Monday, September 24, 2012

electronic discovery services

Electronic Discovery Services 

The process of pursuing, safeguarding, siring and exploring the electronic info in order to use it for further important processes like criminal cases is called as electronic discovery. This activity has many benefits as it can be easily done without or with the help of internet, as all you need is a database collecting system. Electronic discovery services are important as they enable customers as well as partners to be able to employ electronic discovery platform with an aim of reducing the cost and the risk of electronic discovery . The suite of services is designed with an objective of optimizing and streamlining all vital stages of electronic discovery . They include identification, preservation, processing, collection, analysis, production and review among others . 

It is important to note that electronic discovery services are developed and later on delivered by consultants that are highly trained and experienced . The consultants are dedicated in order to ensure that electronic discovery process is optimal . The services are performed both onsite in order to ensure that all the precise needs are accommodated . Some of the services include the following .
First comes the case intelligence . The costs associated with the process and all the important information is collected in case intelligence, so as to shape the process wisely. This kind of services ensures that test search strategies have been reviewed to avoid any reduction in information volumes . Additionally, there is quick access to information to ensure no exposure of data is done at any given time . The other important electronic discovery service is the collection which entails so many things . Here, there are experienced specialists who are used to ensure that identity and collection of legal proceedings have been done . Active information and other archival forms of media are collected onsite .

Processing is an important part here due to the variety of electronic discovery services involved. This is where accurate and reliable evidence is processed so as to be given to the clients . There is control of client review preparation and this in turn helps in reducing any de-duplication and other strategies such as file culling . From the review services, clients are provided with efficient reviews and this in turn helps in saving time and money . This is mostly because, there is secure review hosting which helps in enabling clients search, organize and later on be able to discard defensibly . 

Now comes the service of production, in which the productions are done in a timely manner. Here, the productions are strict and this means that the information produced is strictly confidential preventing any 3rd parties from laying hands on the data . Lastly, there is the project management service in which technical skills, strong communication and legal expertise is provided . Hence, the client can have a good enough idea about the project complexities. This service ensures that the project scope has been managed in order to ensure on-time delivery to the required people . Hence, proper maintenance of projects is ensured under project managements.

 

Thursday, September 20, 2012

Electronic Discovery Litigation

Electronic Discovery Litigation 

Electronic discovery litigation refers to the process of suing a certain individual or an organization, when something wrong is done by them, which is against the law. This process provides a complete solution which helps in solving the most pressing challenges and this in turn helps in reduction of time, cost and the overall complexity of electronic discovery . The best thing of using this kind of process is that; you will be in a perfect position to eliminate the costly as well as time consuming movement of information between numerous dissimilar tools, there is lower processing costs and time which is up to about eighty percent, there is reduced review volume up to about ninety percent and lastly, there is transparency reporting to ensure there is reduced court sanctions T. 

Those, who are denying or supporting the specific claims ought to share their information with each party, as this is one of the rules under electronic discovery litigation. Additionally, written transcripts of various interrogations, depositions, electronic information and documents pertaining to the case must be shared as much as possible . There can’t be any claims, which get unevaluated or unchecked, as there is a requirements of extent of injuries, and any kind of property on which the claim has to be made. There are few more important steps in the process of litigation which has been discussed in subsequent article. Go on and read about them before taking any decision in order to make your choice better. 

The first step includes a pre trail in which a person is filed against, for any unlawful activity under electronic discovery litigation. If there is no agreement to resolve the conflict, it means litigation is a must in that, the plaintiff will file a complaint with the court and the copy given to the other party . At this point, the defendant will be provided with time to respond to the complaint in which he might choose to settle the case . Hence, in this situation, the case may stop, else it will resume to the next step. 

Now, the representation process will take place. The complete process happens with complete transparency, as mentioned earlier, in the presence of both parties and their representatives. Now the attorneys will share the information among them to take the case to the next level. Expert witnesses are located in order to testify for the two sides concerning the technical issues . The evidence will be gathered and this in turn leads to the next step which is trial . 

One important thing to note here is that even a single judge is sufficient to hold the trail. The bench of jury will be selected by the two parties themselves based on their experience, friendliness and legal information after they both talk to the judges. Here, both sides will present their evidence in which the plaintiff’s side is given the first priority . In this way the case will finally come to an end after all the formalities related to proofs and witnesses have taken place, and the jury listens to the complete arguments from both sides. The jury then gives their verdict.

 

Monday, July 30, 2012

All that you should know about Performance Budgeting

The linking of performance with the funds that is to be received by someone is known as performance budgeting. The better you perform the better funding you will get next time round. Performance budgeting is another fancy term used for performance appraisal. Here you link your pay with your performance. In public sector performance budgeting is used to show the definite link between outcomes of services and funds provided by the people.

