PORTAL PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION IN NUCLEAR MALAYSIA TO SUPPORT KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT ACTIVITIES

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1 PORTAL PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION IN NUCLEAR MALAYSIA TO SUPPORT KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT ACTIVITIES a M. S. bin Sulaiman, b M.-H. Selamat a Malaysian Nuclear Agency, Malaysia b Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM), Malaysia address of main author: safuan@nuclearmalaysia.gov.my Abstract: In Malaysian Nuclear Agency (Nuclear Malaysia), a portal project initiative was initiated as early as the preparation of its specification in the middle of the year It took six months project development and implementation to fit into Nuclear Malaysia requirements. The overall project is divided into two types of portal implementation, namely, Internet and Intranet Portal. The main objective of the portal project is to support knowledge management at the organizational level through the simplicity of content management system using web and open source technology. The portal project includes some features of knowledge management system such as online collaboration and communication, knowledge repository and document management. After few months implementation, we found that the number of hits by users in Intranet portal is still small. On the other hand, Internet portal still need to be improved on the design as well as the content. This paper describes Nuclear Malaysia s experience in the development and the implementation of the portal project in terms of the preparation, approaches and problems encountered during the operation and implementation of the project. Several recommendations based on the experience gained toward a successful implementation of the Internet and Intranet Portal is discussed and to be shared for the benefit of other nuclear research institutes. 1.0 Introduction The Director General of Malaysian Nuclear Agency has formally launched nuclear Malaysia s portal on 28 April The portal initiative has been started in the year 2005 through several approaches from business oriented as well as technology availability. The portal project include two type of component, 1) Internet 2) Intranet. Both components have different targeted users; Internet is focusing on the outside users while Intranet is for the usage of internal employees. The main purpose of the portal project is to support knowledge management at the various level in organization. As the entrance of all electronic information, which can be, accessed anywhere anytime, it enables people to have close contact with the information that may result a good action and decision-making [10]. The portal project begins with the preparation of its technical specification after taking consideration of the available technology as well as requirements from several formal meetings and discussions. Unfortunately, the implementation of the portal based on the framework in technical specification did not get the overall expectation within the organization as well as outside users. This paper reviews Nuclear Malaysia s experience during the development and the implementation of the portal project in terms of the preparation, approaches and problems encountered during the operation and implementation of the project. Several recommendations toward a successful implementation of the Internet and Intranet Portal will be discussed and to be shared for the benefit of other nuclear institute 2.0 Portal and Knowledge Management System [18] suggested that, instead of the basic process of knowledge management there are other attributes should be in KM System includes: 1) Customizable 2) Flexible 3) Scalable and extendable. However, there is a doubt in differentiating between KM system and information system. Therefore, [1] suggest that information and knowledge systems are not radically different, there is a subtle but important difference on the attitude and purpose of the system. 1

2 Information system processes information without engaging users but Knowledge management system (KMS) must be geared to help users to understand and assign meaning to the information. On the other view, [14] found that Portals could help employees find information and perform their jobs. In general, portal is described as web site that provides an entry or starting point, a gateway or a central place to access information or online resources [7] which can be accessible by varied audience [15]. Therefore, from technology point of view, portal can never be separated from web technology. Portal as a website or the starting point is not enough, it should facilitate the two important element 1) User perspective 2) Organization perspective. By adding extended functions and features it can facilitate both perspectives to access relevant and interested information and services and also provides versatile functions to catalogue collections of different information and service resources for dissemination based on specific needs, interest and privileges [3] or context. Functions and features can be in the form of web based applications such as forums, electronic mail, search engine and on-line shopping malls[20]. Due to the additional functions and features in portal, portal is classified into two. 1) Enterprise information portals [17] 2) Content management portals [15]. In this case, Enterprise Information portals reflect the organization perspective and Content Management portal reflect the user perspective. As we can see, from the above mentioned definition, portal is an important enabler to Knowledge management (KM) which directly facilitate almost eight KM habits namely 1) knowledge identification 2) knowledge acquisition 3) knowledge application 4) Knowledge sharing 5) knowledge development 6) knowledge creation 7) knowledge preservation and 8) knowledge measurement. This can be found through the role of portal as a gateway that provides simplicity in accessing information and online services that facilitate users action and organizational decision making to meet business goal. At the same time, the functions and features embedded in the portal system further facilitate the process of information store, online communication and collaboration which become the knowledge bank to the organization In addition, the flexibility in User management module of most portal system caters the limit and relevancy to access certain information by a user. The limitation and relevancy indirectly helps users access the right information relevant to their context. By looking into the suggested attributes, portal application is almost fulfill the requirement of a KM System. 2.1 Internet and Intranet Portal In Nuclear Malaysia, Internet portal offers organizational information or knowledge in the public user context. This is the same as corporate portal and enterprise information portal, which the users of this information typically do not publish to this type of portal but they are rather the consumers of the information prepared and published by the organization [15]. Therefore, Internet portal is defined based on the view of an organization and in the context of public information. Instead of that, serious control mechanism should be provided over the information or content before it can be published to the internet portal and accessed by external users. While Intranet portal is more on the context of internal users which refer to employees of an organization which purposely to strengthen internal business process. For that purpose, Intranet have more flexibility compared to internet portal, [6] suggested intranet portal as web based tool it allows users to create a customized site that dynamically pulls in Internet activities and desired content into a single page. 2

