An Agent-based Knowledge Management Framework

Martin S. Lacher, Michael Koch

Technical University Munich
Arcisstr. 21
80290 Munchen
Germany
flacher,kochmg@in.tum.de

Abstract
We propose a framework for a Knowledge Man-
agement (KM) Information Technology (IT) sys-
tem. Our framework can integrate existing solu-
tions for KM IT support. The framework con-
sists of loosely coupled agent-based components
and can easily be extended with further compo-
nents.
We identify core components and functionalities
of a KM support system. We motivate our pro-
posal with a holistic perspective on KM. We derive
One lesson learned from these eorts is, that KM can
always only be eective with a holistic view. Bullinger
et al. propose in (Bullinger, Worner, & Prieto 1998)
information and communication technology, human re-
source management and organization as the crucial per-
spectives of a holistic view on KM for its implementa-
tion in organizations. More genericly put, KM includes
computer science, psychology/pedagogics and business
aspects. We will derive the needs for a KM support
system from previous research in KM and include the
constraints in computer science for implementation.
a classication of knowledge in organizations for
which management can and should be supported
by an IT system.
We introduce an agent-based KM IT architecture
that includes the derived functionalities. The ar-
ow instead of facilitating it. It can
chitecture is structured according to knowledge
The second lesson learned from existing KM IT ef-
forts is that patchwork should be avoided. Proprietary
solutions for part aspects of KM create new barriers
for the knowledge
also be seen that certain components (e.g. ontologies,
classes and group-domains of knowledge. We fur- knowledge domain classications) are a crucial basis for
ther propose new implementation schemes and most functionalities in a KM system and thus have to
present existing solutions from research for our be accessible to all components and centralized. Ex-
architecture. Fields for further research in KM IT isting software solutions for IT support in business like
support are identied. work
ow management systems or document reposito-
Our framework is intended to contribute to a uni- ries must be integratable. A KM IT framework also
ed view of requirements of a KM support system.
We further aim to give an overview of applicable
and available technologies for implementation.
Introduction
has to be easily expandable by new components.
We propose an open and high-level IT support for
KM. Our approach is an agent-based framework that
includes vital components of an open KM architecture.
We will derive the central KM components from re-
The need for eective Knowledge Management (KM)
in organizations has been largely recognized. Tools and
strategies from research have been put to work in orga-
nizations. However, many of the Knowledge Manage-
ment eorts were futile. There are two main reasons
for this: on the one hand, merely the information man-
agement tools were implemented and other aspects of
Knowledge Management were left aside. On the other
hand, the existing information management tools are
proprietary, heterogeneous and thus as a whole do not
at all achieve their goal: the facilitation of the knowl-
edge
ow (Borgho & Pareschi 1998). The knowledge
ow describes the distribution, recombination and cre-
quirements identied in KM research in the section
Core Knowledge Management support functionalities.
We will then transfer those requirements into a KM
IT architecture in the section Information Management
Architecture. The implementation of several core com-
ponents of the architecture will be proposed in the sec-
tion Implementation Concepts. We will conclude what
we could contribute in the Conclusion.
Core Knowledge Management support
functionalities
We are taking a holistic perspective on KM. For the
ation of new knowledge and is identied as the key lever- derivation of the requirements of a KM IT support sys-
age to KM in (Borgho & Pareschi 1998). tem we have to take related issues from psychology and
business into account. Our aim is the identication of
Copyright
c 1999, American Association for Articial In- principles for an IT system to facilitate the knowledge
telligence (www.aaai.org). All rights reserved.
ow (Borgho & Pareschi 1998) in an organization.
 A central notion in KM is the dierentiation between comply, but the term knowledge could be used without
explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge, rst introduced changing the essence of the model.
in (Polanyi 1958). Explicit knowledge can be easily
explicitly coded (e.g. into natural language) into infor-
mation and can be characterized as theoretical knowl-
edge. Tacit knowledge is hard to express and can be
characterized as experience. In (Nonaka & Takeuchi
1995), the transfer process between the dierent kinds
of knowledge is analyzed. They extend the analysis
of Anderson's ACT-theory (Singley & Anderson 1989),
which is limited to the transfer of explicit knowledge
to tacit knowledge. IT systems can always only sup-
port the transfer of explicit knowledge. However, there
is no principal reason why tacit knowledge should not
be explicatable. It is more an economic question, since
explication of tacit knowledge involves considerable ef-
fort. We will assume for our work, that relevant tacit
knowledge has been explicated, and thus can be dealt Information demand
with in an IT system. We consider information to be
explicitly coded knowledge, and knowledge to be infor- Subjective Information requirement
mation that has been internalized by a person and is Information available
functionally applicable. Objective Information requirement
To create a system that facilitates the knowledge Actual Information level