It becomes necessary to think logically in a planned economy in terms of budgeting in both the ways as in context of nearest link in a well-integrated system of planning programming and budgeting and also as a tool of management. For organization it provides a system of information for decision making, coordination, evaluation and control to the appropriate levels

Outcomes and outputs are more important in this form of budgeting rather than inputs. Potential future based results decide the allocation of funds and resources. Performance budgets place priority on employees' commitment to produce positive results, particularly in the public sector. It is also a useful tool for the government to evaluate itself. Performnce budgeting is the smart way to put the fears of public on rest as they are nowadays focusing more on government’s efforts. 

To improve the public sector efficiency and performance as well as expenditure control is the objective of performance budgeting.

Types of performance budgeting

Broadly performance budgeting is divided in to three types:
  1. Presentational performance budgeting: The documents present the performance details. Its main use is just to extract information and it play no role in the activities which involves decision making. They are generally Government stamped budget documents.
  2. Performance informed budgeting: It is an important part of the budget decision making process, but not in terms of allocated resources and the like. It is more or less related to future performance or past performance.
  3. Direct performance budgeting: In this you allocate resources based on past performance. But this is limited only to a few parts of the public sector.
How is performance information used for budgeting
Many countries include tons of non-financial data in their budget documents, but this doesn’t imply that it is used to make budget decisions. But for this non-financial data to be translated to some budget decision, the performance information from the previous budget is needed.
To make a start budget should be put up in a way that will look into how and why money is allocated and does it produce desired outcomes or results. Generally this can be gauged from public surveys. For quite a lot of countries, this has meant changing the entire budget preparation process.
How is performance budgeting put into practice
Performance budgeting has various aspects.
  1. Top down: In developing and aiding reform central Government or ministries play the central role.
  2. Bottom-up: The agents of change is acted by individual civil service societies or organizations.
  3. Incremental changes In order to avoid lump sum benefit in one shot new reform is introduced step by step.
  4. Big bang approach Most of the reforms are overnight institutionalized. This increase the chances of failure.

These performance budgeting norms are creating waves in many countries and are becoming an important part of the state’s institution.

Thursday, July 26, 2012

All That You Should Know About ezshare

The amount of data floating around these days Is copious with very minimum means to manage and share it. Its significance increases all the more as data sharing and filtering has become an important part of our daily collaboration with the clients. Clients in this case can be any client from either litigation support to just healthcare systems.

The ultimate tool for connecting to your computer is eZshare Pro. You can easily access all the important documents, music, photos and other files as well as control and view your desktop as if you are sitting in front of it.

Relief here is provided by Ezshare. For collaboration and information sharing it is a virtual workroom. Collaboration in this context will mean that it implies total management of a client’s case. Ezshare keeps a tab on everything, starting from contact details of the client to the latest scripts of the chat you had with him/her. Things become easy to share as soon as it becomes digitized. It also acts as a common tool which will be present with all the members of the team, it is aplus point. Planning with each other becomes effective. It is built on the Microsoft 2010 SharePoint Technology.

Following are the features of eZshare
  1. Role-based security: The data cannot be accessed by everyone all the time. Data access is limited to only certain people with the required credentials.
  2. Web-based: Guess about this feature. Web-based implies that it is accessible 24x7! You need to just go online, log into your SharePoint and check out whatever data it is that you need.
  3. Contextual search of documents: As the data is digitized it makes sense to think that it can be manipulated or searched easily. There is a search function available which will modify your search in different parameters and hence now you don’t have to go through documents just to find yours at the end of the pile.
  4. Customized: There is content reach dashboards which will keep your information right in front of your eyes and it is customizable to meet your various requirements. This is a very sought after feature. You can design your page yourself, for whatever you want to see when you log in.
Some added benefits
  1. Familiar SharePoint Environment: The learning curve is pretty low, as it is built on Microsoft Share Point 2010 and been used by industry though not in the same manner. The costs will be reduced significantly as you don’t have to spent much in training the staff for this software, it is pretty simple to use.
  2. Easy to use Information Warehousing: The data pertaining to a particular client is stored at one location and hence sharing becomes easy. If any issue arises it offers centralized troubleshooting and it is effective in data and case management.
  3. Online Integration: Another integrated web server which is available is web app server. Without any native downloading application you can quickly view browser, the functionality is already present.
In order to get more information just type ezshare in Google and check the first few web pages. You will get to know about the usage of this tool.

