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:
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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)
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Web portals e.g. MyYahoo, Google News, UT Direct
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Lee & Gaines (1996)
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The use of the Internet as a tool for acquiring knowledge
Conceptual model of Socioware:
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“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
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Thin clients (i.e. web browsers)
Highly-dispersed workforce
 3 types of portals:
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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
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Use of CAll Tracking system (CAT)
Employee verification needed
Distributed memory - telephone, paper, CAT, EMPLOY, employee
 Boundary objects
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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)
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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 System
I.
Group Memory (GMe)
ontology
II. Design rational system
III. Case-based reasoning
IV. 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)
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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:
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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
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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
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Successfully executed projects
Increased new business
Product innovation
Time-saving
 Costs
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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
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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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