ow, we identify and classify the relevant knowledge in
an organization. We choose an inductive-analytical ap- Figure 1: Information management model in (Heinen
proach for knowledge accounting presented in (North, & Dietel 1991)
Probst, & Romhardt 1998): the intangible assets moni-
tor, rst introduced in (Sveiby 1998). Sveiby proposes, The subjective information requirement is what the
that intangible assets (in contrast to visible equity) in user considers the information relevant to perform the
an organization can be classied into external structure task. The objective information requirement is what is
of the organization, internal structure of the organiza- really relevant information to perform the task. The
tion and sta competence. The internal structure is information available is the information the user can
dened as business processes and technologies, whereas access at the moment. The information behavior of the
the external structure is dened as relations along both
directions of the value chain (i.e to customers and sub-
contractors). Sta competence is seen as functionally
applicable knowledge.
From Sveiby's model we derive three classes of knowl-
edge that we can capture: explicit technical knowl-
edge (from internal structure and sta competence),
tacit process knowledge or process experience
(from internal structure and sta competence) and re-
lational network knowledge (from external struc-
ture).
We claim that knowledge necessary for the perfor-
mance of a task has to be provided to the user pro-
actively. This claim is based on research from so-
cial psychology (Hacker 1983). Hacker shows, that the
planning phase of a task is the decisive phase, when
existing knowledge is taken into account and used for
the solution of a task. Thus, the more relevant knowl-
edge is available in the planning phase, the more poten-
user leads to the user's information demand, which is
only a subset of what the subjective requirement is. The
intersection of the four sets of information is the actual
level of information the user has available to perform
the task. We identify two ways to increase the infor-
mation level with the user. One way is to make the
user more aware of the information available, and thus
enlarge the subjective information requirement. The
other way is to supply information that has not been
demanded, but is assumed to be of relevance. We do
not think however, that the third way, determining the
objective information requirement for a task, is feasible
for an IT system.
There are several other advantages to pro-active
knowledge provision. For example double work can
be avoided and new knowledge is continuously created
(Probst & Buchel 1998).
In order to provide knowledge pro-actively, an IT
system has to act partly autonomous. The system
tial problems can be identied and potential mistakes
avoided.
There is also a reason why the system should act
partly autonomous in providing information. In
(Heinen & Dietel 1991) a model about information re-
has to know about the user's task and provide infor-
mation relevant for this task. Thus the system has to
autonomously observe the user's actions, infer the user's
plan and search for information relevant to the user's
work context. This relevant information can then be
quired for the fulllment of a task is presented (Figure delivered to the user.
1). Heinen uses the term information, to which we will Another important aspect for knowledge acquisition
is the accordance of the personal context and the con-
text of provided knowledge. The better knowledge is
personalized to the user's context the better it is ac-
knowledged and internalized by the user (Forgas 1985).
Information provided to the user should be person-
presented in (Schlichter, Koch, & Xu 1998). The char-
acteristics we focus on are:
 Team: members know each other, have common goal,
involved in common processes
alized to the user's assumed qualication and
interest. A negative eect that can not be avoided, is
that if new knowledge contrasts an established belief of
the user, it is most probably not internalized.
A human communication partner is undoubtedly the
most ecient and eective knowledge source. One char-
