DYONIPOS

Redesigned Knowledge Management

Josef Makolm, Silke Weiß

Federal Ministry of Finace, Hintere Zollamtsstraße 2b, 1030 Wien, Austria

Doris Ipsmiller

m2n consulting and development gmbh, Marienstraße 10, 4020 Linz, Austria

Keywords: Knowledge Management, Knowledge Work Support, Semantic Technologies, Research Project

DYONIPOS, Use-Case Project DYONIPOS, Public Administration.

Abstract: Traditional knowledge management is often combined with extra work to collect the information again

which is already electronically available. Another obstacle to be overcome is to make the content of the

collected information easy accessible but. At present conventional searching tools provide only documents

and not the meaning of the content. They are often based on the search after character strings, deliver many

unnecessary hits and no or less context information. DYONIPOS offers a new way. The research project

DYONIPOS focuses on detecting the knowledge needs of knowledge workers and automatically providing

the required knowledge just in time, while avoiding additional work and violations of the knowledge

worker’s privacy. This knowledge is made available through semantic linkage of the relevant information

out of existing artifacts.

1 INTRODUCTION

Current Knowledge Management approach: a

knowledge worker shortly wants to prepare an

important topic but he neither knows where the

according information is stored nor what colleagues

he can ask for expertise. To get an overview about

the topic, he normally proceeds in the following

way: he successively searches in the available

sources (server drive, own hard disk, internet, e-mail

archive, specific applications, etc.) for important

information with different “search tools”. Therefore

he has to run each query individually. In addition he

must know the various functionalities of the

different “search tools”. Finally he has to screen the

delivered search results if they adequately describe

the relevant topic.

Knowledge Management with support of the

DYONIPOS prototype: after activation of

DYONIPOS, all keyboard entries and mouse moves

are recorded as well as the reactions of the computer

system. For instance, if the knowledge worker

begins to create a power point presentation

DYONIPOS is looking the knowledge worker over

his shoulder. DYONIPOS calculates information

needs to the entered words. The knowledge worker

edits for example the title page for his presentation

and writes “DYONIPOS (DYnamic ONtologybased

Integrated Process OptimiSation): Effective and

Efficient Knowledge Management science and

research hand in hand”. DYONIPOS detects the

knowledge needs, e.g. “DYONIPOS“, „Knowledge

Management“ etc. In addition, DYONIPOS

calculates so called “resources”. These are

corresponding documents, PDF-files, links to

websites, electronic record management data

(ELAK) which cover the information needs. The

knowledge worker gets these resources indicated

only by request. In fact, constantly local and global

search results are delivered only if the button for this

function is pressed. Apart from this associated

concepts of the topic and the detected information

need are indicated. These are for example

individuals or organizations which deal with this

topic. Besides the proactive support, DYONIPOS

also offers active search for information.

This is done similar to conventional search tools

via entering of a search item in a search window.

507

Makolm J., WeiÃ§ S. and Ipsmiller D.

DYONIPOS - Redesigned Knowledge Management.

DOI: 10.5220/0001822205070512

In Proceedings of the Fifth International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies (WEBIST 2009), page

ISBN: 978-989-8111-81-4

Moreover DYONIPOS enriches the further handling

and analysis of the indicated search results. For

example important key words can be displayed

which represent the content of the knowledge

resource as well as association graphs that visualizes

the relations of the associated concepts. DYONIPOS

also classifies the detected resources and visualize

them in topic landscapes. In these topic landscapes,

thematically similar resources are mapped closer

together. Trough the use of DYONIPOS knowledge

workers get an impression of the content of search

results without having ever read them. Furthermore,

existing knowledge in an organization becomes

available, transparent and semantically enriched.

2 KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

”Knowledge is relevant information in context”; this

is the underlying definition of the DYONIPOS

project. In public administration knowledge has

always played a central role because the production

of public services would not be possible without

knowledge. As a matter of fact knowledge workers

need more and more knowledge for processing their

daily knowledge intensive work. Furthermore the ad

hoc part of the processes increases steadily.

