How the World Bank built an enterprise taxonomy -- a story with a happy ending

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How the World Bank built an enterprise taxonomy
-- a story with a happy ending

• Denise A. D. Bedford, Ph.D.
• Senior Information Officer
• World Bank
• ASIST Potomac Valley Chapter presentation
• November 19, 2003

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Storytelling

• Im going to use a traditional Knowledge
  Management tool tonight to tell you how we built
  our enterprise taxonomy storytelling
• My goal in using this approach is to illustrate
  the technical, information architecture and the
  social aspects of such an undertaking
• It will also allow me to speak to some of the
  critical foundation elements and milestones in
  the process
• It would not be truthful for me to tell you a
  story about how one day we defined our
  enterprise-taxonomy, and the next day we all
  lived happily ever after!
• Id like to take you back to the world of
  medieval fiefdoms many systems, many rules,
  different sets of laws, different languages and
  grammars

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Once upon a time

• We had many different financial systems, multiple
  document management systems, 100s of searchable
  resources, and a number of gaps in coverage of
  our information assets
• Then a wise and foreseeing Chief Information
  Officer and President helped us to establish a
  stable, standard institutional platform for our
  institutional collections (our modern day
  Alexander the Great)
• This meant that instead of having multiple
  financial systems, human resource systems, and
  document management systems, we had one to suit
  each function (first thoughts of unification
  arise)
• And, the wise counselors advised them to select
  systems that functioned on a common operating
  system - Oracle (we agree to talk to establish
  lines of communication and send ambassadors)
• Enterprise begins to think of systems at an
  enterprise level this is a crucial
  organizational culture aspect to implementing an
  enterprise taxonomy

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Consolidation of Business System Fiefdoms

• Before the dawn of the Knowledge Age, we had many
  different business systems
• Each business system had its own (or no)
  metadata, classification schemes, indexes, search
  systems
• When we standardized our primary business
  systems, we merged those different taxonomies
  into enterprise taxonomies
• In this first step, we still had multiple
  business systems, but one per business function

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Laying Out the Information Empire

• Once we had established a common communication
  foundation, the people in those different
  fiefdoms began to talk to one another and a
  cultural change began to occur
• The idea of having one business system to
  support a business function was accepted by the
  masses
• Now we find we have many different kinds of
  taxonomies accounting structures, business
  functions/process/task taxonomies, product
  taxonomies, taxonomies of job classes, skills
  taxonomies, organizational taxonomies, personnel
  profiles, etc.
• We built taxonomies in these business function
  systems as we were implementing them - designed
  to suit business functions and the people who
  were administering the systems, not necessarily
  end users
• Start to understand important of usability and
  end-user training

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From Business to Information Systems

• Then a wise counselor (information architect) had
  a vision of a common enterprise-document
  management system
• When we began looking for such a system, though,
  the commercial products were not up to snuff in
  terms of our requirements
• We developed our own in-house system portions
  of which were/were not using the common
  foundation
• The wise counselor had another vision of an
  integrated enterprise information system that
  would support a single point of access to all the
  information within the information empire
• This was the spark that set a the goal for an
  integrated enterprise architecture and taxonomy,
  though we were not sure we could actually achieve
  it

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Document Management Systems

• Document management system was like a cathedral
  that held the church network together smaller
  churches represented the units contributing to
  the system
• Document management system architecture was a
  little bit different, though
• Took many years to convince the little churches
  to send their offerings to the cathedral so they
  could become part of the larger network
• Each church could maintain their own filing
  structures which served the creators not the
  users
• Eventually they agreed to use a common prayer
  book common filing structure
• Churches can speak different languages but they
  all have to be able to communicate

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Document vs. Information Management Systems
Monasteries
Distribution

• Caution here goals of document and records
  management systems are to store and preserve
  information from the perspective of those who
  created the information
• End user access is not a primary goal of these
  kinds of systems
• Taxonomies that you put in place for these kinds
  of systems dont necessarily serve end users
  needs
• Kinds of taxonomies organization filing
  structures, record series for retention
  dispositioning, economic sector and impact
  categories, some minimal metadata is beginning to
  emerge, though
• These taxonomies serve filing and storage goals,
  not the information access goal of our enterprise
  taxonomy

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Renaissance Creativity Explodes

• While we were making good progress in
  synchronizing different kinds of taxonomies in
  all of these business areas, a creative
  renaissance of knowledge creation and sharing
  began
• In about 1997, we launched a knowledge management
  initiative, using Lotus Notes databases to
  support collaboration and document libraries
• Knowledge management was a cultural change in
  itself creativity of organizational units was
  encouraged and heightened
• It was a very important source of cultural change
  within the institution beginning of a
  transformation to a learning organization
• It meant that the masses could become interested
  in taxonomies

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Renaissance Creativity Explodes

