Agent Technology for Distributed Organizational Memories: The Frodo Project.

Abstract

Comprehensive approaches to knowledge management in modern enterprises are confronted with scenarios which are heterogeneous, distributed, and dynamic by nature. Pro-active satisfaction of information needs across intra-organizational boundaries requires dynamic negotiation of shared understanding and adaptive handling of changing and ad-hoc task contexts. In this paper, we present the notion of a Distributed Organizational Memory (DOM) as a meta-information system with multiple ontology-based structures and a workflow-based context representation. We argue that agent technology offers the software basis which is necessary to realize DOM systems. We sketch a comprehensive Framework for Distributed Organizational Memories which enables the implementation of scalable DOM solutions and supports the principles of agent-mediated knowledge management.