Knowledge acquisition also becomes more complex

because the amount of information increases

continually and heterogeneous systems are used to

obtain the needed knowledge. In addition the

multitude of found information complicates the

selection of the really needed knowledge. This leads

to the fact that already existing knowledge gaps

grow, respectively available information is not used.

It is often not recognized that knowledge gaps exist

or that information is available – even in the own

organization – which could be used for streamlined

processing or better results. Implementing e-

Government is intended to solve these problems not

just by using information and communication

technologies to exchange information with and to

provide services for citizens and businesses. What is

more, e-Government should also provide better and

more efficient working conditions for civil servants

in order to boost agility of public administration and

quality of public services. DYONIPOS aim is to

provide personal, agile and proactive support for the

knowledge worker by means of proactive, context

sensitive knowledge delivery. The DYONIPOS

vision of knowledge management is that knowledge

management works for people, not that people work

for knowledge management. Additionally the system

should adapt to the wishes of the peoples and not the

other way round. The main idea is to release

knowledge workers from additional work for

knowledge management. For reaching the project

visions, a completely new approach with

technologies „on the leading edge“ was used to

develop the prototype DYONIPOS. Conventional

search applications currently deliver only documents

– DYONIPOS also delivers the knowledge stored in

these documents.

3 KNOWLEDGE DISCOVERY

TECHNOLOGIES

The identification of knowledge gaps, the just in

time delivery of relevant information, the supply of

associated concepts related to the corresponding

topic and further analysis through filtering and

evaluation of the delivered information are the major

functions of DYONIPOS. To provide these

functions DYONIPOS captures the user’s

knowledge work, discovers inherent tasks, and

supports the knowledge worker with information.

The first challenge is the observation of the

knowledge worker’s interactions with and reactions

to the system and existing application data. This data

is the so called low-level sensor data on the

application and operating system level (Maier, 2005,

p. 443). The second challenge is to develop adequate

techniques to discover work patterns and to

automatically support users with appropriate

information. The third challenge is to detect how

knowledge workers can be effectively supported

(Tochtermann, 2006).

In order to capture the worker’s patterns a java

tool called DYONIPOS Task Recognizer has been

implemented (Rath, 2007). At first DYONIPOS

records all interactions between the users and their

computers; these are so called "events", e.g. mouse

clicks or key strokes. Different sensors of the

context observer module observe all interactions of

the user with the desktop environment. DYONIPOS

uses a key logger program to record and log all

recognized events (Kröll et al., 2006; Rath et al.,

2007). The observed events are stored in the so

called event log. This monitored data is the basis for

determining the work patterns. The next step is to

reduce the immense quantity of data and to assign

events to event blocks by filtering and relation

analysis. This allows the elimination of irrelevant

data, e.g. mouse movements. Owing to relation

analysis a set of events can be bundled into an event

block. At present, generic rules, application based

WEBIST 2009 - 5th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies

508

rules and web browser based rules are applied for

bundling events into event blocks (Rath, 2007).

Generic rules are based on the title of the window

currently opened by the user. A reason for the

assignment of events to an existing event block is

e.g. the title of the window currently opened. The

implementation of further rules for assigning events

to event blocks can easily be accomplished. The

methods used for learning task assignments are k-

nearest neighbor classification, Support Vector

Machines based on graph kernels (Rath et al., 2007).

Additionally there is the possibility to train the

classifier, i.e. the above mentioned bundling agent,

by means of task assignments is done by the user. A

method for detecting tasks, which is the next level of

semantic enrichment, is clustering based on

similarity between content and structural features

and the scatter/gather approach. During the first test

phase the assignment was initially performed by the

key-user but in the second test phase the

classification of features and tasks worked

automatically and had only to be controlled by the

key-user.

4 SEMANTIC TECHNOLOGIES

DYONIPOS is a modern information system which

supports users by proactive delivery of contextual

information (resources) while knowledge workers

are doing their daily work. The use of ontologies is

useful in such a system, because they ensure

interoperability and the development of "new"

knowledge. Furthermore, ontologies are used for the

learning process of the user context. Not only the

structure but also the recognition of context is based

on ontologies. The knowledge base and also the

internal program flow are based on ontologies. In

addition ontologies can be used for the unambiguous

description of information resources. As a

consequence, Resource Description Framework

(RDF) is a key technology of DYONIPOS. RDF is

an ontology and a formal language used to encode

ontologies. All events, event blocks and tasks

described in section 3 are represented and stored by

RDF-Triples (Kröll et al, 2006).

