Prime Minister David Cameron has described lobbying as "the next big scandal" and the UK government is consulting on whether the current voluntary system should be replaced by a legally binding register.

BBC: Call for info on lobbyist meetings with Welsh ministers

But Hilary Armstrong, the local government minister, has been appalled to discover that more than 90% of councils have chosen the cabinet system, often without doing much consulting.

ECONOMIST: Provincial cities

Senior managers buy these expensive software packages without consulting their troops, who then refuse to use the system.

ECONOMIST: Always-on people

Within seven months a consulting firm helped Blackstone unite them all, with one system for payroll and reservations, run from one computing center.

FORBES: Magazine Article

It comes in the wake of long-held suspicions that the 1, 700-member pension consulting industry operates a "pay-to-play" system in which the advice it dispenses to pension funds is tainted by its own financial interests.

FORBES: Magazine Article

After consulting with both sides, the department would outline its own evaluation system that both sides would be compelled to follow.

WSJ: Cuomo: State Might Impose Evaluations

The protection this affords to Android should help the spread of the operating system, which according to Gartner, a research and consulting firm, powered just over half of all smartphones sold in the fourth quarter of 2011.

ECONOMIST: Patents and mobile devices

Pragma, an independent trading boutique which develops trading algorithms and provides consulting and guidance for buy-side firms, has developed a quantitative model and supporting smart-routing system for passive limit orders that it says significantly improves all-in performance.

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Schieber, retired director of research at benefits consulting firm Towers Watson and author of The Predictable Surprise, The Unraveling Of the U.S. Retriement System.

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