Knowledge management and emerging technologies.

By Jyrki Pulkkinen, 09.01.2008

Status: non-paper / discussion paper for Train4Dev KM sub-group

This document provides some basic information about new technologies that can be used for knowledge management and capacity building purposes. The presentation of technologies is not exhaustive, but rather a starting point for the group to discuss how these emerging technologies could be used in the context of development policy training and knowledge management now and in the fyture. The document also tries to categorize individual technologies into technology trends or scenarios of technology development, rather than explain each of the application or technology separately. In addition, it is worth of mention, that this document is rather a "copy -paste" collection of ideas than a "scientific article".

Some strategic questions for the Knowledge Management sub-group:

• Should we focus on supporting other sub-groups/agencies in the use of different technologies or just develop ideas and leave the implementation for the groups/agencies themselves
• If supporting, should we develop extended Web based services for the sub-groups/agencies beyond the current website, or focus on supporting the use of the current web site.
• if developing new services, should we focus on technologies that can be put in use NOW (like installing a Wiki) or discuss and develop scenarios  that can be integrated to the website later in the future.
  
  

So, if decided, one aim of the KM sub-group could be to discuss "knowledge support needs" of the development policy experts and future scenarios of the web site to be developed to serve these needs. Just to give an example, one scenario or a need for knowledge management systems in development work could be the following:  

A development policy expert is responsible of a certain sector of development policy and/or certain countries. The person is supposed to work together with similar experts of other agencies, local authorities, local consultants and other stakeholder in the field. A challenge is to extend the knowledge support system from the office to other locations to work and travel. How the new technology can assist the expert and help the person to learn from the other experts and manage with all the information that is available of the sector and the recipient countries at the same time when the person is visiting at project sites.  What kind of knowledge system could support this kind of expert? To summarize the needs of the expert are the following:

• ability to search relevant information for decision making/advise that is related to the sector and relevant countries (Semantic web)
• ability to communicate and collaborate with other colleagues (Web 2.0)
• ability to do all this while travelling and get relevant information related to the current location (mobile)

The categories of technologies that can help us to develop such a knowledge support system for development policy experts are introduced here as following:

• Web 2.0 technologies
• Semantic Web (Web 3)
• Ubiquitous technologies (mobile, wireless, pervasive, wearable, etc.)

Web 2.0

According to the WIKIPEDIA, the phrase Web 2.0 can refer to a perceived second generation of web-based communities and hosted services — such as social-networking sites, wikis, and folksonomies — which aim to facilitate creativity, collaboration, and sharing between users. "Web 2.0 is a knowledge-oriented environment where human interactions generate content that is published, managed and used through network applications in a service-oriented architecture."

Technologies such as weblogs (blogs), social bookmarking, wikis, podcasts, RSS feeds (and other forms of many-to-many publishing), social software, and web application programming interfaces (APIs) provide enhancements over read-only websites. Train4Dev website fulfils the most of these requirements, except Wiki.

Web 2.0 websites typically include some of the features/techniques presented in the triangle:

At the base of the Web 2.0 triangle are the blogs – many companies/agencies have their principal officers run internal/external blogs. As an external tool that plugs into a corporate website, it is an excellent tool for thought leadership positioning.  Another tool, that’s fairly simply to integrate into an existing web presence are RSS feeds. These can be hooked up to dynamic sections like Jobs/Press Releases/ to good effect.

Moving up the ladder we come to networking tools. Networking can be tapped in two ways. The first and possibly the most rewarding is the creation of web communities. A moderated community that can actually share members' experiences and data is a self sustaining web site. Plus it’s a great platform to promote new ideas and products, for organizing user training and even for getting advance feedback for under-construction features. Another interesting way of using networking is to create alumni online group of an institution/agency.

The next level of services are built around bookmarking. In a social bookmarking system, users save links to web pages that they want to remember and/or share. Social bookmarking sites are popular and useful and they can be bent to a professional context.   

Examples of social bookmarking sites:  Blue Dot, BookmarkSync, Cloudytags.com , del.icio.us , Digg, Furl, GiveALink.org , Ma.gnolia, My Web.  

With bookmarking, collaboration kicks in and wikis are the next logical step. While it requires an application to house and manage the wiki, once this is set up, organizations will find that wikis are self sustaining without the overhead of separate teams that intranets normally entail. The wiki is used for knowledge management, project information sharing, news and updates – users have rights for specific sections that they periodically update and each group maintains its own area. The wiki has since cannibalized some of the functions of the intranet and the knowledge management systems since it is always better updated.

Wiki software: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wiki_software

Semantic Web (also called Web 3.0)

The Semantic Web will bring structure to the meaningful content of Web pages, creating an environment where software agents roaming from page to page can readily carry out sophisticated tasks for users. The semantic web provides a common standard (RDF) for websites to publish the relevant information in a more readily machine-processable and integratable form.

Semantic Web promises to make Web-accessible data more amenable to machine processing. The Semantic Web is about labeling (annotating) information so that computer systems (and humans) can process it more meaningfully. The semantics underlying such annotations usually come from ontologies, which encapsulate agreement among information creators and users with help from common nomenclature and the use of rich knowledge representation.

Just as the Semantic Web is beginning to empower and energize content on the Web, the underlying principles and technologies can energize and enhance the long-standing knowledge-management discipline. Several frameworks within knowledge-management theory set contexts for scientific debate. Some emphasize the knowledge life cycle, others the knowledge product, and many researchers have recently begun to emphasize the knowledge and social networking perspective, as previously described. The rapid adoption of Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 technologies adds to this picture a tight connection between knowledge management, social networks, and various implicit, formal, or powerful semantics.

The latest Semantic Web developments and insights in knowledge management challenge the new era of semantic-based knowledge-management systems. Semantic Web tools and applications contribute significantly to knowledge management’s performance, providing a definition for flexible reference mechanisms to knowledge objects and knowledge contributors; integration of knowledge creation and use; integral human involvement in information- and knowledge-management activities; and a definition for and the exploitation of social networks, including social activities and context.

Ubiquitous technologies (mobile, wireless, pervasive, wearable, etc.)

According to Wikipedia, ubiquitous computing (or "ubicomp") is a post-desktop model of human-computer interaction in which information processing has been thoroughly integrated into everyday objects and activities. As opposed to the desktop paradigm, in which a single user consciously engages a single device for a specialized purpose, someone "using" ubiquitous computing engages many computational devices and systems simultaneously, in the course of ordinary activities, and may not necessarily even be aware that they are doing so.

Ubiquitous computing helped kick off the recent boom in mobile computing, although it is not the same thing as mobile or wireless computing. Ubiquitous computing encompasses a wide range of technologies, including distributed computing, mobile computing, sensor networks, human-computer interaction, and artificial intelligence. However, it this limited document, these technologies are discussed here together and the concept of mobile computing is emphasized.

In practice, the ubicomputing can provide technologies where the environment (an intelligent house, machines like refrigerator, etc) are adapting to our needs and our portable devises are communicating the systems that are integrated to our environment through technologies like Bluetooth, GPRS, WiFi, GPS, etc.  From our needs point of view, a mobile computing devise that is linked to the knowledge management system (semantic web able web community site) and is also linked to our environment (location) through a satellite GPS system, is the most interesting. 

For example, the ability to determine the receiver's absolute location allows GPS receivers to perform as a surveying tool or as an aid to navigation to locations that needs to be visited. It also allows to search, gather, produce and share information (pictures, data, comments, etc), that are location related. It also enhances social networking by pin-pointing the other colleagues of the community (if allowed by the member of the community). This can enhance the community of practice to work together and share meaningful and relevant information related to working sites.