5 THE USE-CASE PROJECT

DYONIPOS

Parallel to the research project DYONIPOS the use-

case project DYONIPOS is implemented in the

Directorate General for Information Technology

(DG-IT) of the Federal Ministry of Finance, Austria.

In order to handle their daily work, knowledge

workers in public administration need the following

additional knowledge:

• Where is the relevant information stored?

• How can this information be found?

• How relevant is the delivered information?

The challenge is to provide administrative

employees automatically with information they

need. Consequently the above mentioned additional

know-how is made available by DYONIPOS. Other

objectives are to support the employees of the DG-

IT without creation of additional work by means of

knowledge management and to ensure privacy of the

knowledge workers. DYONIPOS contribute to the

resolution of these challenges by an efficiently and

an effectively support of the daily work of the

individual employees in the DG-IT. The

DYONIPOS Task Recognizer provides employees

with the necessary knowledge produced by semantic

cross-linking of the relevant information from the

existing repositories and processes. Additionally,

DYONIPOS independently develops new relations

between sources of knowledge. This explains why

the DYONIPOS Task Recognizer at the one hand

supports the user by visualization of existing

documents, files or websites etc. and on the other

hand displays the new generated information such as

the name of the person who has the specific know-

how. The ministry or rather fifteen employees

support the research consortium. Together they work

on the realization of the research results and they

ensure the transformation of current scientific results

into an easily useable software solution. The staff of

the ministry shares its domain specific know-how

with the research consortium, by supporting the

development of DYONIPOS base technologies.

Initial interviews with employees were carried

out to get both, an impression of the kind of work

and how this work is done. The results of these

interviews provided information which sensors

should be developed and which events the sensors

should observe. The researchers found out that

employees work mainly with standard applications

such as Microsoft Office tools, Internet Explorer and

the e-mail system Novell GroupWise. That is why a

first research step was to develop sensors to observe

events of these applications. In addition to the

observation of these standard applications the final

DYONIPOS prototype records all electronic artifacts

from the electronic record management system

(ELAK), the file-system on the servers, the Livelink-

system (a system to store office documents in a

DYONIPOS - Redesigned Knowledge Management

509

specific server environment) as well as the specific

application KOMPASS, a system to administrate

persons, resources and authorizations.

6 THE RESULTS OF THE FIRST

AND SECOND TEST PHASE

Through evaluation of the log files, questionnaires

and the analysis of the first and the second test the

following information and operating figures about

the key-user and the DYONIPOS Task Recognizer

were derived. A basic result of the evaluation of the

first test was that key-users always worked on

several tasks at the same time. This information

represented a challenge for DYONIPOS, because it

is an objective of DYONIPOS to provide just in time

information based on the context. Furthermore we

found out that a key-user used different searching

tools and searched in very heterogeneous sources.

Another objective of DYONIPOS is to support the

work of the user by proactive and context sensitive

information delivery. DYONIPOS therefore

searches for information in different repositories and

implements the function of a searching tool.

Moreover it creates cross-links between the context

of different repositories in order to deliver existing

and new generated information. By using

DYONIPOS knowledge workers receive

transparency over the existing sources of

information.

DYONIPOS gives additional references about

the relevance of the found search results which

include all currently available information. The

parallel implementation of the funded research

project and the use-case project made it possible to

exchange ideas between research and practice

constantly; this was useful for both projects.

Furthermore the inclusion of all stakeholders

(Makolm & Orthofer, 2007, p.391) such as

researchers, users, IT experts and also the staff

council – in the development process assures that the

results of the research project DYONIPOS can and

will be transformed optimally and in real time into a

practical application.

The second test phase was started in January

2008 and took approximately two months. A

fundamentally improved version of the prototype

DYONIPOS was released. It established an

organizational knowledge base with new

functionalities and also included artifacts stored on

the server.

