Intranets, Portals and Organizational Knowledge

Helena LohINF 385Q Knowledge Management Systems, Fall 2005

KMS Topic Discussion27 October 2005

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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)

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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)

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Vasconcelos, Kimble & Gouveia (2000) - II

Group Memory SystemI. Group Memory (GMe)

ontologyII. Design rational

systemIII. Case-based

reasoningIV. Application layer

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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)

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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

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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.