3 [14] added, Intranet portal provides more efficient environment for job performance and security issues could also be resolved through unified security environment and support single sign-on. [16] suggested that adding web applications and external links to intranet features can increase user productivity and effectiveness. Intranet portal is found to be a useful tool to support KM but not to be a total KM platform as mentioned by [19]. Looking into the additional attributes, [18] found that intranet has such attributes to manage knowledge and it is also not a system that has well defined task like proprietary information system. 3.0 Project Development and Implementation In Nuclear Malaysia, the portal project approach is more towards system development life cycle. The software was outsourced from the standard portal application available in the industry and re-engineered to fulfill Nuclear Malaysia requirements. The requirements were translated in the form of technical specification before the process of re-engineering of the software is started. Several technological considerations have been set for the portal software development processes which includes Open source technology and the usage of LDAP protocol for intranet user authentication, knowledge repository and organization system. Open source technology platform was set as the first priority in the considerations to the project as inline with the encouragement of the government of Malaysia. 3.1 Preparation of Portal Technical Specification Several processes involved during the preparation of portal technical specification includes: - Study of the user requirement. - Study on the available technology. - Provision of the portal model. - Approval of the model by higher-level IT Committee. - Procurement process for outsourcing. Fig.1: The flow of the preparation of portal technical specification until procurement process User Requirement study A formal user requirement study has been done at various levels. User requirement study has become a standard of IT system approach for any initiation of technological initiatives. The study was conducted in several meeting at managerial level as well higher-level management in Nuclear Malaysia. The result of the meeting has been used for the preparation of the portal technical specification. 3

4 3.1.2 Study on Available technology The IT team studied the available technology after taking into consideration of all requirements by the users. The study of available technology has been done by gathering as much information as possible through Internet as well as through information provided by IT vendors. Several portal applications have been reviewed and tested within some period of time. The findings from the tests and reviews are used to recommend possible portal components, functions and features for the preparation of the technical specification. In line with Malaysian government initiatives towards open source technology, Portal project is the first child in Nuclear Malaysia that is using Open source technology had experiencing a tough attempt for its successful implementation Approved Portal Framework for Nuclear Malaysia After several attempts on the proposed model of the portal, finally, it has been approved as in the Figure 2, which has been translated into portal project technical specification [12]. After the portal framework was approved, the portal project is continued to the procurement process for outsourcing. Fig.2: The approved portal framework for Nuclear Malaysia[12] User Module User component in Internet and intranet portal relatively the same with portal functions and features which includes Online News, Events, Forum, Article management, User Feedback, Search Engine, Poll and Personalization module. However, Intranet component has some extra re-engineering functions and features. The additional functions and features are: (a) Authentication Module The Authentication module is using Light Weight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) protocol to synchronize it s user management with active directory in Microsoft technology for security reason. The authentication is to verify only the valid internal user identification are allowed to access intranet component. The overall idea of synchronization username and password with Microsoft active directory via LDAP protocol is to simplify the maintenance of user account and yet users don t have to memorize different username and password for different system. (b) Knowledge Repository Module 4 The knowledge repository module refers to shared folder system where most of organizational knowledge are stored explicitly in the form of folders, office files and documents. The physical location of the shared folders is stored under Microsoft