The third prototype enables the classification of

detected resources and the visualisation of topic

landscapes (see Figure 1). In the topic landscape,

thematically similar resources are mapped to close

regions. Moreover, the selection of different

resources and the display “how similar they are” is

possible. In addition, DYONIPOS allows the

selection of artifacts according to sources e.g. file

system, KOMPASS, ELAK and Web.

Figure 1: DYONIPOS enables the display of information

in topic landscapes.

Figure 2: The graphical user interface of DYONIPOS.

Figure 2 shows the DYONIPOS user interface.

When the task recognizer is started, all mouse clicks

and tasks are registered. Information needs for a

certain topic are recognized. On demand the user is

provided with information that he searches for or

that is related to the content of his work. If the user

works for example on a power point presentation

concerning the topic DYONIPOS, the task

recognizer shows all web resources, presentation,

word documents etc. related connected to this topic

in the “global search results”. To every newly

entered word or sentence, DYONIPOS searches for

information or concepts in the personal and

organizational database which could be useful for

the knowledge worker. While the user is working on

WEBIST 2009 - 5th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies

510

a particular topic, the DYONIPOS task recognizer is

always shown in the right front of the desktop. As a

consequence, information found by the application

appears permanently. If this is not wished the task

recognizer can be minimized.

Figure 3: Screenshot of the DYONIPOS Task Recognizer.

Figure 3 shows the graphical user interface of the

DYONIPOS Task Recognizer window for the third

test phase. Like in the second test phase, different

tabs allow the navigation between the various

delivered supplied resources and functionalities. On

the screenshot the tab “Übersicht” (overview) is

opened. On this tab the so called “Information

needs” are mapped at the top. The deduction of

“Information needs” occurs automatically, but for

performance reasons the related resources are

measured only after clicking on the activating

button. Afterwards the detection of the individual

and global resources related to the “Information

Need” gets started. With the help of filter criteria

e.g. filtering on associated persons or organization,

the located search results can be improved once

again. In addition also the associated concepts such

as the name of experts, terms, application areas and

organizations corresponding to the particular topic

are offered. “Information needs” will be stored and

may be calculated again at a later date. All located

resources are opened directly in its operational

application. For example, a located e-mail can be

opened in the associated e-mail application with a

double click . A key-user has also the possibility to

search actively for information in the iteratively

generated resource repository by using the search

field. This search field is displayed on the screenshot

at the bottom next to the magnifying glass. On the

left side of the screenshot an association graph is

opened. This graph shows different associated

concepts regarding a selected resource. On the tab

“Persönlich” (individual) the adjustment of personal

DYONIPOS functionalities can be carried out, e.g.

the deletion of knowledge, which is stored at the

organizational knowledge base. On the tab “Verlauf”

(progress) all finally opened resources is displayed.

Furthermore the release of these resources to the

organizational data base is possible on this tab. The

tab “Admin” with the corresponding authorizations

is only available for administrators. This tab

contains diverse control functions for assembling of

the index, the internal system procedures, the

KOMPASS-mappings etc.

Figure 4 shows the star-shaped graph of the

associated concepts. Because of the identified

information needs, the DYONIPOS task recognizer

also indicates associated persons with certain

concepts. The graph which shows these concepts is

mapped star-shaped here and has the name of the

person in the centre. In the association graph, those

persons, organizations etc. are identified that are

connected with several topics linked to information

need. Furthermore it is displayed for which company

respectively which department the person works and

contact details are given. In the same way the graph

points out, for which other projects the person works

or rather with which concepts he or she is identified.

Consequently links to further information are

available by clicking on a symbol. For example if

the person is responsible for semantic technologies,

information about “semantic technologies” can be

received.

Figure 4: Screenshot of the DYONIPOS star shaped

association graph.

Finally the third test phase starts in November

2008. Starting in February 2009 the whole DG-IT or

rather all 180 employees will take part in a final test

of the prototype DYONIPOS. The final evaluation

will be done after one year of practical experience.

The documentation and evaluation of this final test

provides the basis for the decision whether

DYONIPOS will be used in the DG-IT further on. In

the same way the decision will be made whether

DYONIPOS - Redesigned Knowledge Management

511

DYONIPOS should be proceeded as a commercial

tool or not.

