ISTRAD - TOWARD A NATIONAL INFORMATION-SYSTEMS AND TECHNOLOGY RESEARCH-AND-DEVELOPMENT ASSOCIATION

The International Federation for Information Processors (IFIP) aims to foster research, development, application, education and information dissemination in all fields of informatics. IFIP works through a number of technical committees each focussing on one aspect of informatics. The technical committees in turn are responsible for a small number of working groups. Each working group focuses on some sub-set of the field covered by its parent technical committee. Given its objectives, IFIP is uniquely placed to foster both hard and soft technology diffusion. It is doing so with mixed success. This paper describes how the competitive advantage offered by one IFIP technical committee has been used to improve technology diffusion in the field of information systems nationally and internationally. It describes a series of activities aimed at building up an information systems and technology research community in Australia, An initial, key activity, was to run an IFIP supported national seminar series on the ''State of the Art in Information Systems''. The seminar series was used to launch the concept of a national information systems and technology research and development association (ISTRAD). An additional outcome was a ''State of the Art in Information Systems'' video which is being distributed world-wide as an educational resource.