5 platform. The re-engineering process involved, during the transforming the native shared folder into web based application and integrated in the portal. At the same time, the user profile in terms of access limit is managed by the portal via LDAP protocol that synchronized with Microsoft platform. Therefore, This module also incorporated and refer to existing organization server related services which is using Microsoft Active Directory via LDAP. (c) Portal Module As far as knowledge sharing tool is concerned, is integrated to the portal. To remain the consistency and usability and reduce the duplication of system functionalities, portal module in intranet is only referring to existing organization system which is running on Microsoft technology. This module also incorporated and refer to existing organization server related services which is using Microsoft Active Directory via LDAP Content Management Module This module is available in Internet and intranet component. It is managing process of putting information or content to the portal through the available functions and features such as posting forum, publish news, create poll and others. Users are allowed to contribute information and content which is yet become a knowledge, within the limit set by the portal administrator based on their profile as well as context Administration Component Administration component are available for both internet and intranet component. This component is the most important part of the portal that is used to monitor the overall performance of the portal. This component is purposely to monitor three major elements 1) users 2) content and 3) Functions and features within the portal system. Instead of that, the component is equipped with reporting mechanism such as ability to produce reports in graphical format based on the data that was acquired from the monitoring of the three mentioned elements Security Component Security component is also the most important component in the portal since it can be accessed via Internet. This component purposely to protect all mentioned components, functions, features, files, content and information in the portal from any technological and unethical misconduct and misuse such as hacking and cracking activities, virus attacks, spamming, system penetrating and others web related security issues. Therefore, this component ensures the environment, design, tools and techniques used in the portal and the platform are at the higher end. All data/ information transfer during sign-in from Internet Component to Intranet Component is encrypted and secure so that possible of stealing information is almost impossible. 3.2 Portal Development and implementation The development of the project begins after procurement procedures completed. Two committee were formed to manage the development of the portal, namely 1) Steering Committee and 2) Working Committee. Members of both committees are from Nuclear Malaysia and awarded company s people. Steering committee is the higher committee that decide on the higher level decision while working committee is the operational committee that directly involve into the development of the project [11]. The overall portal projects development and implementation stages as in the following diagram: 5

6 6 Fig.3: The overall portal projects development and implementation stages[11]. 4.0 Problem Encountered There many problems encountered during and after the project development and implementation. During the project development, problems that usually faced is at the requirement study stage. It is rather difficult to come into conclusion to represent the requirement as the whole of organization. In fact, The participation and involvement of users during this critical stage is rather small. Due to time and other constraints, the design specification should be delivered and the portal system should be implemented even the requirement is not comprehensive enough. Instead of that, we also faced problems due to rapid of technology evolvement. Because of the portal running on web technology, the rapid evolvement of browser technology such as Internet explorer and Mozilla firefox has slowing down the portal project progress. Many times the programming method should changed according to the update of patches by Microsoft as well as other kind of operating systems. To react to this situation, only one type of browser is specified as the best view for Internet and Intranet portal. In this case, Nuclear Malaysian has chosen Internet Explorer (IE) as the standard browser for portal. IE was chosen because it is the dominant browser used in Nuclear Malaysia. The most interesting and the focus of this paper is the problem encountered after the portal project implementation. After six months portal project delivered, the level of portal usage is still small. This problem is the biggest problem to organization where portal s role is as enabler and base application to support knowledge management activities. Therefore, this paper investigates the possible reasons and factors that caused the small usage of the portal system among the users. 5.0 Data and Analysis As far as knowledge management is concerned, the usage of the portal is important to be measured in order to know the level of practicing knowledge management in an organization. Since the portal was launched on 28 April 2006, the usage of the portal technology to support knowledge management activities inside and outside of the organization is still small. The usage of the portal was measured by the number of hits acquired from the user activities that logged in the reports by the administrative component from both Internet and intranet. Even though a set of data has been acquired for Internet, it is rather difficult to measure the usage based on the same user. It is because of the user accessing Internet can be anybody,

