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Intranets, Portals and Organizational Knowledge

Intranets, Portals and Organizational Knowledge. Helena Loh INF 385Q Knowledge Management Systems, Fall 2005 KMS Topic Discussion 27 October 2005. Presentation Outline. Definition of Intranets and Portals Articles: Lee & Gaines (1996) Roberts-Witt (1999) Ackerman & Halverson (2000)

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Intranets, Portals and Organizational Knowledge

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  1. Intranets, Portals and Organizational Knowledge Helena Loh INF 385Q Knowledge Management Systems, Fall 2005 KMS Topic Discussion 27 October 2005

  2. Presentation Outline • Definition of Intranets and Portals • Articles: • Lee & Gaines (1996) • Roberts-Witt (1999) • Ackerman & Halverson (2000) • Vasconcelos, Kimble & Gouveia (2000) • Brinn, Carrico & Combs (2001) • Large, Beheshti & Rahman (2002) • Millen, Fontaine & Muller (2002) • Impact on Organizational Knowledge • Some Conclusions • Bibliography

  3. Intranets and Portals • An Intranet is “a network within a single company which enables access to company information through the familiar tools of the Internet such as web browers.” (Chaffey, 1998) • A portal is “a single Web browser interface used within organizations to promote the gathering, sharing and dissemination of information throughout the enterprise.” (Detlor, 2000) • Web portals e.g. MyYahoo, Google News, UT Direct

  4. Lee & Gaines (1996) • The use of the Internet as a tool for acquiring knowledge • Conceptual model of Socioware: • “computer-mediated environments for supporting community-wide processes which expedite virtual cooperative interactions.” • Goal to facilitate cooperative behavior for self-organized virtual collaborative communities • Time dimension: Synchronous/asynchronous/publication • Creation of interaction area -> shared knowledge • Analysis of the model suggests • Improvement of message quality • Incorporation of links to preserve discourse relationships • Awareness support - reduction of time in locating relevant information • Tools that develop models for discourse processes may result in improved use of Net resources Article

  5. Roberts-Witt (1999) • Corporate portals as KM’s killer app • Knowledge worker control of information • What drives the corporate portal • Thin clients (i.e. web browsers) • Highly-dispersed workforce • 3 types of portals: • Data - structured, business • Information - less structured • Collaborative - group interactive functionality • Corporate portals lead to true consolidated computing enabling corporations to capitalize on what workers know and should know Article

  6. Ackerman & Halverson (2000) • Study of organizational memory (OM) • Telephone helpline for HR questions • Use of CAll Tracking system (CAT) • Employee verification needed • Distributed memory - telephone, paper, CAT, EMPLOY, employee • Boundary objects • Dependence on external maintenance of employee records • Employee’s own memory - performs task correctly • Decontextualization • Recontextualization for reuse • No unified OM per se - mixed provenance • OM as both KM object (repository) and process (contextualization)

  7. Vasconcelos, Kimble & Gouveia (2000) - I • Ontology as semantic network • Provides syntactic and semantic terms for describing knowledge about a domain • Organizational Memory (OM) • Defined as a computer system • A means for past knowledge to be brought into present activities • Enables organizational learning and continuous process improvement • Test and implement knowledge modelling techniques using ontologies - focus: manage Less Tangible Knowledge Assets (LTKAs)

  8. Vasconcelos, Kimble & Gouveia (2000) - II Group Memory System • Group Memory (GMe) ontology • Design rational system • Case-based reasoning • Application layer

  9. Vasconcelos, Kimble & Gouveia (2000) - III • Encompasses individual and team-based knowledge • Displays different knowledge dimensions within organizational workgroups • Is used to analyze and evaluate competence levels within the organization • Allows the facilitation of communication • Creates and promote collaborative workgroups that can work together on projects

  10. Brinn, Carrico & Combs (2001) • Cougaar (Cognitive Agent Architecture) • Software architecture that enables building distributed agent-based applications • Developed for DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) by ALP (Advanced Logistics Project) for military logistics • Built for vast amounts of information that standard software modeling equipment cannot handle • Suited for domains that are hierarchical, complex, widespread, dynamic, modeled by emergent behavior of components • Uses distributed query/response system approach - clustered information • Powerful web-based interface • Agents become their own intranet, providing information across the society

