Austrade educates on-line - Brief Article

Business Asia, August, 2001 by Nadia Cameron

AUSTRADE HAS launched Australia's first public sector on-line university campus, the Austrade Institute, offering more than 1000 Australian trade commission staff in 60 countries access to a new source of education, training and learning facilities.

Greg Dodds, Austrade's executive general manager North East Asia and the overseer of the new on-line corporate university, says the decision to establish an entirely virtual institute campus was prompted by the size and scope of Australia's trade facilitation agency's staff.

"Our core focus is to make better use of the knowledge and experience within Austrade itself," he said. "Any organisation of our size has this problem. It has relevant experience but it doesn't get shared around the organisation. With over half of our staff overseas, problems with sharing information are compounded even more."

The new Austrade on-line corporate university will consist of three main elements: education and training, research and development and alumni and academic networks. A new alliance with Melbourne's RMIT University will provide the university credentials and experience necessary to consolidate information into these elements.

Dodds says the on-line resource will be developed in two main stages. The first stage will feature a range of training modules, institute programs and information seminars, and will be directed at Austrade staff worldwide. Some of the content examples cited by Dodds include information on how to run seminars properly, getting the best results out of trade shows, and running business missions.

The second, or more sophisticated stage, will then make these modules accessible to exporters and businesses in Australia, and will further expand courses developed in the initial set-up of the site. These could include information on issues like intellectual property in various overseas markets, commercialising R and D, how to utilise e-commerce in the B2B market or even issues involved in direct investment into markets such as Japan.

"This amalgam of external courses and knowledge base mixing with the exporting community is promising stuff," Dodds said.

"For example, a subject on intellectual property in China could see input from Chinese software houses, their government officials, and the trade ministry. We can draw on first hand experience from our employees and companies who've done business there."

Dodds says Austrade is currently building up its curriculum, with content being sourced from Austrade staff, RMIT and, in the future, exporters themselves. Both staff and external parties who use the information will also be able to gain formal qualifications from the institute.

"On a mechanical level, content will be put together from input by staff, which will be marshalled and consolidated with advice from RMIT," Dodds said. "We can draw on the first hand experience from our employees and companies who've done business there. Teaching modules supported by the live input of Australian practitioners would add to the value of the site's content."

The site, which went live in July, already features some basic materials which Austrade staff can access. Dodds says the team is currently in the process of developing additional modules and putting these on the site, making it accessible to more staff and getting feedback on how to improve the site's content and layout. Dodds expects the first stage of development will be completed in mid-2002, with work on the second stage estimated to start by the end of the same year.