Latest news with #IRIS
Business Upturn
2 hours ago
- Business
- Business Upturn
Notified Spotlights AI and Unified IR Communications at HKIRA IR Awards Conference 2025
HONG KONG, July 02, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Notified, the leading provider of investor relations (IR) and public relations (PR) communication technology, proudly participated as Diamond sponsor at the Hong Kong Investor Relations Association (HKIRA) 11th IR Awards Conference and Presentation Luncheon, held last Friday (June 27) at the Conrad Hotel in Hong Kong. The event brought together industry leaders, listed companies, and IR professionals to celebrate best practices and innovation in investor relations. A Media Snippet accompanying this announcement is available in this link. A highlight of the event was a keynote speech delivered by Melanie Morfill, Director of Notified, APAC. Drawing on over 20 years of industry experience and insights from supporting global clients, Melanie addressed the shifting landscape of IR communications. She emphasized the urgent need for IR teams to break down silos, adapt to fragmented digital audiences, and leverage technology to cut through the noise. 'It's harder than ever to break through. Audiences are scattered across various digital platforms, attention spans are shrinking, and trust is eroding,' said Melanie. 'The most effective communicators are those who adapt quickly, unify IR and PR functions, and use data-driven insights to own their narrative. At Notified, we're committed to empowering teams to drive business leadership and outcomes through strategic, credible communications.' After recently announcing the launch of IR Hub, all-in-one platform for all IR communication requirements, Notified followed up with another announcement of upcoming IRIS last week at CIRI 2025. IRIS is the new AI-powered assistant that will be made available directly inside IR Hub and is built to help teams manage growing compliance demands, rising investor expectations, while giving time back to users for strategic work. The HKIRA 11th IR Awards Conference continues to set the benchmark for excellence in investor relations, recognizing outstanding achievements and fostering professional development across Hong Kong's listed companies. Notified's participation underscores its dedication to supporting the IR community with world-class technology, thought leadership, and a vision for the future of corporate storytelling. For more information about Notified's solutions and its role in advancing investor relations, please visit our website at About Notified We are Notified, and your story goes here. As the only technology partner dedicated to both investor relations and public relations professionals, we help you control and amplify your corporate narrative. Our fully integrated PR and IR platforms streamline every step—whether it's reaching the right media, press release distribution, and measurement or designing new IR websites, managing investor days, earnings releases, and regulatory filings. Connecting both worlds, GlobeNewswire is one of the world's largest and most trusted newswire distribution networks, serving leading organizations for over 30 years. Together, we empower communicators to inform a better world. Notified is an affiliate of Equiniti Group Limited (EQ) For media inquiries, please contact Khoo Chong Thye [email protected] Disclaimer: The above press release comes to you under an arrangement with GlobeNewswire. Business Upturn takes no editorial responsibility for the same. Ahmedabad Plane Crash
Business Recorder
4 days ago
- Business
- Business Recorder
Traders reject abrupt implementation of digital invoicing system
PESHAWAR: Traders and manufacturers rejected imposition of heavy penalties and declaring defaulters under section 25-A of the SRO-709 and abrupt implementation of digital invoicing system to integrate small and large scale businesses and industries in one go. Business community raised voices against the government and FBR for its unilateral policy and initiatives, especially the aforementioned new system through three different resolutions that were adopted unanimously during an awareness session on Digital Invoicing organised by Sarhad Chamber of Commerce and Industry in collaboration with Federal Board of Revenue /PRAL (Pakistan Revenue Automation Private Limited) here in the chamber. The session was chaired by SCCI president Fazal Moqeem Khan. Senior vice president of the chamber Abdul Jalil Jan, member of the SCCI executive committee Adnan Nasir, Aftab Iqbal, Ashfaq Ahmad, Muhammad Nadeem Rauf, Sajjad Zaheer, former senior vice president Imran Khan Mohmand, carpet exporters Mazhar ul Haq, Atif Rasheed Khawaja, Afshan Khan, Sadder, Fazal e Wahid, Secretary General SCCI Muqtasid Ahsan, representatives, managers of various industries, business and importers and exporters were in attendance in a large number. The resolutions strongly denounced the imposition of Rs2Million to Rs3 Million penalties and declaring the business community defaulters over violation of not digitizing in digital invoicing system and imposing heavy penalties under the Section 25-A, and called it an attempt to discourage the business and industries and demanded immediate abolishment of the afore-stated section forthwith. Another resolution against S.R.O.709(I)/2025, stating that businesses and industries are unprepared technically and physically to adopt this new system abruptly, therefore, it is strongly called to give an extension into implementation of the new system for an indefinite period. In the third resolution, the business community suggested phase-wise and sector