• Proliferation of writing, publishing and
  organizing of information
• Déjà vu all over again creativity took the form
  of user-defined metadata, publishing and
  navigation taxonomies
• These taxonomies were different from any of the
  taxonomies we had seen before reflected the new
  thematic structure of the KM organization
• In some respects there was more confusion because
  they were talking about different kinds of
  taxonomies but trying to fit them into the same
  structures
• We began some internal QuickStart educational
  sessions on metadata, taxonomies, search,
  semantic web, etc. to provide a framework

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Popular Information Revolution

• So now we have several business process systems,
  a decentralized document management system,
  knowledge management system and there is a
  popular uprising the web
• Many web towns are created - 100s of web sites,
  1000s of web pages
• No central coordination of virtual villages
• Too many different places to go to look for
  information going back to the medieval
  monastery network systems
• Masses begin to surface their discontent with the
  quality of access and the quality of information
  that is being published
• Realization among the masses that not all of the
  quality information assets are electronic or
  publicly available

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Popular Information Revolution

• Begins to look like the Dark Ages again - no
  profiles, no taxonomies, no controlled
  vocabularies or values
• Different systems have different profiles,
  different taxonomies, controlled vocabularies or
  values, indexes, search systems
• We start to see information pollution
  alchemists and court jesters come back onto the
  scene advocating magical approach to
  discovering the enterprise architecture
• But, we didnt give up we kept working on the
  components of the infrastructure in the
  background
• We knew that the day would come when they would
  be needed and that day came

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Rationalism Enlightenment

• Wise counselor returns to bring back sense of
  rationalism and enlightenment
• Counselor commissions a synthesis of content
  types across systems, standard metadata scheme,
  and the rejuvenation of the World Bank Thesaurus
• Content of the information is what we focus on
  for integration
• Information architecture then derives from our
  kinds of content
• Synthesis and integration work outside of
  existing systems, but leverages all the work that
  is done within the business systems
• Metadata is the central structure (faceted
  taxonomy)
• Reference sources for each facet support the
  governance and quality control (flat,
  hierarchical and network taxonomy structures)

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Scientific Revolution Industrialization

• About this time, the visionary counselor begins
  to lay the work for a superhighway connecting all
  information systems using the integrated
  enterprise taxonomy as a blueprint
• Content type proposal enterprise-wide review of
  kinds of information is completed and accepted by
  Information Architecture Committee
• Establishment of Bank standard metadata
  deriving from existing metadata across systems
• Long-term search strategy proposed and submitted
  to Information Architecture Committee
• Simplified Enterprise Taxonomy for topics is
  formed looking across all systems and looking
  to the systems that are used by our partners

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Space Travel - Portals

• The wild and crazy growth of the external website
  of the Bank, as well as the need to create a new
  internal web services platform raised awareness
  of the value of an integrated enterprise taxonomy
  
• You need some predictability in the source and
  target systems before you can syndicate content
  from an SAP BW cube, a newsfeed source, a DM
  system, an RM system, Archives, and the InfoShop
  to a project portal or to a personal portal, they
  all need to have a common point of reference
• The portal team tried the vendors suggested
  approach create and implement simple new
  hierarchies and use them throughout the portal
• The enterprise taxonomy actually becomes the
  technical and information infrastructure of the
  portal metadata repository, global navigation
  bars,
• Taxonomies also now must be an integral part of
  the content that you are creating in the portals
  and in the systems that provide content to the
  portals

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Back to Communications

• Vision of a whole-Bank search one place to go
  to find information in any of the Banks systems,
  speaking any of the languages of our clients
• Vision involved having a search engine that spoke
  the Banks business language and the languages of
  our clients another kind of taxonomy
• We had a print-based topical thesaurus which
  needed to be updated and expanded to reflect the
  Banks business in 2000 (moved this from 10,xxx
  terms in 1997 to 92,xxx in 2003)
• Same time the Translations Department was
  implementing a new parallel translation system
  which leverages multilingual and cross-language
  glossaries
• Translations Department glossaries focus on
  business functions, WB Thesaurus focuses on
  topics integration and cross-population now in
  progress

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Transparency

• Policy on Information Disclosure (2002) approved
  by the Board of Executive Directors required that
  we
• develop a metadata based, cross-system Catalog to
  surface disclosed and disclosable documents for
  the external public user
• put in place a system that would support the
  capture and tracking of disclosure requests in
  the future and record changes in disclosure
  status
• This effort funded the first release of
  whole-Bank search
• Disclosed and disclosable documents lived in all
  of those systems above and were not tagged with
  their disclosure conditions or status
• In order to deliver WB Catalog, we had to
  integrate all of those taxonomies described above
  as well as the long-term search strategy

