However, security requirements are not the only functions that stimulate organizations to manage their information. If the information does not enable some further use that provides value, there is no need to secure it. Organizational information generally carries content that enables action leading to a gain or loss of resources. An organization amplifies its ability to control those resources by dividing among multiple individuals the work required to reach a goal. For the organization to be effective, activities and progress must be coordinated. An important reason for sharing information within organizations is the agreement on and coordination of these goals and tasks.
An Intranet offers new options for more effective coordination of organizational activities in a distributed decision-making environment. However, today's paper-based infrastructure inhibits exploitation of many Intranet enhancements and does not effectively control others. What is needed is an infrastructure that uses the Intranet to meet the requirements for organizational coordination by supporting the management of content in the distributed decision-making environment.
Constructing an effective Intranet infrastructure requires attention to three distinct areas: management, technological and content. Management consists of the roles, policies, processes and organization needed to manage the life cycle of formal Intranet content. The technological infrastructure consists of the networks, hardware and software required to support content development, publishing and access. And, content requires processes to be developed to support special needs such as initial conversions, creation of database or application interfaces and development of "glossy" pages for high impact.
These days the Internet is everywhere: ads for television programs have their own addresses on the World-Wide Web, the most popular of Internet services. With all this attention, it seems as if the Internet has become the only topic for computing professionals these days.
However, this focus may be misplaced: it is the Intranet, the internal Internet, which is the key information technology revolution for the remainder of this century. This paper will describe the necessity of the Intranets, provide description of some of their key features, and focuses on these management aspects of an Intranet and presents an organization and information architecture to support the new environment.
In the past, IP has been hampered by huge memory requirements needed to support the protocol, especially on DOS machines. With the increase of Windows-based operating systems, and with new versions this year of Windows95 and NT that offer tighter integration and better support of IP protocols, this is becoming less of an issue.
That degree of openness has changed with the rise of Netscape and increased competition from other vendors. The latest version of Netscape's Navigator contains features not found in any HTML standards specifications, such as independent frames within a browser window.
Why is the Web so popular? Three reasons: First off, web servers contain both text and non-text items: recorded speech, graphics, and even video clips are now becoming common. Most other Internet services are strictly for text. This means that web "pages" (as they are known) can range from the most mundane of lists to be sophisticated multimedia shows. Second, web sites (or places where information is stored) can range from the personal to the most corporate, depending on the content, author, and effort. Prodigy, Compuserve, and America Online all began offering the ability to construct one's own personal web page to their respective millions of customers this year, further popularizing the concept. And, as mentioned earlier, highly visible companies such as Disney, ESPN, and Hershey's Chocolate have begun using the web to provide both corporate information as well as to extend the value of their identities and services.
Finally, each web server contains information that can be cross-linked to others, whether they are located around the world or just down the street. It is this ability to link, designed correctly, that enables the web its power, and its attraction, as a distributed corporate information resource. But the web isn't the sole piece of corporate Intranets. Along with this technology are support for other standards, such as ftp servers, SMTP and other pieces that were originally developed for Unix computers and have spread throughout a corporate enterprise as IS has embraced them.
Intranet uses the same protocols and languages of the Internet, it doesn't mean it has to follow the same rules of operation and chaotic anything-goes environment: indeed, what many corporations are beginning to realize is that out of this chaos comes some important design considerations for building very reliable Intranets.
One example would be the ability to assign maintenance chores for particular pieces of content to different corporate departments who develop and maintain the information. Other management issues include being able to provide a local cache of popular or useful Web sites for better performance or to ease network congestion. Other issues include providing a very granular user-based access control and reporting of usage statistics help corporate Intranet developers to fine-tune their applications.
The formal information is the officially sanctioned and commissioned information of the enterprise. It usually has been reviewed for accuracy, currency, confidentiality, liability and commitment. This is the information with which the formal management infrastructure is most concerned.
Project/group information is intended for use within a specific group. It may be used to communicate and share ideas, coordinate activities or manage the development and approval of content that eventually will become formal. Project/Group information generally is not listed in the enterprise-wide directories and may be protected by passwords or other restrictions if general access might create problems.
Informal information begins to appear on the Intranet when authors and users discover how easy it is to publish within the existing infrastructure. Informal information is not necessarily the same thing as personal home pages. A personal folder or directory on an Intranet server can serve as a repository for white papers, notes and concepts that may be shared with others in the enterprise to further common interests, for the solicitation of comments or for some other reason. Instead of making copies, the URL can be given to the interested parties, and the latest version can be read and tracked as it changes. This type of informal information can become a powerful stimulus for the collaborative development of new concepts and ideas.