Sunday, July 22, 2012

Healthcare Records Management – An Informative Guide

Health care providers or hospitals keep comprehensive records of the patients that come for treatment. There is a record maintained for every step of the patient’s treatment, starting from the time he/she enters the hospital to the time he/she is discharged. These records are nothing but the prescriptions, the X-Rays, other reports such as CT scans, Electro Cardio-grams, (ECGs), blood reports and bills.
Of recent, healthcare records are becoming digitized so that every prescription given to you has a digital copy in the hospital’s database. In some countries, courts have also stipulated that by the end of 2014, all records of patients have to be digitized.
How Does The health care records management works?
Some firms pick up paper records from your hospital or health care provider and convert them to digital media. The process involves creating a repository of all the document data in the form of scans and they also create formats to store the videos of ultra sound or a surgery videos. to document the data in this case means to scan prescriptions, x-rays or anything else to be saved on a computer.
Why is HealthCare Records Management important

To keep the healthcare records management in vogue these days there are multiple reasons. A few of them are:
  1. Ease of use: The digitized version make the act of sorting data easy as the reports can be traced by typing the name of the patient or by typing the name of the illness or by mentioning there the year of treatment. In order to get to the relevant data in electronic database any criteria can be used to sort through it.

  2. Security: It is highly secured and can be seen by the only the concerned doctor. Also records can be shared with other doctors only with prior signed permission from you and your doctor.

  3. Savings: Keeping it digitized doesn’t cause hold ups in generation of bills and other necessary items. It saves time and cost! Your laboratory tests will come straight to the hospital via email, and will reduce your effort in doing the same. Of course there will be an option of yours collecting it too, should you wish to go in person.

  4. Mapping diseases to prevent spread of epidemics or to identify especially virulent conditions It is easier to access data across sectors. Data across public services organizations, healthcare records services and human services organizations can be mapped to check for any possible mass spread of diseases or epidemics data across public services organizations, healthcare records services and human services organizations can be mapped In order to check any possible mass spread of diseased or epidemics. It can also check if any particular area or locality is vulnerable to a particular type of disease year on year.
What should I look for in a healthcare records management services provider

Most of the information is available online. So the best thing to do is to Google your requirement. Type “HealthCare records management” in the Google search bar, it will give you lots of hits. Check the results links one after the other. After you have narrowed down on one, verify their security policies and service charges\After scrutinizing many once you narrow down to one, then the next step will be to check the security policies and services charges of the firm you selected. Most of these providers also provide database maintenance and upgrading. There are also lifetime contracts available with some firms. It does make sense as it is cheaper and we all know that digitization is here to stay.

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Electronic discovery services-what is it all about

The way we access, modify or append electrically stored information is known Electronic discovery services or e-discovery services. It is a process or a method of selection. Any data available in digitized form is Electronic discovery services or e-discovery services. So it can mean anything from your email account’s password to your latest Facebook post. It is the collection of your information on the internet or web. The online footprint of people is increasing because they have started gaining more and more access to internet.
One thing to be considered is that it is just not about what you put online voluntarily which is termed as electronic data. It is also the details that the HR department of your company has on you as an employee. Simply put, if your data is digitized, you are easier to get hold of, literally.
What is the relevance of Electronic discovery services?
litigation support, lawyers and attorneys are some of the cases where it is used. They have simplified their workflow to a great deal.
Electrnoics discovery services – what does it have
There are 3 parts with the help of which Electronics discovery services can be explained.
  1. Data processing: videos, audios, emails, text, websites, blogs etc is the form of online data. Electronic discovery services are required to process this data at real- time speed. It also includes scanning of documents.
  2. Data collection and data preservation: The online footprint of the people that you will engage with in litigation or court, the collection of their data is done by using electronic discovery services. Data preservation is nothing but storage and use of data. Data identification is also a part of this. This means sorting relevant data from the entire lot.
  3. Data analysis and filtering: it is almost like data identification, except that data which has been segregated is also analyzed keeping an end result in mind.

How do I find the best vendor for electronic discovery services?
Here is some tried and tested means to find out the relevant information. Search and google it for electronic discovery services. Then move ahead to the vendor of your choice as many companies offer these services and have a user friendly site and even the numbers of customer care are available.

Next step to be followed is to ask around. Even if you haven’t had the time to Google this, ask people who you know use these services frequently. First hand review is always useful and reliable. If you visit litigation firm regularly then ask your contacts to provide you with some reference of electronic discovery service provider.

Once you have shortlisted few that fulfils your requirement then the next step will be the take a thorough look of their websites. Most service offerings along with what it will cost you are generally available online. Whichever firm you select, please check for the following information.

