Knowledge Management: The On-To-Knowledge Project Hans Akkermans Free University Amsterdam VUA

Hans AkkermansOn-To-Knowledge2 What is On-To-Knowledge? European project in EU Information Society Technologies Programme: EU-IST Aim: innovative tools for knowledge management Duration: 2.5 years, January June 2002 Total effort & cost: 26 personyears, 2.5+ M EUR EC funding: 1.34 M EUR

Hans AkkermansOn-To-Knowledge3 OTK Partners Free Univ. Amsterdam (VUA, coordinator), NL British Telecom, UK Swiss Life, CH Aidministrator, NL CognIT, NO EnerSearch, SE AIFB Uni-Karlsruhe, D

Hans AkkermansOn-To-Knowledge4 What is Knowledge Management? (1/2) Peter Drucker: Post-capitalist Society (1993) change in the meaning of knowledge Knowledge is the only meaningful resource today. knowledge is now being applied to knowledge “The change in the meaning of knowledge that began 250 years ago has transformed society and economy. Formal knowledge is seen as both the key personal resource and the key economic resource. Knowledge is the only meaningful resource today. The traditional `factors of production' - land (i.e. natural resources), labour and capital - have not disappeared. But they have become secondary. They can be obtained, and obtained easily, provided there is knowledge. And knowledge in this new meaning is knowledge as a utility, knowledge as the means to obtain social and economic results. These developments, whether desirable or not, are responses to an irreversible change: knowledge is now being applied to knowledge.”

Hans AkkermansOn-To-Knowledge5 What is Knowledge Management? (2/2) Identify Plan Acquire Develop Distribute Foster use Maintain, Control quality Dispose Aim of Knowledge Management: Increase the leverage of corporate knowledge, as a key production factor in the organization Increase the leverage of corporate knowledge, as a key production factor in the organization Aim of Knowledge Management: Increase the leverage of corporate knowledge, as a key production factor in the organization Increase the leverage of corporate knowledge, as a key production factor in the organization The knowledge value chain

Hans AkkermansOn-To-Knowledge6 Exploiting World-Wide Information Resources IT, and especially Internet/WWW, have boosted potential for knowledge acquisition and sharing BUT: BUT: information resources are heterogeneous, distributed, semi-structured, & enormous in size HENCE: On-To-Knowledge HENCE: need for KM tools for selective semantic (meaning-oriented) access => On-To-Knowledge Move from keyword search to query answering Move from keyword search to query answering Move upwards in the data-info-knowledge chain Move upwards in the data-info-knowledge chain Vision: knowledge web Vision: toward the next-generation “semantic” (Tim Berners-Lee, W3C) or knowledge web

Hans AkkermansOn-To-Knowledge7 OTK Results (1/2) Tools: Intranet/WWW information extraction Semantic representation & analysis User query access

Hans AkkermansOn-To-Knowledge8 OTK Results (2/2) Methodology Methodology (inputs: e.g. our KE&M book, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2000) Industrial case studies: Industrial case studies: evaluation and feedback OIL: OIL: XML/RDF-based ontology language plus inference layer on top of the web Note: see Chapter 9 for EnerSearch case study on agent communication

Hans AkkermansOn-To-Knowledge9 What is an Ontology? In philosophy: theory of what exists in the world formal description of shared concepts in a domain In IT: formal description of shared concepts in a domain Aid to human communication and shared understanding, by specifying meaning Machine-processable (e.g., agents use ontologies in communication) Ontology = key technology in semantic information processing Ontology = key technology in semantic information processing Application: knowledge management, e-business

Hans AkkermansOn-To-Knowledge10 OTK Tool Environment and its Use

Hans AkkermansOn-To-Knowledge11 Project Roles of OTK Partners

Hans AkkermansOn-To-Knowledge12 EnerSearch Case Study: Virtual Enterprise (1/3) How to do knowledge transfer via website? How to do knowledge transfer via website? Issue: Issue: hyperlinks or keyword search do not tell you much, and are a waste of time Much better: Much better: you want to ask questions and just get the answer Note: EnerSearch website hyperlink structure does not really help!

Hans AkkermansOn-To-Knowledge13 Can EnerSearch Case Study: What You Can Do (2/3) Annotate documents or webpages with meaning (through ontology) Note: taxonomy or type hierarchy is simple(st) form of ontology Next: semantic clustering of pages gives content- based organization Automatically done by one of the OTK tools: Aidministrator’s WebMaster Note: EnerSearch website ontology gives organization of important topics (Excerpt)

Hans AkkermansOn-To-Knowledge14 EnerSearch Case Study: Preliminary Results (3/3) Author relations Agent subtype structure Interactive generation of subtype intersections (here, e-commerce) Key idea: Key idea: website hyperlinks + ontology = meaningful structure

Hans AkkermansOn-To-Knowledge15 EnerSearch Case Study: Involvement of Shareholders Request to participate in evaluation of OTK tools User query interface tool: ask questions rather than browse or search Test/evaluation feedback to On-To-Knowledge => Improve EnerSearch website as a knowledge transfer medium Ontology helps separate two different meanings of “communication” 2 1