wise implementation of the new digital invoicing system, right from large-scale manufacturing industries to small businesses and traders. Traders and manufactures opposed the section 25-A that has made mandatory to electronically integrate their hardware and software with FBR's computerized system through a license integrator or PRAL and to issue invoices, which unable for them to adopt abruptly while keeping in inadequate digital infrastructure, particularly in underdeveloped and remote industrial zones, insufficient technical readiness among enterprises, especially SMEs, limited digital literacy and capacity, both at user and support levels. They viewed that FBR is not itself fully digitized. Business community furthermore pointed out that frequent downtime of FBR's IRIS services couldn't enable them to generate invoices in wake of inaccessibility of the system. Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
Montreal Gazette
6 days ago
- Business
- Montreal Gazette
Montreal overspending on engineering contracts, union charges, with study pegging extra cost at $40M in 2024
Montreal Politics By Montreal's municipal engineers were sounding the alarm even before a recent bombshell study revealed that engineering fees paid by the city to private firms have skyrocketed while the quality of work has diminished since the Charbonneau Commission a decade ago. But it has been a frustrating year of whistleblowing for the Association des scientifiques et ingénieurs de Montréal (ASIM), says the union's president, Gisella Gesuale, who has spoken at city budget hearings, buttonholed councillors outside of council meetings, met with department managers and filed formal complaints with the city's Bureau de l'inspecteur général (BIG) and auditor general in an effort to get someone to act. 'We're at one year later and we're still at square one,' said Gesuale, who was a municipal chemist before being elected president of her union in October 2023. 'There's been no reaction. They haven't taken our hand yet.' As it turns out, the problems pinpointed by the union in a 19-page brief it has circulated among city officials and shared with The Gazette jibe with the findings of Colin Pratte, the researcher at the Institut de recherche et d'information socioéconomiques (IRIS) who authored the study released on May 29. Pratte's study concludes that Montreal paid at least $40 million too much on over $200 million in contracts to engineering consulting firms awarded in 2024 — in other words, at least 20 per cent above fair value. The estimate, which Pratte describes as conservative, is based on the fact that the hourly rates paid by Montreal in its contracts with external engineering firms increased by 82 per cent from 2012 to 2024. That was more than double the inflation rate for the period. The study looked at contracts awarded by the main three central city departments hiring external engineers: road infrastructure, water and urban planning and mobility. Gesuale's union notes the spike in external professional fees doesn't include interest costs the city is paying on them. Most engineering contracts are in the city's capital works program, which is financed through long-term loans charging interest over 20 or more years, and not paid in cash out of the city's annual operating budget. Moreover, the IRIS study says the city could have avoided the explosion in engineering fees if it had followed the recommendations of the Charbonneau Commission. Among other things, the 2015 report of the public inquiry into corruption and collusion in the Quebec construction industry recommended reducing the city's reliance on subcontracting, a suggestion that is reiterated by Pratte. Gesuale's union, for its part, calculates that the total annual value of contracts awarded by Montreal to engineering consulting firms has increased by 809 per cent — from $23 million in 2012 to $209 million in 2024 — while the number of in-house engineers has remained relatively stable. Her union represents 575 Montreal municipal engineers, many of whom are tasked with preparing estimates and correcting the plans submitted by the external engineers. The Association des firmes de génie-conseil du Québec (AFG), which represents 71 member engineering consulting firms, maintains the 82 per cent increase in professional fees between 2012 and 2024 cited in the IRIS study is directly linked to the increase in construction projects carried out by the city. But bigger investment in construction — from rebuilding roads and sewer pipes to installing traffic lights and creating bike paths — doesn't explain the exponential increase in the hourly rates paid to junior and senior engineers, technicians and so on within each external contract, the union noted. 'That's what started us wanting to look into what was going on,' Gesuale said. 