  1. The data might be of very sensitive nature hence just see for the confidentiality clauses in the agreement.
  2. Technical prowess and technology at their disposal.
  3. Hours which as consultants they spend with you and if many hours are wasted on frills and formalities in your very first meeting that don’t forget next time you will be paying for it.
This guide to electronic discovery will help you ease out your work to a considerable extent.

Thursday, July 5, 2012

What Do You Want To Know About Trial Consulting?


Jury consulting and litigation consulting are the other two terms by which people know trial consulting. However, of recent since many cases get settled out of court, people prefer the term trial consulting or litigation consulting as opposed to jury consulting.


Trial consulting is nothing but the use of social science experts or social scientists, clinical psychologists and communication experts to support lawyers in a trial. Earlier trial consultants were hired for selecting the jury in a trial. But now the trial consultants have increased the scope of their services. Trial consulting has been around since several years, but it has gathered speed only in the recent past. This is mainly because of the huge amount of remuneration for the services of a trial consultant. His remuneration is generally at par with the lawyer or some of the reputed trial consultants may charge even higher than a lawyer.

Define the role of trial consultant

A trial consultant’s job broadly falls under three main things.

  1. Picking the jury: A trial consultant generally has a bucket list of which all can be possible jurors. They then go through this list to single out those who can understand the dynamics in the case and would be on their side. By their experience they can tell which juror will be in the best position to understand your case point of view and thus have a favorable outcome.

  2. Working with witnesses and evidence: The important task of preparing the witness before the litigation starts is done by these trial consultants only. Doing mock trials with them so that they don’t lose confidence in the last minute. A nervous witness can have a negative impact on your case and the trial consultant ensures that this doesn’t happen. They create almost a trial like environment in front of the witness! It also concerns readying evidence and exhibits to be presented in court during the trial. Researching precedents of the case or the situation also forms the part of trial consulting.

  3. Deciding on trial strategy: The trial consultant will decide by their experience when to bring which witness or evidence in front of the jury to get the maximum benefit. They know the working and thinking style of a juror and know how to engage them. They try to understand which juror can be engaged and how. More often than not, it’s not witnesses and evidence but an incompetent trial strategy that loses cases. Their decisions are based on their research and experience form the cases they have gone through throughout their professional life. Also to minimize costs, they work closely with the attorneys, so that they are aware of every little thing in the case.

A trial consultant also looks towards the financial aspects of the case. The trial consultants also keep in mind the resources used in the case that is the economics of the case. This will not only save the money but also a lot of time for the client.

What are the basic qualifications to be trial consultant?
As was mentioned earlier, trial consultants are clinical psychologists, social scientists, communication expert, psychiatrists etc all with a basic understanding of the law and knowledge of the industry that the trial deals with. To understand this, we can take the example of a case that involves the harassment of an employee at an IT firm. To get into the groove of the case, the trial consultant must have the knowledge of the policies followed in an IT firm along with dealing with the psyche of the employee. It is understood that it’s not possible to know about all sectors. The research part is the essence of the entire process of trial consulting.
Along with the eagerness to learn a potential trial consultant must have a problem solving attitude and the ability to interpret the things in the requisite manner.

When do you need to engage trial consultants?
The most in vogue variety of cases that trial consultants are associated with are copyrights suits, art forgery and health care. In fact the list of cases that a trial consult deals is quite large. Some of the other cases involve government regulations, gender and racial discrimination, personal loss to body, environmental and ecological safety cases, property or reputation, any professional malpractice, infrastructure and many more.

What else can trial consultants’ do?
You don’t need to ask your law firm to hire yourself a trial consultant. They have their own in-house attorneys and lawyers as well. Trial consulting organizations can fully function in the law field if they choose to be an independent body. I Ordinary people hesitate engaging the law firms they can look for help from the trial consultants and solve their problems . The litigation companies can then refer the lawyers and attorneys keeping the demands in mind.

If the case is very important for you and you can’t afford to take risk with it, going for trial consulting will surely increase your chances.

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

All That You Want To Know About Healthcare Records Management

Each and every hospital needs to keep a comprehensive record of every single patient coming there for treatment. From the time that the patient sets foot in the hospital, to the time that he is discharged, there are records substantiating every step of their treatment. These records are the prescriptions, the X-Rays, other reports such as CT scans, Electro Cardio-grams (ECGs) and bills.

Healthcare records management has been made compulsory by law. However, of recent, these records are becoming digitized. Technology has simplified this process to large limits as these records are now kept in digital forms. Also owing to the large number of patients and volumes of such records, it makes it all the more necessary to digitize this data so that sorting through data, drawing up precedents or making changes in a previous prescription is easier. A number of courts have also stipulated that by the end of 2014, all records of patients that have till now existed on paper need to be converted to complete electronic records. A healthcare records management system will help you follow all the guidelines issued by the law regarding storage of records.

