A Platform for Organisationally Mobile Public Employees

Objective

The aim of the Pellucid project is to develop a flexible and adaptable platform to assist organisationally mobile employees at middle and higher levels of public sector organisations. Organisational mobility, in which employees move from one department or unit to another, is becoming increasingly common, and brings its own problems and opportunities. The Pellucid platform is a multi-layer, agent-based system to aid these employees in acquiring, reusing and sharing knowledge and experience, benefiting both them and the effectiveness and efficiency of the organisation. The platform will use and integrate technologies such as autonomous cooperating agents; organisational memory; workflow and process modelling; and metadata for accessing document repositories. The platform will be evaluated on pilot sites. It will be customisable to a wide variety of public sector organisations and thus the exploitation prospects are excellent.

OBJECTIVES
The overall objective of Pellucid is to develop an adaptable platform for assisting organisationally mobile employees, in effect re-engineering their work in the organisation. This will improve organisation effectiveness and efficiency by formalisation, recording, storage and preservation of experience and knowledge; and supporting workers during integration in a new department or role by giving access to specific knowledge and experience accumulated in the past. At the technical level, the objective is to develop and integrate several advanced technologies in a customisable agent-based architecture. These technologies include autonomous cooperating agents; responsive interaction with the end-users; organisational memory; workflow and process modelling; and metadata for accessing document repositories. The objective is also to obtain experience with customisation and to formulate guidelines for best practice in using the Pellucid platform in assisting organisationally mobile workers.

DESCRIPTION OF WORK
An 'organisationally mobile' employee is one who moves, as a normal part of their career progression, to different departments or units in a sector where they do not necessarily have direct experience. Nonetheless their prior experience in other positions in the organisation is likely to be relevant and valuable, since many of their tasks have similarities. They need to develop an understanding of the new working environment and its processes in order to master the new situation rapidly, and then their own growing experience becomes valuable to others. Pellucid aims to advance with respect to the present situation in the support for organisational mobility of workers by moving from a 'passive' approach to an 'active' one. The Pellucid project will develop a platform to assist such employees. The platform will be agent-based and have three layers: the interaction layer, concerned with managing the interface with the employee (end-user) and the external world; the process layer, concerned with managing tasks and workflows; and the access layer, concerned with search and retrieval of a wide range of documents. Each of these layers will comprise a collection of agents with defined competences and communications, acting together in a dynamic, flexible way. An organisational memory will allow for monitoring of the overall behaviour of the system and a learning capability for continuous improvement. Initial workpackages devoted to analysis of the public sector working environment and organisationally mobile employees and to overall system design will be followed by development of the agents in parallel. Effort will be devoted to integration and pilot site operation including comprehensive evaluation. Evolving business plans and dissemination plans will be developed throughout the project.

Programme(s)

• FP5-IST - Programme for research, technological development and demonstration on a "User-friendly information society, 1998-2002"

Topic(s)

Data not available

Call for proposal

Data not available

Funding Scheme

CSC - Cost-sharing contracts

Coordinator

COUNCIL FOR THE CENTRAL LABORATORY OF THE RESEARCH COUNCILS

Address

Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
OX11 0QX Chilton, Didcot
United Kingdom

Participants (8)

AKADEMICKIE CENTRUM KOMPUTEROWE CYFRONET AKADEMII GORNICZO-HUTNICZEJ IM. STANISLAWA STASZICA W KRAKOWIE

Poland

Address

Ul. Nawojki 11
30-950 Krakow

COMUNE DI GENOVA

Italy

Address

Via Garibaldi 9
16124 Genova

CONSEJERIA DE LA PRESIDENCIA DE LA JUNTA DE ANDALUCIA

Spain

Address

Calle Monsalves 8 Y 10
41001 Sevilla

MANCOMUNIDAD DE MUNICIPIOS DEL BAJO GUADALQUIVIR

Spain

Address

Lg Finca San Jose S/n
41740 Lebrija

SADIEL, S.A. - SOCIEDAD ANDALUZA PARA EL DESARROLLO DE LA INFORMATICA Y LA ELECTRONICA

Spain

Address

Av/isaac Newton, Sn. Edificio Sadiel. Isla De Cartuja
41092 Sevilla

SOCIEDAD ANDALUZA PARA EL DESARROLLO DE LA SOCIEDAD DE LA INFORMACION S.A.U.

Spain

Address

Edificio Zoco Aljarafe Av De La Arboleda
41940 Tomares, (Sevilla)

SOFTECO SISMAT S.P.A.

Italy

Address

Via De Marini 1
16149 Genova

USTAV INFORMATIKY, SLOVENSKA AKADEMIA VIED

Slovakia

Address

Dubravska Cesta 9
84507 Bratislava