acteristic that we would like to copy from a human com-
munication partner is graceful degradation when di-
rect answers to a query are not possible. Human part-
ners often still try to help and supply links to possible
solutions, which is much more agreeable than a response
like \0 hits found on your query".
Finally, the cognitive overload in using a KM IT sys-
tem has to be as little as possible. This means all cog-
nitive resources should be devoted to the acquisition of
knowledge and not to how to communicate with the IT
system. Thus we claim that high-level communica-
tion or maybe even anthropomorphism is required
for a KM IT system. The user should be able to co-
operate with the system on a peer-to-peer basis and
communicate with the system in a discourse fashion
rather than giving explicit commands.
Information Management Architecture
We will present an IT infrastructure that incorporates
the above derived functionalities. First, we motivate
why we chose agent technology for the framework. We
will then give an overview over the structure of the
framework and afterwards explain the inner details of
the framework in more detail.
Why agents ?
A lot of the requirements above parallel what is pro-
posed in (Foner 1993) as characteristics of a software
agent system. Agents act partly autonomous and can
thus pro-actively provide the user with required in-
formation. The user gives strategic acting guidelines
to the agent instead of strict commands. This allows
on the one hand for a peer-to-peer-like cooperation be-
tween the agent and the user and on the other hand for
a graceful degradation in the performance of the task
 Community: members do not know each other, mem-
bers have common interests but no common goal,
members are usually not involved in common pro-
cesses
A user is member in a team and in one ore more commu-
nities. Each of the knowledge source classes has their
own knowledge repository that is exclusively under con-
trol of the owners. We can see in Figure 2 that the
architecture is inherently distributed.
Communication
Team member
Team Community Agent
Community
Figure 2: Relation of User, team and community
The communication in and among communities will
be explained later when we look in detail at the archi-
tecture. First we would like to introduce our framework
in an overview (Figure 3).
Information that is private to the user is adminis-
tered in the user agency, team relevant information is
administered in the team agency and community rel-
evant information is administered in the community
agency. The community agency is moreover the gate-
way from the team or the user to all communities in
by the agent. Agents are dened to be personalizable,
e.g. adaptive and adaptable to the user's needs. The
agent paradigm also provides for high-level interaction
between the user and the agents and is thus more suit-
able for knowledge exchange. Another advantage of the
agent paradigm is the loose coupling among functional
components (agents). This assures an open architecture
and easy integration of future new components.
Framework structure
We have structured our framework according to three
which a user is a member. Our architecture stays on
a high level of abstraction. In the proposals for imple-
mentation it will be shown how existing KM IT support
tools can be integrated in the framework.
The shared ontology is shared by all team members
and provides a concept of the team knowledge domain.
The ontology on the one hand provides the basis for
consistent agent communication. On the other hand it
is the scheme with regard to which existing knowledge
of users and knowledge required by users is uniquely
central knowledge source classes: user, team and com- identied. Moreover, it is the classication scheme for
munity. We use those terms according to what has been storage of information provided by the users and re-
 User Agency knowledge of the user can be classied and respective
Profile Agent Knowledge Pump Agent Awareness Agent knowledge nodes can be marked as existent or non-
existent. The total set of these marks in the ontology
constitutes the user qualication prole.

