Share Thy Neighbour's Expertise

Sometimes corporate knowledge remains locked up in employee files and inboxes even when other knowledge management tools are in use. For a couple of years now, Procter & Gamble has been looking for new ways to retrieve these internally exiled intellectual riches, says Arthur Hart, section manager of P&G's information and decision solutions department. He tried out several "expertise finding" KM applications designed to index and publish mail and files from end-user PCs. These failed because they required the users to keep their own profiles of expertise up to date, which they never remembered or had time to do, he recalls. Other programs published too much of the data they discovered, and employees perceived them as an invasion of privacy.

Hart eventually heard about a similar program that combines automatic discovery of corporate expertise with user control over privacy. Tacit's Illumio is a Web-hosted information broker that accepts information requests, such as: "How do you hire good employees?" and sends them out to other users. Individual users may optionally install one of two desktop search utilities, Google Desktop and Microsoft Desktop Search, which Illumio queries for answers to requests. However, Illumio doesn't just send your data out; no information leaves your computer unless you explicitly agree to send it out.

Illumio consists of a Web-based host site run by Tacit, the Google or Microsoft search software installed on your PC that digs up data, and the Illumio client software, also running on your PC, that acts as a broker between the two. The Illumio client forwards requests from other Illumio users to the desktop search tool, then asks for your permission to send out the data discovered. According to Tacit, Illumio will come in several flavours. The standard version, for use in public groups via the Internet, will be downloadable for free. Pricing of a managed, private group option with added controls, for enterprise users, had not been set at press time.

Hart, who has been beta testing Illumio since June, hasn't made the final decision whether to recommend it for use at Procter & Gamble. He'd like to do a bit more testing. "We believe Illumio might solve the problem if we could get a large percentage of the organization to install a desktop search utility and use it," Hart says.

"You have to ask if the tool will fit in your corporate culture," he says. Ultimately, success will depend on how willing employees are share the information that Illumio digs up, he adds.