Australia cuts 3000 Government Regulations

The Australian government has recently cut 3000 regulations as part of its drive to cut red tape. The savings were in part made possible by their Standard Business Reporting (SBR) initiative. Here's the press release.

MOOCs a Changing Game

MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) have taken the world of online education by storm in the last couple of years. Offered by universities, often major ones, they are provided free (so far) to anyone who enrolls and credit for certificates are offered for completion. One of the issues has been that only about 5% of the students complete the courses. Although some people argue this isn't really an issue, since many of the students take the courses for fun and recreation and have no plane to complete the assignments and exams. Nevertheless MOOC purveyors are looking for ways to improve their offerings. Udacity is an example and some of their efforts are explained in this article.

Training for XBRL

The AICPA and XBRL US have launched an XBRL GAAP Certificate program, which involves a 35 hour online course. The announcement states that the certificate holders will be able to prepare top quality XBRL documents for filing financial statements.

XBRL Canada also offers an online course, which while not as comprehensive as the US one and also not a certificate program, does provide an excellent basic understanding of XBRL. The Canadian course can be found on the XBRL Canada website.