Tha latest advancements in technology have allowed the hospitals to digitize records simultaneously when they are created. But a good healthcare records management system is extremely important for the regular upkeep of the older records and their conversion to digital form.

What does health care records management consist ofWhat is health care records management all about?

There are companies that carry out health care records management. They pick up the paper records from your hospital or health care provider and convert them to digital media. A repository of all the data present in the documents is made through scanning and different formats are used to store this data that varies from a simple X-Ray report to an ultrasound video to the highly sophisticated surgery videos. Document data in this case means prescriptions, x-rays or anything else that has to be scanned to be saved on a computer.

When all this task is done, the healthcare records management service providers delivers the records in both forms to the hospitals.

Advantages of using healthcare records management system

There are several advantages of using a healthcare records management system like.
  1. You can easily scan through the hospital records to find information about nay patient or his illness. Since it is an electronic database, any criteria can be used to sort through it and get to the relevant data.

  2. The information in digital form is secured from any unauthorized access and use.

  3. In case the hospital wants to transfer the case to some other specialized hospital, all the records can be easily transferred avoiding any delays.

  4. Keeping it digitized doesn’t cause hold ups in generation of bills and other necessary items. It saves time and cost!

  5. It is easier to access data across sectors. Data across public services organizations, healthcare records services and human services organizations can be mapped to check for any possible mass spread of disease. This helps them to formulate health care plans keeping in mind their specific needs.

  6. Your laboratory tests will come straight to the hospital via email, and will reduce your effort in doing the same.

What should I look for in a healthcare records management services providers?

If you don’t know where to ask about this, the ideal thing to do is to Google your requirement. Just type in “HealthCare records management” and you will get the list of all the major service providers. You can visit their individual websites and get into touch with them either through phone or e-mail. Most of the information is available online. Ask the selected service provider to disclose their privacy and security policies along with the charges. Also check if the service provider provides database management service or not.

A healthcare records management system is just the system that you need to manage your hospital efficiently. There is just the initial cost of converting previous data that is on paper to electronic data. The new records get stored directly into the database. It helps you integrate data across various platforms that are used to store data. For example, a healthcare provider can have providers in various parts of the country. This data can be easily integrated into a central database with the help of a central platform. It would be much easier to study trends and figures from such a centralized database. There is a lot of technology around that can be leveraged for this purpose.

Last but not the least; it makes data compilation, processing and usage simpler than past practices. Along with this, it also ensures that you are being given the timely treatment and fixes the responsibility of the treating staff

Thursday, June 21, 2012

What Should I Know About Electronic Discovery Services?


Electronic discovery services or e-discovery services are the method of choice today to deal with electrically stored information. The most important reason of the popularity of e- discovery services is the online availability. With more and more going online today, it is surely the best way to access information. This in turn is increasing their online footprint. Online footprint can be described as anything from your emails, blogs, videos, YouTube uploads to Facebook posts. All this contributes to electronically stored information.







To sum it up, we can say that a company has your electronically stored data if it has,
  1. Your name,
  2. Address,
  3. Your current designation in your company,
  4. Your past performance ratings,
  5. Current designation,
  6. Job description,
  7. Information on hobbies, like and dislikes etc.

The user group of Electronic discovery consists of litigation firms, attorneys and lawyers.


Are there any sub-parts to electronic discovery services?

Electronicdiscovery services include several important parts. Read on to know more about them and have a better understanding:

  1. Data processing
    1. The data present in the form of online blogs, audios, videos and texts. All this data needs to be processed at a high speed and thus the electronic discovery services should have relevant technology.
    2. Even the relevant documents are also scrutinized and are sorted out later under data processing.
    3. A sound electronic delivery system should be able to manage all these tasks efficiently.
  2. Data collection and data preservation
    1. Access to electronically stored data becomes important when you are about to start a litigation. Such data is thus electronically stores and is called data preservation to give your case a sure shot advantage as you already know the parties you are going to deal with.
    2. Data collection also entails data identification. The staff at the electronic discovery service provider is expert in scrutinizing the relevant data from a vast data pool.
  3. Data analysis and filtering
    1. Identification of data is followed by its careful analysis. Preliminary analysis of relevant data might reveal some interesting facts.
    2. After the preliminary analysis of the data is completed, a further and in depth analysis is required to extract maximum information from the available data keeping in mind the purpose of the litigation.

Why should I use electronic discovery services, when my staff can do the same work?

There is a simple reply to this; it saves cost to the company! All the steps involved in the whole process right from the collection, identification, preservation and analysis are more or less done online. This is surely better than sending your staff to personally visit the location and collect information manually who may face resistance in people divulging their personal information to a stranger.

