Agent-Mediated Knowledge Management

The Quest for (Locating) Knowledge Expert

Authors:Shahrinaz Ismail, UCSI University

Mohd Sharifuddin Ahmad, Universiti Tenaga NasionalCAIT2010, UKM, 27-28 Sep 2010

Introduction Goal/objectives:leader of the industry,

knowledge expert in the field

Goal/objectives:leader of the industry,

knowledge expert in the field

The people still find difficulties in searching/locating knowledge

experts within the firm

High employee turnover

RISK!!

Objectives of Research

The processes involved may include identify, locate, acquire and match the knowledge users, experts and resources.

2nd objective:To use software agent to mediate

knowledge management processes based on the framework, which

covers the reactive and proactive behaviours of the agent.

Main objective:To develop a framework for a software agent to identify the required knowledge expert within and outside the organisational boundaries.

Scope of Research

Body of knowledge:Focused on the knowledge retrieval and knowledge acquisition by identifying, locating and acquiring the matching expertise of the required knowledge

Framework /model for software agent in its environments

within organisational boundaries (internal)in semantic web (external)

to be tested in an existing

organisational environment

supported by a prototype

simulation of the software agent

A platform of knowledge experts’ profiles for proof of concept

possibility of the successful ‘perfect match’ on knowledge expert may be low boundary of this research

Material & Methods

Data Collection

Questionnaire survey on PKMInterview on current state of

IT infrastructure, OKM

individual knowledge workers expert sampling

how the individual knowledge worker performs task,identifies knowledge source, manages knowledge,

manages source collected, and interpretsor makes data available as and when it is needed

Requires Findings on

the behaviour of the knowledge agent will depend on two different situations: reactive search and proactive search

Material & Methods (cont’d)

This Research Outcome

A simulation of knowledge agentin locating knowledge expert

With an experiment onreal-world context

The model will take into account:

the knowledge sourcesrelated to knowledge worker

how an agent would know/identifyone particular knowledge entity

to be relevant/suitableto one knowledge worker

Two Aspects of identifying the Knowledge Expert:

Proactive- agent assists human to

match profilewithin organisation

Reactive- agent understands from humanand roams around in organisation

to identify knowledge expert

? Semantic Web…?

Material & Methods (cont’d)

Methods Software/Application

Simulation of the model

JACK Intelligent Agents application

Questionnaire data analysis

SPSS

Interview data analysis

NVivo

Discussion on AI in KM

• KM would be supported by many artificial intelligence developments– i.e. intelligent agents, natural language understanding and

processing, reasoning strategies, and knowledge representations and ontologies

– will be relied on to organise and facilitate knowledge application to important situations (Wiig, 1999; Chandrasekaran, Josephson & Benjamins, 1999)

• Aligned with the key of having intelligent agents, which is interoperate– “to exchange information and services with other programs and

thereby solve problems that cannot be solved alone” (Genesereth & Ketchpel, 1994)

• Few definitions of software agents (or intelligent agents)– The similarities are on the autonomous behaviour of the agents

to interact with its environment or surroundings– For this research, the features of an intelligent agent should be

autonomy, reactive, proactive, able to communicate, adaptive, goal-oriented, capable to cooperate, reason and learn, and flexible (adapted from Paprzycki and Abraham (2003)

Discussion on AI in KM (cont’d)

• Paprzycki and Abraham (2003): Agent technology is not just about the construct, but also on human-computer interaction

• Macal and North (2006): Agent is any type of independent component, which is more on component behaviour

– From a practical modelling standpoint, agents have the characteristics of identifiable, situated, goal-directed, autonomous and self-directed, and flexible with ability to learn and adapt

– Similar to Diosteanu and Cotfas (2009) – agents should be reactive, autonomous, rational, goal-oriented, temporally continuous, mobile and communication

• Principle areas of software agent technology:– development and maintenance of complex systems, resource management,

delivery of personalised content, and e-commerce– in e-commerce: marketing and personalisation, KM, real-time systems, expert

systems, knowledge discovery, and network management (Paprzycki & Abraham, 2003)

• Agent-based modelling application is required in order to apply agent technology to KM processes – for social processes

– agents would represent people or groups of people, and agent relationships represent processes of social interaction

• Modelling agent behaviours should be extended to modelling the agent interactions – who is connected to who and the mechanisms governing the nature of the interactions (Macal & North, 2006)

Discussion on AI in KM (cont’d)

• Previous researches on AI in KM:– Diosteanu and Cotfas (2009): agent-based knowledge management

solution in the web environment, making use of GIS to locate the construction material suppliers in supply chain management for construction industry

– Wang and Shakshuki (2005): agent-based department CMS to encourage knowledge sharing among the users

– Ahmed, Ahmad, & Mohd Yusoff (2009): a departmental level agent-mediated system in automation of alerting humans to work on the tasks within stipulated time

• These examples of previous researches cover the two aspects of this proposed research: – agent to be reactive to search for knowledge experts within the

organisation (Wang & Shakshuki, 2005; Ahmed, Ahmad, & Mohd Yusoff, 2009)

– agent to be proactive to search for knowledge experts outside the organisation or within the semantic web (Diosteanu & Cotfas, 2009)

Conclusion

• This paper lays out the proposed research project under the area of agent technology in organisational knowledge management.

• The scope of KM in this research is constrained to knowledge retrieval and knowledge acquisition.

• From these aspects of KM, the proposed simulation of the framework will place the software agent in two different environments:– within the organisational boundaries (internal)– in semantic web (external)

• In achieving the objectives, this research requires findings on:– how the individual knowledge worker performs task, identifies

knowledge source, manages knowledge, manages source collected, and interprets or makes data available as and when it is needed.

• From these findings, the behaviour of the knowledge agent will depend on two different situations:– reactive search: when human requests to locate knowledge expert– proactive search: agent understands the need from human’s activity,

search for and suggests knowledge expert

A glimpse..

SA-2

SA-1

delegate

Legend:SA = Software Agent SA-1* = Method 2 for SAKW = Knowledge Worker

Internet

Knowledge Source

Repositories Database Knowledgebase

SA-1*

Node 1

Human Knowledge

Worker

SA

Node 2

Human Knowledge

Worker

Non-Expert(without profile)

Human KW with or without SA

Human KW is assisted by SA

Node 3Human KW without SA

-Proactive Search-Semantic Web

Agent EnvironmentSchedule to pertain

Human Knowledge

Worker

SA-N

Expert(with profile)

THANK YOU…