'One (city) engineer noticed that the hourly rate that was being charged to the city was exploding. It was three to four times our salary.' The union, like Pratte, concludes that Montreal is overpaying and that it stems from the way the city has restructured its external contracts for engineering work in the decade since the Charbonneau Commission ended. Montreal has shifted toward paying engineering consulting firms by the hour through contracts called 'framework agreements' — and has moved away from fixed-price contracts that pay by project. A framework agreement will provide a bank of, say, 100,000 hours over a time span for an engineering firm to work on various city projects. Engineers employed by the winning firm will bill their hours from that bank. In 2012, the city was mostly awarding fixed-price contracts, paying engineering firms a flat amount for a project. Framework agreements were slammed in the 2013 report of a city committee headed by former Parti Québécois minister Jacques Léonard, which issued 60 recommendations to Montreal to prevent corruption and collusion in municipal contracts. But while the city has shifted away from framework agreements for construction work since then, it has increased their use for engineering work since Mayor Valérie Plante's Projet Montréal administration was elected in November 2017. In 2012, 35 per cent of Montreal engineering contracts were framework agreements; in 2024, 93 per cent were, the IRIS study found. When it was in the opposition at city hall, Projet Montréal denounced framework agreements. Plante's office ignored The Gazette's questions about the IRIS study and the problems raised by the engineers' union. The five political aides who handle media relations for the mayor and city executive committee didn't respond to the newspaper's messages. Executive committee chairperson Émilie Thuillier also didn't respond to a direct request for comment. On the civil service side, a spokesperson for the road infrastructure, water and urban planning and mobility departments said it's difficult to move away from hourly-rate contracts in engineering. Framework agreements, spokesperson Gonzalo Nunez said in a written response, are 'essential due to the volume of projects and their ever-increasing scope, particularly to address the maintenance deficit in our infrastructure.' Montreal has seen an 'acceleration of planning for certain projects,' he added, and that 'has indeed led to an increase in professional fees, but also an increase in the hours worked by city employees on these same projects.' By comparison, Quebec City awards very few framework agreements for professional services. In fact, 97 per cent of engineering contracts awarded by Quebec City are fixed-price, Gesuale said. Paying external firms by the hour offers no incentive for them to deliver work expeditiously, Gesuale said. Moreover, it means the city is paying external engineers to correct their errors, she said. Meanwhile, the exponential increase in external engineering fees is reinforced by another factor that was denounced by the Charbonneau Commission and in the Léonard report, Gesuale said: Montreal's method of estimating the price of new contracts. Quebec's Cities and Towns Act requires a municipality that plans to award a contract of $100,000 or more to establish a control estimate before opening the bids. A large difference between the estimate and bids might point to an error or lack of clarity in the plans and specifications. On occasion, it leads a municipality to cancel the call for tenders and start again. Montreal continues to use the historical price to estimate engineering contract prices, even though it has dumped that method for construction contracts. Under the historical-price method, Montreal takes the already inflated price of a previous contract, adds inflation and voilà — that's the city's estimated price of the next contract. For construction contracts, the city now uses a 'fair value' method of estimation, which takes into account objective factors, like the real costs of items in the contract, market conditions and supply and demand. Montreal's BIG has advocated internally for the city to end historical-price estimation, Gesuale noted. Now, the union has decided to act where the city won't, she added. Last month, the union issued instructions to its members to produce estimates according to fair value instead of historical price. To do that, the union developed a tool that establishes fair value, based on municipal engineers' salary conditions plus an additional 90 per cent to cover firms' direct and indirect costs, such as rent, as well as benefits and profits. The factor of 90 per cent is used by different authorities, Gesuale said. 'We have no choice,' she said of developing the tool. 'It's our role because the city's not doing anything.' The union has also advised its members to keep a written record if a manager directs them to use an estimation method that isn't 'consistent with best practices — particularly the use of prices from previous years.' The city, for its part, didn't explain in its responses why it's sticking to the historical-price method to estimate engineering contracts. Gesuale describes Montreal as a 'school' for external firms to send inexperienced engineers to learn from municipal engineers. In the meantime, the city isn't developing its internal expertise, she said. As well, the city itself has complained about the quality of work by external engineers, her union discovered in the minutes of meetings between city managers and representatives of the association of engineering consulting firms. The union obtained the minutes through an access-to-information request. The AFG says the solution has to come from both sides. 'Regarding quality, we intend to continue working with the City of Montreal to identify issues on both sides and find solutions to improve our practices on an ongoing basis,' AFG deputy general manager Pierre Nadeau said in an email. Gesuale's union is calling on the city to repatriate recurring work, the kind that's outsourced year after year or under long-term contracts. 'We know we can't do all the engineering work internally,' she said. 'There will be outsourcing. But can we not ensure it's well-balanced?' The union is also calling on city management to form a committee to work on the union's recommendations. 'Our objective is to ensure that Montreal gets the most for its buck,' Gesuale said. 'And at the moment, that's not what I'm seeing.'
