The Hindu Business Line : Job status can make a good feed

ALL OF a sudden, one finds too many mails from the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) popping into the inbox. From corporatelaws@icai.org Lalit Kumar Ruia, Secretary, Corporate and Allied Laws Committee of the ICAI, has sent a mail about the programme for All India Conference on Fiscal and Corporate Laws to be held in Nagpur in mid-August.

Days before that, there was a mail from aasb@icai.org where my old friend Vijay Kapur, Secretary, Auditing and Assurance Standards Board, was seeking to find out difficulties of members in complying with the Companies (Auditor's Report) Order, 2003, and the ICAI's Statement in this regard. Not to be left behind, the top man, Sunil Goyal, the Institute President, has sent his mail too and it is from cret@icai.org, the ID of the Committee for Review of Education and Training: "I am confident that your valuable views would be of immense help to the Committee and shall go a long way in shaping the future of the accountancy profession in India."

Thus, at last, the Institute has come a long way — from being a monolith on Indraprastha Marg to testing the waters to be cyber-savvy in trying to work at the speed of light. A good sign that these mails do not get bogged down with any characteristic disclaimer — that the contents of this e-mail do not necessarily represent the views of the Council of the Institute unless otherwise stated. Also, the ICAI is not waiting to give the info through its journal that comes only once a month, nor is complacent with a posting on its Web site. While there can be CAs who may promptly put any id with icai.org as its second name into the blocked senders list, the new role that the ICAI has assumed as a broadcaster is welcome.

The latest issue of Harvard Business Review has Paul Kedrosky saying that "If you're not giving people the precise information they want the second they want it, they'll look for it elsewhere." The article titled `Feeding Time' emphasises that any data-generating act, no matter how trivial it may seem, will need to be released over the Internet in real time to anyone who wants to know about it. The author discusses RSS — short for RDF Site Summary, or more simply `really simple syndication' — as the potential to exploit for customising information streams.

If, for instance, you would want to know when the ICAI added some new stuff to its page on accounting standards, you could subscribe to a feed. Likewise, you don't have to keep tracking new job positions in a company by visiting its site, or by minimising the site on your screen; a feed could reach you the news right into your inbox.

`Feed for thought' that the HBR article offers is to pose a question: "What sort of information should companies syndicate?" Advice: Don't stop with press releases. "If it's a manufacturer, why not turn shop floor flow into feed?" Adapting this to the ICAI, how about a feed on the status of different pronouncements-in-progress, queries posed to the ICAI on applying standards, statistics of members and students, up-to-date figures of money spent on different activities and so on?

"Make sure your IT people keep syndication on top of mind as they refine your Web presence and information systems," the author reminds. Technology is only half the hurdle; to grow beyond Web site and e-mails, the ICAI has to appreciate the time value of information. Because, if the Institute is not giving its members the precise information they want the second they want it, they'll look for it elsewhere.

mail to:AccountSpeak@thehindu.co.in

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