How the World Bank built an enterprise taxonomy -- a sto....pptVIP

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 Storytelling I’m 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! I’d like to take you back to the world of medieval fiefdoms – many systems, many rules, different sets of laws, different languages and grammars Once upon a time We had many different financial systems, multiple document management systems, 100’s 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 Consolidation of Business System Fiefdoms Laying Out the Information Empire Once we had established a common communication foundation, the people in those different fiefdoms b