Electronicdiscovery services are only just catching up and like with anything new it takes time to gain confidence of the people around. More and more people are getting to know of the advantages of taking electronic discovery services. It is not hacking in to any system or database. This is not so, as it is almost like making a request and court intervention can be made to collect this data if such request is denied.

How do I find the best vendor for electronic discovery services?
You can go through any of the following suggested ways to find the best electronic discovery provider:
  1. Google electronic discovery services. The easiest and the best way to find a good electronic discovery provider is surely the internet and you can get a list of almost all the service providers in a few seconds.
  2. The second best way is to ask around. Even your litigation firm can suggest some good service provider. Then check out their services either by visiting them or asking for more opinions around.
  3. You need to perform extreme caution in deciding the final service provider and if you can keep following some points in mind, you won’t have too much of difficulty:
    1. Check for the credentials of the electronic discovery service provider and look for some previous clients and references. However, you may find it a bit difficult as people are usually discrete about these services. Even in this case, you can assure them to keep their references confidential and try to get a reference.
    2. Evaluate the service providers based on the amount of time that they spend with you. As a client you have every right to know the source of their information.
    3. Draw up a contract with the electronic discovery services provider clearly stating confidentiality clause and ownership of data clause. Towards the end of the litigation, all data used for the case and also that considered irrelevant should reside with you.

In the current environment of technology beating any and every evidence, electronic discovery services can just be the things that you need in order to turn the tides in your favor.

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Government Budgeting – How It Works


Budget word has been taken from the French word 'Budgette', that signifies 'wallet' or 'Leather bag'.A government budget is to be passed at two stages, first by legislature and then approval should be taken by the president or chief executive and all this is to be done because it is a legal document. This document shows Government’s revenue and expenditure incurred during the financial year, 1st April to 31st March.
The financial performance of the government can be traced in the document and hence it is one of the most vital document. The plan of the government with respect to finances is also presented in the document. People of India, ranging from a common man to the one’s having seat In Parliament wait for the budget to be presented because of the following reasons:
  1. It gives crystal clear information about the Government’s performance over the past financial year.
  2. It helps you determine financial policies and programs of Government for the next financial year.
  3. To assess how the standard of living will be affected by Government budgeting for the next whole financial year.


Government budgeting is done at all levels, central, state or local. The decisions are taken on behalf of people through civil bodies. The other basis on which government budgeting is done are social, economical, political and regional. The other factors on which the budgeting depends are the monetary policies, fiscal policies, trade policies etc. The main intention behind preparing a budget is to the raise the revenue earned than the expenditure in a fiscal year.
In words of Mary Landrieu, a government budget should reflect the values and priorities of a nation and its people. The facts of the budgeting of UK government are stated below
  1. The UK fiscal year ends on March 31 of following calendar years. Thus, UK budget for fiscal or financial year 2012 would cover period from April 1, 2012 to March 31, 2013.
  2. A month before the fiscal year starts the budget is presented in UK i.e. in march. Government decided on the proportions by summers.
  3. The prime minister has a complete control over the sessions of the parliament and hence as a result quick action on the budget is taken.
  4. Each department submits their individual funding request. This request is termed ‘Main Supply Estimates to HM Treasury. Then the consolidation of data takes places after which it is released under the following name, ‘Central Government Supply Estimates: Main Supply Estimates’.
  5. The UK Government hold back the right to put forward ‘Supplementary Estimates’ in spring and winters of the fiscal years so that the agencies can be updated about the total spending of the current year. In addition to ‘Supplementary Estimates’, agencies also need to submit ‘Estimate Memorandum’ to the oversight committee justifying and describing the changes.
Government budgeting and its components
Rene Storum rightly defined budget as a document that contains introduction approved plan of public expenditures and revenues. According to Rene Storum, "A budget is a document containing a preliminary approved plan of public revenues and expenditure”.
The two components of Government budgeting are:
  1. Revenue budget: Revenue Budget - The financial statement compiles together all the revenue receipts. It is the revenue collected by the means of receipts and taxes.
  • Revenue receipts: This is earned by Government from all possible sources in the course of governance. There is no decrease in the assets and these receipts are free from liabilities. These can be classified as follows:
  1. Tax revenues: This income is collected from various taxes and duties. This forms the major part of public revenue. There are 2 different types of taxes: Direct taxes which include estate duty, corporation tax, property tax and income tax and indirect taxes include excise duty, custom duties, sales tax and service tax
  2. Non-Tax revenues: The government also collect revenue from several other non tax sources. Some of them are fines and penalties, fees, profit from public enterprises, grants and gifts.
  • Revenue expenditure: Revenue expenditure is the sum-total of expenses incurred on normal day-to-day expenses. This includes both non-developmental and developmental expenditures by Central Government.
  1. Capital Budget: This portion of budget includes expenditure and receipts on the capital account that is projected for the coming financial year. Capital expenditure and capital revenue are parts of the capital budget.
  • Capital Receipts: These receipts results in reduction of assets or create liability. They are generated by raising funds via borrowings, disposition of assets and loan recovery. Capital receipts are Government borrowings through sale of securities and bonds, RBI and various other financial institutions.
  • Capital Expenditure: The expenses which are incurred in order to buy assets which has long life are termed as capital expenditure. Expenditure on machine, oil exploration, land, equipment and irrigation projects.
 