Business Recorder
21-06-2025
- Politics
- Business Recorder
National Identity Card Rules, 2002: NADRA makes major amendments
ISLAMABAD: The National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA) has made major amendments to the National Identity Card Rules, 2002, aiming to modernise the identification system, eliminate forgery, and enhance overall security. Following the direction of Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi, NADRA prepared a comprehensive reform proposal which was approved by the federal cabinet. The NADRA has now initiated the implementation phase of these reforms, said a senior official, adding that the reforms aim to curb fake registrations and effectively prevent child trafficking. According the new rules, registration of birth at the Union Council will now be mandatory for acquiring a B-Form. Children under the age of 3 will no longer be required to provide biometric data or photographs, it says. However, children between 3 and 10 years must provide a photograph and undergo an IRIS scan. For children aged 10 to 18 years, a photograph, biometric data, and an IRIS scan will be mandatory, it says. As per the rules each child will be issued a separate B-Form with a validity period mentioned. Existing B-Forms will not be cancelled, but a new B-Form will be mandatory for passport issuance, it says. It says that the Family Registration Certificate (FRC) has been granted the status of a legal document. Applicants will now be required to submit a declaration verifying the accuracy of the information provided in the FRC, it says, adding citizens will be able to obtain the FRC based solely on NADRA's records. It says that all family members, including those previously unregistered, must now be entered into the system. Citizens can verify or update their family data through NADRA offices or via the mobile application, it says According to the rules details of all spouses and children of men with multiple marriages will now be included in the FRC. Women will have the option to include either their father's or husband's name on their identity card as per their preference, it says. It says that decisions regarding cancellation, confiscation, or restoration of CNIC cards must now be made within 30 days. The NADRA has also incorporated most features of smart cards into the non-chip-based ID cards, which will now be issued at a lower cost and within a shorter timeframe. These new cards will include both Urdu and English credentials along with a QR code, without any additional fee, it says. Copyright Business Recorder, 2025
Euronews
20-06-2025
- Politics
- Euronews
Why do Europeans still believe a nuclear deal with Iran is possible?
Europe hopes to use diplomacy to avoid the threat of all-out war in the Middle East, amid fears that the conflict between Israel and Iran could engulf the wider region. On Friday, the foreign ministers of France, Germany and the United Kingdom, together with the EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, will hold talks with representatives of the Tehran regime in Geneva. The meeting aims to de-escalate the fighting between the two Middle Eastern powers, which began when Israel launched airstrikes against Iran and killed some of its top military commanders last Friday. The Europeans seek to initiate a form of shuttle diplomacy between Israel, Iran, Washington and the main European capitals. They would like to reestablish a security dialogue with Tehran, similar to the one interrupted in 2018 when the first Trump administration unilaterally withdrew from the Iranian nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The JCPA, which was signed by Iran along with China, the EU, France, Germany, Russia and the UK in 2015, stipulated an easing of Western sanctions against the Middle Eastern country in exchange for Tehran's commitment to a drastic reduction of Uranium stockpiles and centrifuges at its nuclear facilities. Such sites are now being targeted by Israeli missile attacks, including those at Natanz and Isfahan. In 2018, despite the UN nuclear agency saying that Tehran was progressively adopting the restrictions required by the agreement, Trump's administration withdrew from the JCPOA, effectively rendering it null and void. By walking back on the JCPOA, the US put an end to one of the main achievements of European foreign policy. David Rigoulet-Roze, an author and associate research fellow at IRIS, a French foreign policy institute, said the cancellation of the Iranian nuclear deal of 2015 was a hasty act. "The agreement had the merit, despite all its imperfections, of existing, of serving as a basis, including for the possible subsequent renegotiation of something more binding', said Rigoulet-Roze. 'Even though, the Europeans were not in control of the process'. The accord represented an opportunity for the EU to reopen trade relations with Iran after decades of US and Western sanctions against the Islamic Republic. However, after the JCPOA's demise, the regime in Tehran stigmatised the EU for the failure of the agreement. 'Somewhat wrongly, because we obviously didn't provoke the cancellation of the accord and we have also suffered the consequences of what is known as the extraterritoriality of American law', Rigoulet-Roze said. He noted the capacity of the US to impose sanctions on a global scale, particularly secondary sanctions, 'which are formidable and which have obviously curbed Europe's desire to develop trade relations that were authorised after 2015'. Iran has been a party to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty since the time of Shah Reza Pahlavi, who was the original founder of Iran's nuclear programme. Therefore, Tehran has been obliged to open up its sites for inspection by UN agencies. This motivated Brussels to treat Iran as a potentially rational actor despite its puzzling decisions and smoke and mirrors regarding its nuclear programme. Years ago, Tehran ended its highly enriched uranium production, yet it continued developing its military conventional ballistic capabilities and financing Middle Eastern proxies, including Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen. "This was a kind of matter of national pride as far as the Iranians were concerned. So I don't think that they, and this is in retrospect, ever planned to negotiate it away,' senior British diplomat and adviser Robert Cooper told Euronews. A strategic nuclear force, Cooper explained, "was going to mark them out as one of the most important powers in the Middle East. And as an international power beyond the Middle East as well." The Iranian nuclear programme and the existence of uranium enrichment equipment and heavy water facilities were officially made public by then-president Mohammad Khatami, a reformist who persuaded France, Germany and the UK to reach a deal that was meant to oblige Tehran to stop the uranium enrichment. Javier Solana, the EU foreign and security policy chief at the time, attended the negotiations in Tehran. The Spanish diplomat was one of the deal's key architects, who believed that a deal is better than any conflict, and that the EU is best poised to broker it. "Solana was fascinated by Iran, and you know, we had a certain admiration for it. Our aim at the time was to persuade the Iranians that a military nuclear programme would make them a target,' Cooper recalled.