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Information Universe

• Lets jump to the 21st century Enterprise
  Content Architecture and Enterprise Content
  Management
• All those taxonomies we worked on for the past 15
  years are now integral components of the
  enterprise content architecture
• Were finding that these taxonomies are critical
  to efficient and effective use of portal
  technologies
• Allows us to shift the focus to information
  content, metadata management, taxonomies, search,
  access, security, disclosure.
• Now the impetus is to bring them all under
  central control so that they can be managed and
  used by systems across the enterprise
• Lets see what the enterprise taxonomy looks like
  today, its content, how we maintain and manage it
  

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Information Universe

• We realize that we really do want to work and
  travel in a 21st century universe of information
• Space travel is not magical, but is based on good
  engineering and maintenance
• Managers need to understand that quick fixes and
  solutions do not result in sustainable systems,
  but rather result in significant investment
  losses
• A multi-dimensional design approach supports
  flexibility, extensibility, and customization
• We can view our information universe from several
  different perspectives
• Individual systems landscape
• A technical architecture landscape
• Users view of the enterprise taxonomy
• An information architecture landscape
• All of these views make up our Enterprise Content
  Architecture and allow us to move to the next
  step Enterprise Content Management

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Systems Architecture
World Bank Catalog/ Enterprise Search
Site Specific Searching
Publications Catalog
Recommender Engines
Personal Profiles
Portal Content Syndication
Browse Navigation Structures
Metadata Repository Of Bank Standard
Metadata (Oracle Tables Indexes)
Reference Tables Topics, Countries Document
Types (Oracle data classes)
Transformation Rules/Maps
Data Governance Bodies
Metadata Extract
Metadata Extract
Metadata Extract
Metadata Extract
Metadata Extract
Metadata Extract
Doc Mgmt System
Web Content Mgmt. Metadata
SAP Financial System
People Soft
JOLIS Metadata
InfoShop Metadata
Concept Extraction, Categorization
Summarization Technologies
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Technical View of the Enterprise Architecture
Content Contributor
End User
Content Systems
DELIVERY
Metadata Management and Security Services
ePublish
PDS
.
Content Management Services
Content Access Services
access rules
view
multilingual srch
workflow
check in/out
create/del.
retention schedule
search
syndication
versioning
declare
classification
browsing
notification
reference data
taxonomy
Content Integration and Archives Services
relate
Connector
Concept extraction
rules evaluator
harmonize
Adapter
thesaurus
data dic.
SAP (R/3, BW)
Notes / Domino
monitors
Archives Store
Over Time
Metadata warehouse
Documents, Images, Audio, Data records
logs
People Soft
iLAP
Repositories Services
Business Systems
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Users View of the Enterprise Taxonomy
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Information Architecture
Title
Keyword
Author
Content Type
Topics
Format
Bus. Activity
Disclosure
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Bank Standard Metadata by Purpose
Identification/ Distinction
Search Browse
Compliant Document Management
Use Management
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Taxonomies in Action

• Metadata in Fielded Search Faceted Taxonomy
• Topics Taxonomy Shallow Hierarchy
• Business Activity Taxonomy Deep Hierarchy
• Organizational Taxonomy Faceted Taxonomy
• Country Region Taxonomy Hierarchy
• Thesaurus in Search Faceted Taxonomy
• Disclosure Status Flat Taxonomy

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Top Tier Content Type Examples

• Documents in IRIS, ImageBank, IRAMS
• Data in BW, DEC SIMA queries in central, regional
  agency databases, CDF indicators, GDF data
  reports, .
• Publications in JOLIS, Office of Publisher,
  Thematic Group databases
• Communications in External Affairs, Office of
  President, DEC, IRIS
• People Communities in YourNet, PeopleSoft,
  WBDirectory,
• Knowledge in Notes databases, Oral History
  program,
• Services in WB Yellow Pages, Service Portal,
• Collections in EIU database, Oxford Analytica

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Lessons Learned

• You can change some of the information
  architecture, but some of it you will have to
  adapt or map
• Business functions are the most critical for
  standardizing to single business taxonomy the
  move towards standardization has to come from
  above
• Map business system taxonomies to enterprise
  taxonomies - help the business system owners to
  see the value of being part of an enterprise
  taxonomy (no value, no buy in)
• Expect change and be ready to integrate and map,
  but educate your users to alert you to changes
  make it possible for them to work with you
• Do outreach and consciousness raising (QuickStart
  programs on metadata, taxonomies 101, search
  engines, semantic engines,

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Lessons Learned

• Move forward on the end user front while youre
  working on the backend when people can see the
  actual value they will buy in (now no one wants
  to be left out of the WB Catalog now we created
  it, so they are coming)
• Have to have a goal and a vision you will never
  succeed at creating an enterprise taxonomy if you
  dont know why youre doing it
• We are putting in place an enterprise
  architecture based on well-defined and managed
  taxonomies that are used within and by internal
  systems
• This gives us flexibility to build different
  products and views for end users, while
  internally managing our information assets