Knowledge Management Across Domains

摘要

This paper presents a secure, Internet-enabled, third wave knowledge management system, TheResearchPlace~(TM), that will facilitate a collaborative, strategies approach to analyzing public safety problems and developing interventions to reduce them. The ResearchPlace, currently being developed under Government and private funding for use by the National Cancer Institute, Federal agencies, and the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency, will augment Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and analytical tool capabilities by providing a synergistic workspace where teams of multidisciplinary professionals can manage portfolios of existing knowledge resources, locate and create new knowledge resources that are added to portfolios, and collaborate with colleagues to leverage evolving portfolios' capabilities on team missions. TheResearchPlace is currently in use by selected alpha users at selected federal sites, and by the faculty of Howard University. In using TheResearchPlace, team members can work to gather, analyze and collaborate on the information collected to address selected problems or issues. Information can be obtained from a variety of sources, including Internet searches, subscription library services, and disparate data sources. Because the technology infrastructure provide easy, Internet-accessible collaboration, even new, geographically diverse, team members can see, add to, or annotate the information that the original team has gathered. This includes not only data and papers, but also meeting agendas and planning deadlines. The tool provides for persistence of corporate memory of the discussions (via annotations and comments) and the raw data for future use. Member authentication is supported through row-level database security, allowing collaborators to see only information pieces they have the authority to view.