7 which may be coming from inside or outside of Nuclear Malaysia and the user may hit the same application many times in a session. Therefore, the study of the Internet usage is based on the user hits in comparison between available applications without considering whether the same user hits many times to the same applications. However the study of the Intranet usage is beyond ambiguity because the number of user is specified and every user must log into the intranet once in a session [13]. Fig.4: The Internet Portal Hits From Dec 2005 Until May 2007[13]. Figure 4 shows that Contact Us and NDT have the highest hits in comparison to the others. It is too early to make any conclusion about the graph but several possible reasons can be made based on the trend of the data that we acquired. Several possible reasons due to the highest hits of the Contact Us include: Inadequate Information provided on the internet Improper menu navigation to direct users right to the information they require Improper information architecture to represent the organizational content Inaccurate terminology to represent the context of the information Choose to have direct contact to webmaster to reduce time in browsing information Impossible to find required information Further study of the intranet usage can be explained by the following graph. Figure 5 shows the number of the user hits on the intranet portal till 2 nd October 2006, which is after 5 months and 2 days of the portal launched. 7

8 Fig.5: Total Hits of a Month from January to October 2006 [13]. From the Figure 5, we can see that the usage of the intranet decreased dramatically after July. The trend of the decrease should be investigated to ensure that the portal remain relevant to internal user as enabler to support knowledge management activities in Nuclear Malaysia. Therefore the number of hits of every user should be reviewed to further explain the trend. Fig.6: Total Hits Until October 2006 [13]. A dot in Figure 6 represents one intranet s user. From that, we can see that till 2 nd October 2006, only two users have achieved at least 3500 hits and most of intranet users in the range of 0 to 500 hits. There is a big gap between the most hits users compared to the least hits users. However, Figure 7 shows in different dimension in which least hits do not mean that the user not get in touch with the latest information on intranet. 8

9 Fig.7: Latest Hits Until October 2006 [13]. As we can understand from figure 7, there are three main groups that have different time to access latest information. The smaller group is the group that has their latest access to the intranet that ranged from 2 nd February 2006 to 24 th Mac This group is considered obsolete group. But we can also found that most the bigger group is the most up to date group because of their latest access to intranet ranged between September to October It is important to see the intranet user s interest especially in accessing functions and features offered in the intranet. From here, we can identify the most interest applications and increase the usability to access the application. Figure 8 shows total hits by users on the built in intranet portal application. Fig.8: Total Hits of Built-in Application until October 2006 [13]. Figure 8 shows that mydesk application has the most hits compared to Administration, personalization and tool module. There is a concrete reason why mydesk application achieved the highest hits compared to the others. As we can understand, the access to administration and tool is limited to administrator-type user. While not many users know how to use personalization module. Figure 9 shows total hits of customized application until October

10 10 Fig.9: Total Hits of Customized Application until October 2006 [13]. From figure 9, we can see that localweb application or site has the highest hits followed by application, shared folder, Applications, localinfo, club and society and others. Historically, Localweb is a native website which previously hold internal information of Nuclear Malaysia. It is also can be considered as the earliest version of Nuclear Malaysia intranet which has no capability like a portal system. Because of the user request, the localweb is attached to be the one of the portal application. Therefore, localweb has the highest hits compared to other application. 6.0 Discussions and Recommendations From the mentioned analysis, we found that Contact US site scored the highest hits in comparison with other sites or applications in Internet component. On the other hand, Mydesk scored the highest hits for built-in Application and the Localweb site scored the highest hits for customized application. By looking into the data and analysis, many possible reasons could be made. But the most important thing is to increase the usage of the intranet and Internet component in the portal. There are many initiatives can be organized to increase the portal usage as the enabler to knowledge management activities based on the possible factor found in the analysis. Based on the Analysis, we can conclude that several factors may cause the level of usage in Internet and intranet component of the portal increased or decreased. The possible factors are: - User Familiarization - Content Navigation - Information architecture - Web Interface Design - Hardware and Network performance From the five possible factors, we found that factor number 1,2,3 and 4 are related to the portal software. However, the factor number 5 is related to infrastructure issues, which is not a major focus of the portal usage study. Factor number 2 needs more focus to improve on mechanism to increase portal familiarization among the Internet and intranet users. While, factor number 2,3 and 4 need major improvement in the presentation of the content in the portal. Therefore, to overcome those factors, thorough investigation should be done especially in putting the right context to the available information or knowledge in the portal. [5] found that development of knowledge context model facilitates the use of contextual information in

