pdf 820Kb - INSEAD CALT

Evaluation report of the use of Onto-Logging
platform in the user site
Deliverable ID: D8b
Page : 54 of 110
Version: 1.0
Date: 27 january 2004
Status: Final
Confid.: Public
Being allocated to different projects, writing projects proposals for various clients and
proposing IT solutions are current tasks for Indra’s knowledge workers. The access to the
right information and collaboration with experts help their efficiency and help them taking
better decisions. Therefore it is necessary to make experience of people more visible in
organization. The need “to know what people know, to make their experience with
technology and products accessible” and “to find the right people” is useful for solving
everyday tasks.
These needs of the users validate the main research challenges of the project namely:
• Research on mechanisms to better structuring and reusing knowledge (e.g. ontologies),
• Research on more powerful mechanisms for searching and retrieving knowledge (e.g.
advanced query mechanisms and the use of semantics annotations for retrieving
knowledge),
• Personalized information spaces for avoiding a condition of information overload and
easiness of the use of the system (e.g. taking into account preferences of the users, the
users’ needs, etc)
• Better management of the tacit knowledge expressed as: “to know what people know and
to make their experience with technology and products accessible”.
5.2 Phase 1: Ontology Building (and some content population)
Ontologies aim to structure and represent domain knowledge in a generic way which may be
reused and shared across applications and groups.
“Disparate backgrounds, languages, tools and techniques are a major barrier to effective
communication among people, organizations and/or software systems (…) the implementation
of an explicit account of a shared understanding (i.e. an “ontology”) in a given subject area,
can improve such communication, which in turn can give rise to greater reuse and sharing,
interoperability and more reliable software.” (Uschold and Gruninger, 1996).
5.2.1 Ontology building (at INDRA)
5.2.1.1 Description of the building process
The process of knowledge domain modelling at INDRA, namely the tendering process
modelling, went through an iterative phase in order to get to a shared understanding of
concepts, to get to a complete ontology and to reach consensus towards the definition of
concepts. The process of building the domain ontology was used in the process of the
evaluation of the ontology modelling processes and tools. The design and implementation of
the domain ontology at INDRA brought some interesting insights, which were captured
through a specialized questionnaire. The questionnaire is attached in Annex 6.