The Development Of The Knowledge Store

The Knowledge Store, which was developed by iFramework Limited, a Knowledge Management Software provider, supports three different working requirements: an expertise database (i.e. who is who, and who is working on what projects – this is what other organisations often refer to as a Yellow Pages); capabilities information (i.e. what people know, documented in reports, or working papers) and a resource to support collaborative team working.

The Knowledge Store integrates a range of standard Microsoft products. iFramework were chosen as the software supplier because their software was capable of interfacing with the organisation’s existing systems, such as PeopleSoft and Siebel. This means that certain categories of existing Human Resource data can be accessed via the Knowledge Store without the need for duplicating this type of information.

The Knowledge Store has been designed from a specification produced by QinetiQ’s Information Systems department, based upon requirements gathered as part of the organisation’s knowledge management strategy. The development involved a multidisciplinary team approach with representatives from the scientific user population, the business development areas, the Knowledge Management and Technology Intelligence Information Services team and the Human Factors department (this department has knowledge about the people aspect of implementing technology systems).

The system design reflected the fact that there are different consumers and contributors of the information and knowledge held within the Knowledge Store. While primarily seen as a tool to help connect and encourage collaborative working among the organisation’s scientists and technologists, Business Group Managers are able to utilise the system to locate particular areas of expertise when putting client proposals together and for finding information about an individual’s knowledge contribution, prior to carrying out a performance review.

The Knowledge Store provides an open publishing environment in which scientists at different levels within the organisation can make their ‘know how’, in the form of written reports and working papers, available to colleagues. The author (i.e. individual scientist) is responsible for managing and publishing his/her own content and for deciding who else it would be valuable to share their knowledge with. Scientists can choose to share their formative ideas with a smaller community, or to make reports and working papers available to the rest of their team, or make these available to all users of the Knowledge Store.

In addition to being used as a publishing repository the Knowledge Store can be used to search for information about people, projects, departments, company presentations, or external market research data. Searches can either start from requesting information relating to a pre-defined set of science and technology keywords (of which there are around 15,000). From here an inquirer can then search for further details about the author of a particular paper, such as the types of projects that the author has worked on, or the author’s contact details.