11 virtual collaborative work. This is because; association of information or knowledge to the right user context can increase the ease of use or usability level to users. [2], [4] and [9] agreed that, without proper contextual information, knowledge can be isolated from other relevant knowledge resulting in limited or distorted understanding. At the same time, we can slowly nurture the development of user familiarization in adapting the portal systems. In Intranet case, nurturing process of user familiarization may reduce cost of the organization especially in conducting many sessions for user training. Slowly, the study of user contextual information for the portal will directly consider the improvement of information architecture, content navigation and web interface design. This is because those improvements are always associated with user context. This type of study is referring the context-based proactive delivery of knowledge suggested by [5] with several examples from previous works by other researchers. In line with those technical initiatives, the portal project champion should further take the leadership portion to educate and promote the portal technology to users. By acquiring more information of user context through interviews and questionnaire surveys, portal can improve better to get higher usage over the time. Portal as the enabler to knowledge management (KM) activities, the practice of 8 KM habits should also be considered at individual, community as well as organizational level to increase the usage. By achieving the level of Innovative knowledge professional among the users within the organization, the culture of KM can be nurtured simultaneously with the improvement of portal systems [8]. 7.0 Conclusion In conclusion, portal project has a big responsibility as the base application and enabler to support knowledge management activities in Nuclear Malaysia. Holistically, the usage level of the portal system is predetermining the practice of knowledge management at various levels in the organization. Before any portal technology initiatives is taken into consideration, the development of the information context as well as user context should be thoroughly studied, so that the usage of the portal can be improved as early as the first six months of portal implementation. Even though, the usage of the portal becomes the major issue to the portal implementation, the nurturing process can be adapted over the time in line with the continuous improvement on the contextual information in the portal. REFERENCES [1] ALAVI, M. and Leidner, D.E., Knowledge Management and Knowledge Management Systems: Conceptual foundations and Research Issues, MIS Quarterly, Vol.25, No. 1, 2001, pp (2001). [2] BREZILLION, P. and Pomerol, J., Contextual knowledge sharing and cooperation in intelligent assistant systems, Le Travail Humain 62 3, pp (1999). [3] COMPUTER CENTER, The University of Hong Kong, Development of the HKU Campus Portal (2007) [4] GOLDKUHL, G. and Braf, E., Contextual knowledge analysis understanding knowledge and its relations to action and communication (2001). [5] HYUNG, J.A.,Hong, J.L., Kyehyun, C. and Sung, J.P., Utilizing knowledge context in virtual collaborative work, Decision Support System, Science Direct, Volume 39, Issue 4, pp (2005). [6] IP, INTRANET PORTAL, Defense Technical Information Center, 1 Nov. 2006, (2006), 11

12 [7] IWEBTOOL, Computer Glossary, What is Portal? (2007) [8] JT FRANK Academy, Certificate in Knowledge Management Course, Malaysia (2007) [9] KLERNKE, R., Context Framework- an open approach to enhance organizational memory systems with context modeling techniques (2000). [10] MALAYSIAN Institute for Nuclear Technology Research(MINT), Information Technology Strategic Planning,Malaysia, (2004). [11] MALAYSIAN Institute for Nuclear Technology Research(MINT), Portal Project Charter,Malaysia, (2005). [12] MALAYSIAN Institute for Nuclear Technology Research(MINT), Portal Project Technical Specification, 546 Portal v7, Malaysia (2005). [13] MALAYSIAN Nuclear Agency, Internet and Intranet portal s system monitoring module, Malaysia (2007). [14] NIELSEN, J., (2000), Why You Only Need to Test With 5 Users, 8 Nov. 2006, [15] NTNU Det skapende universitet,what is a Portal? (2007) Cwelcport~htm/navId.3/navSetId._/ [16] RESNICK, M. L., Bakar, W. Castellanos, M., Haghighi, R., Monsalve, A., User-Centered Design of A Customized Intranet Portal For A Large Public University, FL (2003). [17] SEARCHSAP.COM Definitions, Enterprise Information Portal (2007) [18] SELLENS, C. and Wilson, O.L.F., The CMG Knowledge Intranet, Proceeding of the 2nd International conference on practical aspects of knowledge management (PAKM98), basel, switzerland, (1998). pp [19] STENMARK, D. and Lindgren, R., Intranet for knowledge management: Applications affording user participation, Ninth Americas Conferences on Information Systems, pp (2003). [20] WEBOPEDIA, Web Portal, (2007) 12