document
knowledge
specified

nalized
perso-
request
The awareness agent analyzes the user's work con-
text. From observed user actions, a work context and
Service Agency a work plan are inferred. Both context and plan are
Information Broker Agent Directory Agent classied according to the ontology. This classication
is considered as the basis for the knowledge required by
the user to perform the current task.
document
Specified

Personalized document
request

nalized
Perso-

Specified request
The knowledge pump agent requests the work con-
text from the awareness agent. It further requests the
Team Agency user's knowledge prole from the prole agent. The dif-
Technology Agent ference of the two yields the knowledge still to acquire
Process Agent by the user to perform the current task. The knowl-
edge pump sends a request for these uniquely specied
Community Agency
knowledge nodes to the service agency.
Knowledge
Expertise Agent Community The service agency is the intermediate between the
Knowledge Firewall Agent Exchange
user agency and the other agencies. The service agency
consists of an information broker agent and a di-
rectory agent. The directory agent registers available
knowledge sources like the team agency or the commu-
Shared Ontology
nity agency. These knowledge sources do not necessar-
Knowledge Domain Model Process Domain Model
ily have to be existent in the exact fashion presented
here or may not exist at all. Or there may be more
Figure 3: Architecture of a KM IT system knowledge sources than the ones presented here. As
long as the sources are correctly registered with the di-
rectory agent, they are accessible to the information
trieval of this information. We will give a more detailed broker agent.
description of the usage of the ontology when the dif- The information broker agent receives the request for
ferent agencies are described. Since the shared team the specied knowledge nodes and looks up the avail-
ontology is not suitable for communication among all able knowledge sources with the directory agent. The
members of a community, the ontology shared by all information broker then requests the specied knowl-
members of a community is the set intersection of all edge nodes from the available sources. In our proposed
team ontologies. If the possibility of merging ontologies framework the sources are the technology agent and the
is provided, missing ontology parts can be acquired. process agent in the team agency as well as the exper-
Without going into implementation details, we con- tise agent in the community agency.
sider the ontology to conceptualize of a collection of
knowledge nodes that represent a uniquely identied The team agency includes two of the knowledge
\piece of knowledge". sources in our framework: the technology agent and
The shared ontology is divided into a knowledge the process agent. The technology agent administers
domain model and a process domain model. The explicit technical knowledge. The process agent admin-
knowledge domain model provides a concept of the rel- isters process experience. Each of these agents receives
evant explicit technical knowledge. The process domain a request for specied knowledge nodes in their domain.
model provides a concept of the tacit process knowledge The requested nodes may or may not exist. However, all
about processes common to a team. Since both parts found nodes are assembled into a document. The struc-
of the ontology are employed the same way, we will ture of this assembly is in the responsibility of the team
not distinguish between process and knowledge domain agents. The result of the assembly is a document that
model from now on. features the knowledge required by the user to perform
the current task, tailored to the user's qualication.
The user agency consists of the prole agent, the The community agency provides for the relational
knowledge pump agent and the awareness agent. network knowledge. The community agency consists
The prole agent keeps a qualication prole of the of the expertise agent and the knowledge rewall
user. The prole is based on the shared ontology. The agent.
shared ontology provides a concept of the team knowl-
edge domain. According to this concept, the existing The expertise agent is a knowledge source like the
technology agent and the process agent. The expertise user proles can be designed and what possible appli-
agent administers knowledge about experts for certain cations are. We propose a user prole that is based
knowledge sub-domains. The reference classication for on a stereotype. The stereotype is established in an
expertise is again the shared ontology. Since members initial user interview. From then on, the user prole is
in a team according to our denition know each other, dynamically extended through observation of the user's
expertise brokering is only needed in and among com- information request behavior. Empirical results showed
munities. It can be seen in gure 2 that the commu-
nity agency is the gateway for communication among
teams, be it within one or among dierent communities.
The expertise agent requests expertise knowledge from
other community agencies. This knowledge exchange
can only take place if the respective ontologies have a
non-empty intersection. This is a reasonable constraint,
since one cannot expect an answer from someone who
does not know what one is talking about.
that the time spent to read a document is correlated
with the amount of the internalized knowledge from the
document.
The functionality of a knowledge pump is shown
by the example of the XEROX Knowledge Pump in
(Borgho & Pareschi 1998).
Another area for future research is the awareness
agent. Existing awareness infrastructures like NESSIE
(Prinz 1999) or Elvin (Fitzpatrick et al. 1999) sup-
The knowledge rewall agent controls what team-