Monday, May 28, 2012


Electronic Discovery 

 
E-Discovery or Electronic Discovery refers to the method, via which electronic data is searched for, discovered and secured and saved for the purpose of facilitating the evidence is being recorded as the evidence in a civil or criminal court case. The E-Discovery software allows the recoding of both online as well as offline information. E-discovery, also, includes court-approved hacking of certain systems to get essential information.
The advantages of electronic discovery over paper documents include:
  • This software simplifies the search of required data and information from the electronic database. This database is constantly updated to facilitate the collection of useful information for any civil or criminal case.
  • Using this software for recording the data saves a lot of time as manually looking out for relevant documents consumes a lot of time. Also, data in hard copy has to be manually interpreted and analyzed, and such analysis cannot be completely validated as compared to the electronic data received through E- Discovery software.
  • Data obtained through E-Discovery has lesser chances of being lost as it is in a digital format. There is also less chances of the data being stolen or deleted as it is saved on multiple destinations. This makes data obtained from E-Discovery more reliable as well.
  • The usage of E- Discovery software has led to development of cyber forensics which is completely a new field of study and includes the investigation of digital data in the social, legal and political spheres of life. Thereafter, the pc is secured to prevent distortion of important data or information by isolating the pc from the network.
The process of Electronic Discovery is starts with information management. If you want to minimize the the costs and risks involved, you need to identify and ascertain them very carefully. Identification of the sources of Electronically Source Information (ESI) is the next stage of the process of E-Discovery. The information gathered is scrutinized on the relevance factor so that useful data is collected.
The data thus scrutinized is collected and preserved. This includes the securing of useful information by ensuring that it is adequately protected and not subject to deletion by any unauthorized source. All the information that is collected from various sources for further processes that include processing of the data is termed collectively as collection.
Thereafter comes the processing, review and analysis of the concerned data or information. Here, the ESI is compressed to make it easier for reviewers and approvers to sift through data. After all these steps are successfully completed, the data is evaluated on the basis on relevance, importance, applicability and pattern.
The delivery of ESI to the final clients or the concerned parties is the last and final step of the whole process of ElectronicDiscovery. The client is free to use this data in any area of life including court cases and use it for his advantage.
The whole process of searching, identifying, collecting, processing, interpretation and delivering of the data is covered under E-Discovery.

Monday, May 21, 2012

Managed Review Work Flow


The procedure of enhancing one’s legal documents in support or against a particular court case. Through online software, one can easily search, obtain, process, analyse, interpret and save legal data that will strengthen their evidences for or against a court case. Through this software you can easily increase the chances of a favorable outcome as you have access to all the important and reliable information.

Litigation has become an important process world-over. Searching for paper data or you can call it data in hard copy format is often a tedious process with little hope of getting your hands on the right document. This ease of handling the documents also makes their interpretation much simplified for the user. You might not believe it but correct and timely access and interpretation to the documents related to case are very instrumental in turning the course of the judgement of the case towards or against you.

Also, managed review is more cost-effective compared to assembling a team of paralegals and attorneys. Also, the latter requires constant supervision and control which simply increases the work at hand. Going for a management review provider also helps in fixing the responsibility regarding the validation of the legal documents and its interpretation which is not possible in the case of working with attroneys.

Work flow includes all the processes like designing process, assuring quality and assignment validation which are needed to be carried out for managed review. All these processes are required to achieve the fixed and desired security and quality levels. Depending on the varied work flows, there are different types of managed reviews or approval stages as below:

1. Serial review: At various stages, there are a set of reviewers who sequentially review the legal documents and work flows one by one~The legal documents under this type of managed review comprises of a set of reviewers who review the documents in a sequential manner}.

2. Parallel reviews: Here, the set of reviewers review the work flows simultaneously and add their inferences and suggestions thereof.