  11. Large, Beheshti & Rahman (2002) - I • Study of 4 focus groups - Web users (10-13 years old) • To identify design criteria to subsequently develop kids’ portals, including portal goals, visual design, information architecture, and personalization • Portals: Ask Jeeves for Kids, KidsClick, Lycos Zone, Yahooligans! • Should educate and entertain; be visually attractive; provide keyword search facilities and browsable subject categories; and allow user personalization • Prime use of Internet in schools: Web as information resource to support class projects

  12. Large, Beheshti & Rahman (2002) - II • Conclusions: • Entertainment distractions • Clearly identified routes to information retrieval • Attention-grabbing colors - applied throughout interface • Portal’s name - easy URI to remember • No advertisements or revenue-gathering devices • Quick direct access to information e.g. linked subject categories, letters of the alphabet • Short annotations of retrieved sites • Disliked extensive scrolling • Personalization for children’s sites not extensive

  13. Millen, Fontaine & Muller (2002) - I • Study of benefits and costs to Communities of Practice in collaboration, social interaction, productivity and organizational performance • Use organizational support and value as focus to base the study • Benefits: individual, community, and organizational • Community • Increased idea creation • Increased quality of knowledge and advice • Problem-solving • Established common context • Forum for free expression of creativity • Shared ideas

  14. Millen, Fontaine & Muller (2002) - II • Organizational benefits: tangible business outcomes • Successfully executed projects • Increased new business • Product innovation • Time-saving • Costs • Participation time for community members - supporting community roles (other than own work roles) • Meeting and conference expenses - travel, accommodation, teleconferencing • Technology - group messaging, community websites • Content publishing - online content development, production of media and promotional materials • Measurement and demonstration is difficult

  15. Impact on Organizational Knowledge • Due to communities of practice, organizational knowledge is inevitably heavily social in character (Brown & Duguid, 1998) • Annotate (a KMSS system) in an Intranet increases knowledge throughput by increasing the flow of relevant information across business units (Ginsburg & Kambil, 1999) • The data mining KX supports communities of practice that share and reuse knowledge (Liongsari, Dempski & Swaminathan, 1999) • Intranets support the creation, sharing and use of knowledge (Choo, Detlor & Turnbull, 2000) • Decentralizing of information via the Web and Intranet allows information to flow vertically and horizontally (Stenmark, 2000) • Portals provide a “shared information work space” (Detlor, 2000)

  16. Some Conclusions • Collaborative work space • Information flow vertically and horizontally • More dispersion of knowledge, (ideally) more democratic the organization • Within organization - bottom-up structures • With external organizations - spider network • Asynchronous communication

  17. Bibliography • Vasconcelos, J., Kimble, C., & Gouveia, F. (2000) A Design for a Group Memory System Using Ontologies. Proceedings of the 5th UKAIS Conference. Cardiff. McGraw Hill. • Millen, D., Fontaine, M., Muller, M. (2002) Understanding the Benefit and Costs of Communities of Practice. Communications of the ACM. 45(4), 69-73. ACM Press. • Lee, L.& Gaines, B. (1996) Knowledge Acquisition Processes in Internet Communities. Proceedings of the 10th Knowledge Acquisition Workshops, Banff, Canada November 9-14, 1996. • Brinn, Marshall; Carrico, Todd and Combs, Nathan. Every Agent a Web Server, Every Agent a Community Intranet. Proceedings from Agents'01. Montreal, Quebec, CANADA. ACM Press. • Ackerman, Mark S. & Halverson, Christine A. Reexamining Organizational Memory. Communications of the ACM. 43(1), 59-64. ACM Press. • Roberts-Witt, S. L. (1999, July). Making sense of portal pandemonium. Knowledge Management Magazine • Large, A., Beheshti, J. & Rahman, T. (2002) Design Criteria for Children's Web Portals: The Users Speak Out. Journal of the American Society of Information Science and Technology, 53(2): 79-94. • Chaffey, D. (1998) Groupware, workflow and intranets: reengineering the enterprise with collaborative software. Boston, MA: Digital Press.

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