7 FUTURE TRENDS

In the DYONIPOS project, the Directorate General

of Information Technology of the Federal Ministry

of Finance is innovation driver and solution provider

at the same time. Altogether 15 key-user from

different areas and selected experts support the

research consortium directly with the

implementation of the pilot software. Through the

joint venture of science, economy and public

administration good results could be generated.

DYONIPOS supports above all organizations which

collect knowledge in a written form, which do a high

part of knowledge intensive activities, which are

active in a very dynamic environment and

implement ad-hoc processes. DYONIPOS is a very

flexible system. For the implementation of

DYONIPOS open standards such as RDF, OWL and

Jena are used. The DYONIPOS system is model-

based and can be individually configured. The

connector principle enables the integration in

different IT-landscapes. The scale and the

performance allocation can also be individually

adapted.

8 CONCLUSIONS

The use of DYONIPOS leads to an increase of the

effectiveness of the knowledge organization. This is

because not only the own individual knowledge is

available for the handling of the daily work but also

the global organizational knowledge is supplied

proactively. Likewise, more knowledge can increase

the quality of products since important information

can be considered for the creation of products.

DYONIPOS can also contribute to a reduction of

double work because similar work that is already

done is automatically indicated to the present topic.

Due to the fact that work can (partly) be used again

valuable work time can be saved and consistency

can be assured which ends up in a more efficient

work method. Furthermore DYONIPOS improves

the individual work situation of single knowledge

workers. Workers of a knowledge organization can

concentrate on their core responsibilities as

bureaucratic activities are reduced. In addition,

DYONIPOS links individual employees through the

indication of potential conversational partners and

therefore encourages the cooperation and the

exchange of information in a company. Newest

leading edge technologies are tested in the

DYONIPOS research and use-case project. It can be

concluded that the joint venture between research,

economy and administration was successful.

REFERENCES

Kröll, M., Rath, A., Granitzer, M., Lindstaedt, S. and

Tochtermann, K., 2006. Contextual Retrieval in

Knowledge Intensive Business Environments. Paper

presented at Workshop Information Retrieval 2006,

Hildesheim, Germany.

Maier, R., 2005. Modelling Knowledge Work for the

Design of Knowledge Infrastructures. Journal of

Universal Computer Science, 4, 11, 429-451.

Makolm, J. and Orthofer, G., 2007. Holistic Approach,

Stakeholder Integration and Transorganizational

Processes: Success Factors of FinanzOnline. In

Makolm, J. and Orthofer, G. (Eds.), E-Taxation: State

& Perspectives, E-Government in the Field of

Taxation: Scientific Basis, Implementation Strategies,

Good Practice Examples, pp. 389-402, Linz, Trauner

Verlag.

Rath, A., Kröll, M., Andrews, K., Lindstaedt, S.,

Granitzer, M. and Tochtermann, K, 2006. Synergizing

Standard and Ad-Hoc Processes. Proceedings of the

6th International Conference on Practical Aspects of

Knowledge Management (pp. 267-278). Heidelberg:

Springer Berlin.

Rath, A., Kröll M., Lindstaedt, S. and Granitzer, M., 2007.

Low-Level Event Relationship Discovery for

Knowledge Work Support. In Gronau N. (Ed.), Proc.

of the 4th Conference on Professional Knowledge

Management (pp. 227-234), Potsdam: GITO-Verlag.

Rath, A., 2007. A Low-Level Based Task And Process

Support Approach for Knowledge-Intensive Business

Environments. Proceedings of the 5th International

Conference on Enterprise Information System

Doctoral Consortium DCEIS 2007 (pp. 35-42),

Madeira, Portugal.

Tochtermann, K., Reisinger, D., Granitzer, M. and

Lindstaedt, S., 2006. Integrating Ad Hoc Processes

and Standard Processes in Public Administrations.

Knowledge transfer across Europe, 4th Eastern

European eGov Days and 5th eGov Days, Volume

203, OCG Serie. Vienna.

WEBIST 2009 - 5th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies

512