3.3.1. Content pages can take many forms. They may be static pages, like the ones you are reading here, or they may be active pages where the page content is generated "on the fly" from a database or other repository of information. Content pages generally are owned by an individual. Over time expect the "form and sense" of content pages to change as more experience is gained in the areas of non-linear documents (hyperlinking), multimedia, modular content and integration of content and logic using applets.
3.3.2. Broker pages also come in more than one form, but all have the same function, to help users find relevant information. Good broker pages serve an explicitly defined audience or function. Many of the pages with which we already are familiar are broker pages. A hyperlink broker page contains links to other pages, in context. It also may have a short description of the content to which it is pointing to help the user evaluate the possibilities. On the other hand, a search oriented broker page is not restricted to the author's scope, but it also does not provide the same level of context to help the user formulate the appropriate question.
Combination search and hyperlink broker pages are common today. Search engines return the "hits" as a hyperlink broker page with weightings and first lines for context, and hyperlink broker pages sometimes end in a specific category that is refined by searching that defined space. It is unlikely that hyperlink broker pages ever will be generated entirely by search engines and agents, because the context that an expert broker provides often contains subjective or expert value in its own right. After all, not all content is of equal quality or value for specific purposes and even context sensitive word searches cannot provide these qualitative assessments. As the amount of raw content increases, we will continue to need reviewers to screen which competing content is most useful, or the official source, for workers in our enterprise.
A special use of broker pages is for assisting with the management of web content. There are several specific instances of these management pages. We call one instance the "Enterprise Map" because collectively these broker pages form a hyperlinked map of all the formal content in the organization. Other sets are used for project management, functional management and to support content review cycles. The use of broker pages for each of these management functions is discussed in more detail in the next section.
The Web Administrator is responsible for facilitating cooperative opportunities among the various organizations in the enterprise and administering the enterprise content management infrastructure. By contrast, the Webmaster is responsible for the technical infrastructure. The same person may serve in both roles, but to do so requires that the person have both of the distinctly different skill sets and enough time to carry out both sets of responsibilities. The Web Administrator chairs the Enterprise Web Council.
Publishers determine what kinds of formal information will be created and maintained by their organization. They represent their organization on the Enterprise Web Council and may create and chair an Editorial Board within their own organization. The publishers own the processes and policies that both the enterprise and their organization require officially sanctioned information to follow. In larger organizations, they may delegate the monitoring and implementation to editors, but the responsibility remains with the publisher.
Editors are found in organizations that have multiple product lines or service areas. For example, Human Resources might have editors for Benefits, Compensation, Equal Opportunity and Staffing. In a line of business, the editor often is the primary marketing person for each product line. The editor determines what official information will be created for specific activities and manages the information creation and update process, including the formal review cycles.
Authors create the content.
With the exception of the content pages at the bottom of the map, the Enterprise Map pages consist only of links. Each page corresponds to an organization committed to the creation and quality of a set of content pages. In today's organizations, commitments tend to aggregate into a hierarchical pyramid, but the mapping technique also could be applied to most any organizational model. The Enterprise Map also does not have to be based on organization. It could be a logical map where the top level is the mission, the next level the major focuses required to accomplish the mission, and so on, down to the content level.
An Enterprise Map has several interesting characteristics. Once it is in place, authors and editors can self publish, and the information automatically shows up in a logical structure. Most reorganization shift responsibilities at higher levels in the Map. This means that when reorganization does occur, the new managers can adjust the Map quickly, by changing one or a few links. Content does not need to be moved around. The result is a very low maintenance path to all the formal enterprise content, without forcing publishing through a central authority that can quickly become a bottleneck.
A Shadow Map continues down to the author level. In this model, the author maintains an Index Page that is divided into two sections, work commitments and work completed. When the first draft of committed content is created, the author places it in his web directory and links the item line on his Index Page to the file. As revisions are made, the author places the latest version in the same directory with the same name so the Index automatically points to the latest version. This does not preclude keeping back versions if they are required. The previous version is copied and numbered as it is moved out of the current version status. When the content completes review and goes into "production" the author moves the item from the committed section to the completed section and redirects the link to the permanent address of the published item.
Intranets are rapidly becoming the primary information infrastructure for enterprises. To effectively utilize this infrastructure, we must become as proficient at managing content and coordinating our actions on our Intranets, as we are at managing content and coordinating our actions using paper today. The architecture and models above were put forth to provide the first few steps in this direction.
6.0. Acknowledgements
The authors of this paper thank Dr. M. S. Shivakumar, Head, Department of Computer Science & Engineering of The National Institute of Engineering, Mysore for his valuable guidance in writing this paper.
7.0. References