management succession program d) Employee education programs: i) Annual costs ii) Reimbursement scope iii) Level of employee participation iv) Employee scholarships v) Eligibility e) Safety programs (See Section 10) f) Communication programs: i) ii) Hot Line telephone iii) House organs/newspapers/employee publicity iv) Quality circles and the like v) Employee orientation practices vi) Attitude surveys g) Community relations/public relations programs/scholarship funds h) Policies and procedures i) Compensation practices (See Section 5) j) Benefit programs (See Sections 6, 7, 8) k) Relocation allowances l) Computerized data sources and information m) Use of outside consultants n) Employee Assistance (EAP and Grievance programs 2. Employee services i) Physical fitness programs ii) Recreation iii) Social programs iv) Parking v) Credit Union b) Employee food services: i) In-house facilities (cafeteria, eating areas, etc.) ii) Neighborhood restaurants 3. Considerations a) Quality and professionalism of employee programs b) Fairness of application and eligibility c) Degree o mechanization and /or computerization d) Comprehensiveness of company policies e) Staffing vs. use of outside services f) Efficiency of computer resources g) Availability and quality of in-house medical staff 4. Data Sources a) Personnel policies and procedures manual b) Administration and operating (policy) manuals c) Employee handbooks d) Employee announcements and memoranda e) Accident log (5 years) COMPANY CULTURE 1. Basic Driving Force of Business a) For example, but not limited to technology, research, marketing, service, finance, other b) Are there Corporate value s and what are they? c) What is vision/strategic intent? d) Are their values reflected/ contradicted in their compensation system 2. Operating environment a) Short/Long term orientation b) Degree of entrepreneurialism c) How far along are they in TQM initiatives? d) Level of competition (how competitive in the market) e) Extent of competitive advantages f) How structured is decision-making process? g) Degree of complexity of company (example: conglomerate, global, different business) h) Commitment to employee health and safety i) Employee involvement j) Risk taking atmosphere k) Degree of accountability and responsibility given employees at different levels l) Concern of social responsibility m) Labor relations philosophy 3. Life Style Indicators a) Travel and entertainment practices b) Working environment c) Company car practices d) Management perquisites e) Distinctions between levels of management 4. Organization a) Flat/hierarchical team/empowerment practices b) Centralized/decentralized c) Formalized leadership development/succession planning d) Turnover/senior management and key employees e) Time in position / senior managers f) Recruitment practices internal external g) Profile of Human Resources h) Degree of computerization i) Paternalistic versus low involvement j) Task versus people oriented k) Bureaucratic versus informal l) Generalist versus specialist m) Composition of board n) Procedures used in employee selection o) Promote from within versus hire from outside p) Long service versus up and out q) Degree of diversity 5. Interpersonal Style a) Formal / informal b) Leadership styles c) Communication approaches (bulletin board/ TV/ Newsletters, MBWA/ annual reports, d) etc.) e) Employee morale indicators (demeanor of employees/management treatment of f) employees/ treatment of customers) g) Chemistry between current company leadership team and target team 6. Reward Recognition a) Fixed/variable compensation b) Compensation policy practice c) Equity position of senior/key managers d) Celebration of success e) Promotion criteria 7. Data Sources a) Company mission/vision/strategic intent statements b) Strategic Plan c) Values statements d) Human Resources statements on mission/vision/intent e) Annual report f) Recruitment literature g) Minutes of executive committee h) Job Evaluation System i) Leadership and succession planning descriptions/plans j) Attitude survey k) Human Resource Policy Manual l) Performance Review forms m) Travel entertainment policy n) Dress code o) TQM literature p) Training guides/records q) Organization charts r) Employee publications s) Minutes of sessions with trade unions t) Suggestion system Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "Human Resource Cultural Due Diligence Business Essay" essay for you Create order