The Biological Monitoring Working Party (BMWP) score system was introduced in 1980 to provide an index of river water quality for England and Wales based on aquatic macro-invertebrates. The score allocated to each taxon was set by a group of expert river biologists based upon their collective experience of the taxon's sensitivity to organic pollution (Hawkes, 1997). This paper describes an objective reappraisal of these subjectively-derived scores through the statistical analysis of a large and comprehensive database of field samples. Using the analytical approach of Walley & Hawkes (1996, 1997

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Information and communication technology (ICT) is largely used as a strategic business factor. Consequently, business opportunities for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the ICT industry are potentially very strong, as they are the service and product providers. Many assume that ICT SMEs understand the importance of continuously assessing their internal activities, such as their management capabilities, technology investment strategies, and equipment provision to their employees for their competitive advantage. However, this has often not been the case and many ICT SMEs are poorly managed, less well equipped, and often the employees depend on open source software. Our previous research showed that most ICT SMEs face various challenges. In order to understand the details of these challenges, a research was conducted on two failed companies. This paper's contribution includes detailing the side effects of lack of company's self-assessment for its internal business activities which may reduce ICT SME's critical challenges and failure. Also, we propose a new framework that can reduce these challenges.