Just-in-time Knowledge Flow for Distributed Organizations usingAgents Technology

R. Brena, J.L. Aguirre, A.C. Treviño

ITESM, Mexico

Who are we?

Joint project between a lab in AI and a Bussiness research center at the ITESM, Monterrey:

Center for Artificial IntelligenceCenter for Knowledge Systems

Summary

Just-in-time KnowledgeAgents technologyArchitectureOntologiesServicesContextsDiscussionConclusions

Knowledge economy

Increased relative weight of knowledge and information in the production of value

Knowledge is critical for shrinking cycle time for competency-base renewal

Pressure for most organization to cope with massive flood of unstructured information

Knowledge life cycle

Knowledge flow

Often K is created in one place and needed (often not used) in another

Many large distributed organizations suffer from a lack of K circulation both in vertical and horizontal directions

Good dissemination of relevant pieces of information and knowledge is very important

JITIK concept

“Just-in-time” Information and Knowledge

Give support to K circulation in the organization by connecting the right K with the right person at the right moment

Right Knowledge

Knowledge pieces are characterized as points in a multidimensional space

Dimensions are class hierarchiesThese come from “ontologies”Examples:– Classification of users’ interest areas– Structure of the organization

Right person

“Right knowledge” and “Right person” are reciprocal

We use the same categories for characterizing users and knowledge

This makes possible to link pieces of knowledge to corresponding users

Right moment

The time for sending a piece of knowledge could be:– When that K is generated– When it arrives to the organization or

is discovered– When a particular users needs it

1. The user knows he/she needs it (point-and-click search)

2. The user is not aware of needing some information (K is diffused to some specific users)

Agents technology

Long-lived autonomous processes

Reactive and proactive

Cooperate and compete

Users delegate tasks to agents (electronic assistants)

Point & Click / Delegate

Old paradigm: Point and click– Computer does just what user directs

it to do

New paradigm: Delegate– Computer takes care of tasks and

reports results to the master

Search / Diffuse

Usually K is searched by users – (point and click paradigm)

In JITIK K is diffused to users as it becomes available / relevant – (delegation paradigm)

Architecture

Parasiticagents

Personal Agents

Clusteragents

Directory agent

Cluster agents

DB

InferenceEngine

Communicationinterface

Workingdata

Inference engine

Forward-chaining rule-based

Rules of the form:– Distribute K satisfying Char(K) to U satisfying Char(U) when E

– Distribute www_library_regulation satisfying relevant(library_regulation, new_users) to ?x satisfying new_registered(?x) when NOW.

Directory agents

Help finding other agentsLike DNS servicesGive great flexibility to the

system’s (re)configuration

Directory agent

Personal agents

Take care of services specific to an individual

Examples: –Monitoring specific web pages– Checking ranges for values in

databases– Reporting articles from netnews

related to interest areas

Maintain a “user profile”

Parasitic agents

Allow JITIK to gather information from other systems

Parasitic agents are “fastened” to conventional programs

PA report to cluster agents– Identity of the PA– Event being reported– Associated data

PA find cluster agents using DA

Knowledge/Users specification

Combination (“and”) of several class hierarchies

Example:– User in the sales division

(organization classification), and– User is executive in charge of a

department (level classification), and– User involved in best-practices

support (tasks classification), and– User expert in customer satisfaction

(competence classification)

Ontologies

The set of class hierarchies is a form of “ontology”

Terms are defined by their place in class hierarchies

Expression of ontologies in an ontology-oriented language is under way

JITIK services

Alerts

Messages

K from bussiness processes

Alerts

Alerts are brief notification of events:– A new relevant piece of information

has arrived– An important information has changed– A deadline has been reached

They are reported to personal agents, which notify their user according to his/her profile

Messages

Messages are created by a human user

The delivery time could be now or when some conjunction of conditions become true

Messages are delivered in a form chosen by the user (email, instant messaging, web)

K from bussiness processes

Parasitic Agents are attached to key points of bussiness processes

Information from PA is associated to a specification of relevant K

Relevant K is then distributed among concerned users

Example: New user registers at a library.- Send him/her regulations

JITIK in context

JITIK could be applied to a variety of organizational contexts:

– Big distributed / multinational / vertical entreprises

– Virtual organizations and networks

– Task forces

Best-practices support

Best practices are hard to generalize

Quality circles run without much automated support

JITIK can distribute best practices to relevant users

Could help to break geografical / organizational distances

Virtual organizations

Users are spread over the world

They share common interests / activities (e.g. Medical specialists)

JITIK could help to distribute relevant alerts, information and knowledge

Discussion

Personal computers or server networks?– PC are not running and connected

around the clock– Permanent tasks could not be

delegated– Personal agents need to take care of

their delegated tasks on a permanent basis

A word on methodology

Currently there is no methodology to create rules relating knowledge to users and events

Rules are themselves a form of K about the organization (e.g. Intellectual capital)

Project status

Web-based client-server technology version running

Java programmingJess inference engineFull agent-tech version under

development

Future work

Broader scope in K life cycleTighter integration as KM support

tool (e.g. K maps, K monitoring)Sophisticated AI tools (Case-based

reasoning, Data mining, Knowledge repositories)

Integration with workflow systems and CSCW

Integration with XML and related technologies

Conclusions

JITIK is a method for relating a piece of knowledge or information, specied as mentioned, to a set of users, also characterized in an abstract way, when an event is produced

JITIK provides diffusion of the right K to the right person at the right time