Creating the International Training Management Web Site: A Corporate University Portal That Shares Best Practices

DISAM Journal, Spring, 2001 by Charles E. Collins

Doesn't a web master get tired of making changes that users are constantly recommending? Not really, if he wants the web page to truly be a valuable management tool that all training managers will find useful. Perhaps we need to identify who the web master actually is. The web master of the ITM web site is a security assistance training functional expert who teaches others how to manage our international training program. That functional training expert is also responsible for providing a significant amount of customer support to our international training management community. To put it frankly, the ITM web page actually saves time and effort in providing that customer assistance. Instead of writing out answers to numerous E-mail questions and inquiries, references are simply made to the ITM web site and answers provided with a web site address.

The added advantage of many training managers looking at what is published in the ITM web site and bringing required changes to the attention of the ITM web master is a decided advantage. Again, as these additions and changes are made, web site becomes even more valuable. The web site actually becomes a vehicle for effecting change. In an effort to actually solicit the input of material from the field, we queried all SAO, IMSO, military department, and other training managers for examples of electronic documents that they are using to manage their portion of the training program. We have been adding these continuously to the ITM web site.

A Comment on the Style and Format of the ITM Web Page

The format and style of the International Training Management web page was purposely kept simple, without the use of extensive web page graphics. We decided to do this so that the impact of accessing the ITM web page files could be kept as small as possible, particularly for our overseas users. Opening most of the military school house web pages using a typical slower telephone modem connection is less than satisfactory. ITM pages open much faster because they are basically a textual HTML document. The only exception to this is that Power Point presentations have been provided. Even these are now provided as an Adobe Acrobat file as are many of the larger textual documents.

The use of Adobe formatting provides much smaller files that open much easier. Of course, this requires the use of Adobe Acrobat Reader, but all U.S. government users surely should have this now on their computer. Adobe Acrobat Reader is free. We provide it via the DISAM distributed Security Assistance Software CD-Rom disk and, from the ITM home page, we point to the Adobe web site where you can download Adobe Reader at no cost.

The Access Issue

There certainly is a significant issue involving access. Many of our overseas SAO offices that have a local internet provider and thus come in with a foreign URL address, cannot successfully access .MIL addresses. We have provided a partial solution for them that involves logging on the Security Assistance Network (SAN) and using the SAN proxy server. Some users who are having trouble with .MIL access have not yet registered to use the SAN proxy server.