This chapter deals with quality control in the virology laboratory, including quality control and quality assurance. It stresses the need to conduct regular audits of the service to maintain quality standards and the need for accredition schemes (e.g. UKAS). Sources of errors in the laboratory and factors associated with technical quality are also discussed.

Chapter 2 offers the first full illustration of the trade-off between raising revenue and enforcing the norm of truth reporting. In traditional theories of tax compliance, audits are the primary tool of enforcement. It has been assumed that audits in China are carried out by tax inspection (jicha) bureaus. However, drawing on archival material and a novel dataset, I show that the practice of mandatory taxpayer “self-inspections” predominates in the jicha system. Self-inspections allow the tax authority to raise revenue by foregoing penalties on noncompliant taxpayers, but threaten to erode the government’s deterrence power. By making self-inspections a perennial and integral part of enforcement, Chinese tax inspectors largely abandon the goal of enforcing the norm of truthful reporting. Chapter 2 then pivots to the much larger segment of Chinese tax administration called “revenue management.” Although revenue managers routinely process tax returns, they are even less likely to enforce truthful reporting norms, because of the competition with tax inspection to meet revenue targets and because of a lack of specialization. Therefore, what one might have thought was an immutable component of tax administration – audits – is largely absent from Chinese practice.

Provides an omnibus conclusion on government cloud computing adoption and a look forward to impending challenges.

The rules of the SPS Chapter confirm and reinforce the rules under the WTO SPS Agreement by incorporating not only relevant provisions of the WTO SPS Agreement but also decisions of the WTO SPS Committee. Although most of the “SPS Agreement plus” rules are procedural in nature, they are expected to contribute to the enhanced governance of SPS measures in the Asia-Pacific region. In particular, the SPS Chapter would improve the transparency regarding the adoption and implementation of SPS measures. While the SPS Chapter requires improved transparency among the TPP parties, TPP parties may consider it more efficient and appropriate to take the same transparency measures to non-parties as well. If they apply the transparency measures required by the SPS Chapter on a nondiscriminatory basis, the impact of the SPS Chapter would extend beyond the region. Moreover, if the SPS Chapter is successfully implemented, it could lead to the creation of new rules on SPS measures under other FTAs and the WTO.

Reporting is an essential instrument for organizations to understand the impacts of their decisions and operations on people and the planet. Addressing the most serious corporate impacts on sustainability by means of reporting effectively creates an accountability mechanism that helps organizations embed critical issues such as human rights into their business practices and at the core of their strategy. Through the means of reporting, organizations identify their sustainability risks and impacts and are encouraged to be accountable for them. Reporting contributes to internal awareness and understanding of possible negative impacts, as well as the means to mitigate them while maximizing the positives. This accessibility of information enables informed decision-making by stakeholders, including civil society, investors, customers and regulators. Consequently, businesses are more inclined to avoid or limit negative impacts and hence strive to improve performance. Ultimately, effective reporting plays an important role in a company’s success, as it responds to its stakeholders’ needs for transparency and information. This chapter presents an overview of the sustainability reporting process, draws lessons from current practices on human rights reporting, and provides recommendations for (future) practitioners, presenting a snapshot of current challenges and practical thinking.

This chapter is organized under two main sections. The first discusses how the content requirements of HRIAs are conflated with the ethical requirements of the assessment itself. This, narrow and inadequate species of HRIA ethics is quite different from the extensive body of legal ethics. The second section provides a case study of a World Bank-related impact assessment, which gives rise to legal and non-legal ethical issues and which is meant to demonstrate that the absence of concrete human rights-centred ethical guidelines in HRIAs can, even with the best of intentions, lead to outcomes that effectively violate fundamental rights.

The use of experiments to study the behavior of political elites in institutions has a long history and is once again becoming an active field of research. I review that history, noting that government officials within political institutions frequently use random assignment to test for policy effects and to encourage compliance. Scholars of political institutions have generally been slower than practitioners to embrace the use of experiments, though there has been remarkable growth in experimentation by scholars to study political elites. I summarize the domains in which scholars have most commonly used experiments, commenting on how researchers have seized opportunities to leverage random assignment. I highlight design challenges including limited sample sizes, answering theoretically-driven questions while partnering with public officials or others, and the difficulty of conducting replications. I then implore scholars to be bold in using experiments to study political institutions while also being mindful of ethical considerations.