Knowledge Sharing Environment

"Most people have a hard time dealing with the sheer number of e-mails they receive," says Andrew Mitchell, a research associate with London-based British Telecommunications E-Government Division. "We need solutions to store and summarize all this, and that will enable us to collaborate."

"I'm concerned that people don't know how to find what they need," says Mike Turillo, chief learning officer at KPMG International in Boston. "And when they finally find it, they don't know how to use it. We spend a lot of our time just trying to manage it."

To manage e-mail more efficiently and productively, both Mitchell and Turillo are testing new web-based software: Mitchell is trying out his own company's Knowledge Sharing Environment (KSE); at KPMG, Turillo is using Palo Alto, CA-based Tacit Knowledge Systems KnowledgeMail. In addition to helping people manage their e-mail, the software tracks a user's work, alerts users to important information and even notifies them that someone else in the company is doing similar work. This way, the software brings people (like A and B) together to share information and solve problems.

KnowledgeMail and KSE share similar technology, vernacular and features. KSE in particular can be traced directly to Yenta, software agent technology developed by Lenny Foner, a doctoral student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass.

Extraído de Feb. 15, 2000 Issue of CIO Magazine