3. Serial approval: This stage is an extension of serial review except for the difference that the upper reviews has a right to accept or reject the suggestions of his predecessor.

4. Parallel approval—Here, the approvers take part in the approval process simultaneously. Being a client you are allowed to have a say in the selection or alteration of the review type. You can, in fact select the reviews type yourself and also have the decision to change the review system in case of dissatisfactions.


To find more about managed review work-flow click here.

Going for managed review work flow will not only help you with the present case but it will also be helpful in your future cases. Remember to keep a record of the documents produced for referring in possible future cases.

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Benefits Of involving Litigation Consulting Firms


Litigation consulting firms have become the need of today’s legal structure owing to the increases complexities and the large stakes involved. The basic benefit that litigation consulting gives to the customers is the support in working out the case strategies and making the factors work in their favor and thus increase the possibilities of a favorable outcome.

Apart from this, you should also expect some of the following benefits by involving a litigation consulting firm for your case:

Mock trials: Mock trains can be extremely helpful for your case. The life like setting of the trial help you to find the loopholes in your case presentation and give you the golden opportunity to rework on those points. This helps in finding the week points in the case that are readily worked upon.

Mock hearings: Mock hearings include a hearing of your case by a group of experts. This enables you to get an added advantage as you are in front of actual jury. You get an idea how to behave in front of the jury and present your case in a better way with the help of the attorney.

Witness evaluation: A potentially good witness can turn the luck in your favor at the most crucial points of your trial. A litigation firm helps you in identifying and screening the key witnesses.

Witness trainings: Even the boldest of the witnesses can break down during the trial and may reverse the course of the trial. A firm specializing in litigation consulting will train the witness to maintain his calm even during the most provocative and grilling segments of the hearing.

Maintains the documents: A trial generates a large volume of documents and only an expert has the ability and potential to maintain and manage these documents in the best manner. The experts at the legal consultant firm are experienced in dealing with the paper work and thus help the attorney in correct interpretation of the documents.

Support to the attorney: Litigation consulting firms support the attorney by helping him with the nuances of the case. They take care of all the non legal aspects of the case and help the attorney to concentrate solely on the legal aspects.

Saves you money: The litigation consulting firms usually charge much lower than the attorney. Since you are getting all the non legal part of the case by them, you automatically save on a lot of money which you might have been paying as the attorney fees.

Before you hire the litigation consulting firm, never forget to check their experience and reviews for best results.

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Performance Budgeting 

 

For government associations it’s forever a pressure kind of a condition to preserve the transparency of their accounting activities to demonstrate how well and professionally they are handling and using the people’s hard earned money. Public put lots of pressure on the government to show that they are investing their money for the right caused and providing good return . So for government associations, this eventually ends up handling their programs and accounts in a way to achieve computable result. The core aim of this activity should be to increase the performance of all the activities and at the same time to reduce the costs of the organization .

Government organizations have to give valid reasons for all the budget requests they make ~ Government associations have to provide acceptable reasons for all the budget demands they make}. This justification should be on the bases of expected output, along with the costs of all the performance activities . Size of the associations also plays a crucial part If the organization is large in size with multiple departments then there are more challenges to efficiently complete these tasks at all levels and at all locations . It is very significant for all the managers to recognize that how to handle a visible level of implementation management. They should know what their program is doing and what is required to meet the goal in order to maintain the high-level and long-term aims of the organizations . They should also realize and understand that they are able to track this progress in a way which helps them maintaining the same level of enthusiasm for future outcome throughout the entire financial year . So, lots of efforts are required to make this operation successful .

The chief elements of a thriving advancement to Performance Management comprises of developing:

Strategic plans with more than 12 months association goals and planning strategies to attain them
Performance budgets which replicates the expected cost of achieving yearly program goals, and
Performance reports gauging the authentic results and costs all the way through the programming year

The secret to achieve a successful Performance Management is in cascading organization-wide or subsidiary-wise business aims down throughout every single level of the organization, just to aid in all the managers at every single location . This is what guarantees that each single program movement or action is connected to and supports the higher-level aims of the organization .

Relevant Technology

CASCADE Performance-Based Budgeting Software

CASCADE Performance-Based Budgeting Software is one of the modern, online Performance Management work space that comprises of features like tactical planning, performance budgeting, and extracting reports based on the performance .

The software acts as a great performance budgeting tool that helps these government organizations analyzing what has been done so far and what needs to be done to properly manage the budget and maintain the great transparency . The software also offers a highly customized reporting tool that assists preparing proper insight about what is happening in all different subsidiaries .

The software is particularly designed and developed for governmental organizations as well as for the organizations that are of the similar nature, irrespective of the size and scope of the organizations