internal knowledge can be made available to non-
members of the team. Thus not all the team knowledge
is available to communities in which a team member
is also a member. An expertise agent may receive a
request for expertise knowledge, but the correspond-
ing answer may be prohibited to leave the team by the
ow systems, from which the currently
ply events from user observation. The missing link is
plan recognition from those actions. We propose to
have the user himself semantically characterize dier-
ent workspaces. Upon switching of workspaces, a large
pert of the work context is then already available to the
awareness agent. Another possibility is the integration
of existing work
knowledge rewall agent. The knowledge rewall agent
also has the task to request technical and process knowl-
edge from other teams on request of the information
broker agent in the service agency.
Existing Implementation Concepts and
future research
We will brie
y introduce some possible implementation & Sperberg-McQueen 1998), (null W3C 1999). The
concepts for our framework. With this we also identify
exible syntax approach and the possibility of seman-
areas for future research. We will give some examples
for how existing KM IT tolls can be integrated in our
framework.
Infrastructures for software agents have been exten-
ex-
sively researched and there are a number of existing
solutions. A comprehensive collection of articles on
multiagent systems can be found in (Weiss 1999). For
agent communication a number of Agent Communica-
tion Languages (ACL) have been proposed. KQML
(Finin et al. 1992) is targeted towards knowledge ex-
change. The FIPA ACL (Steiner 1998) is extensible
for dierent purposes and well-maintained due to the
powerful industrial background of FIPA.
The shared ontology The core of our architecture
is the shared ontology. The Ontolingua system (Fikes,
Farquhar, & Rice 1997) is a powerful tools to design
ontologies. In (Bullock & Goble 1998) a semantic net is
worked process could be extracted.
The service agency contains standard functionality
in distributed systems.
The team agency and the community agency
The main issue here is storage and reuse of informa-
tion modules. A promising approach seems to be usage
of XML for information representation (Bray, Paoli,
tic meta-tagging makes XML predestined for informa-
tion reuse and dynamic assembly. In (Su, Freitag, &
Brossler 1999), an XML-based teachware system is pre-
sented. Information modules there can be reused,
ibly and dynamically structured in new documents and
the presentation style of the document can be adapted.
Existing document management systems for example,
could be integrated as means of storage for information
in the team agency and the community agency.
Conclusion
We found that existing KM eorts either suer from
patchwork IT solutions or from non-acceptance of IT
solutions that were not designed with a holistic per-
spective on KM. We derived core functionalities of KM
IT support by taking a holistic perspective on KM
built on the basis of a description logic to conceptualize and related research. We identied the need for high-
objects in the domain of tourism. This is an approach level communication to reduce the cognitive usage over-
that could be easily transferred for an ontology imple- load. Moreover, information needs to be provided au-
mentation. In (Gruber 1993), a number of design prin- tonomously and pro-actively. And nally the supplied
ciples for ontologies are introduced. We consider the information must be tailored to the requirements of
shared ontology and the user agency the parts of our the user, especially his qualication. Those compo-
architecture, where most research still has to be done. nents were transferred into an IT system framework.
Agent technology was identied as the key to many of
The user agency Kobsa presents in (Kobsa & the identied needs. We also identied user, team and
Wahlster 1989) and in (Fink, Kobsa, & Nill 1996) how community as the important concepts for the scope of
knowledge administration. We structured our frame- Foner, L. N. 1993. Whats an agent anyway? a socio-
work according to these scopes as well as according to logical case study. Technical report, MIT Media Lab.
derived classes of knowledge to administer (technical Forgas, J. P. 1985. Interpersonal behaviour. Pergamon
explicit knowledge, tacit process experience and rela- Press.
tional network knowledge). Gruber, T. R. 1993. Toward principles for the design
We brie
y discussed existing approaches for possi- of ontologies used for knowledge sharing. Technical
ble implementation of our framework and showed how report, Stanford University.
existing tools can be integrated in our framework. Pro- Hacker, W., ed. 1983. Kognitive und motivationale
posals for implementation of user proling, document Aspekte der Handlung, volume 22. Huber.
personalization and awareness services were given. We
further identied areas for future research within the Heinen, E., and Dietel, B., eds. 1991. Industriebetrieb-
scope of our framework. slehre, volume 9. Gabler.
This paper sets a basis for future research in IT- Kobsa, A., and Wahlster, W., eds. 1989. User Models
related issues of KM. The importance of a holistic per- in Dialog Systems. Springer Verlag, London.
spective for requirement identication was shown. The
framework we proposed is open for future extensions.
Acknowledgments. This research is sponsored by
the German Governmental Research Association
(DFG). We would like to thank Jurgen Koch as well
as all members of the Arbeitskreis Wissensmanagement
(KM Workgroup) for many fruitful discussions. A spe-
cial thank goes to Christine Erlach for many useful
hints and the contribution of psychological background
knowledge.
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