Rodan Systems S.A. is the co-ordinator of the Intelligent CONtent Management System (ICONS) project realised within the European Commission Fifth Framework Programme, User-friendly information society IST(see www.cordis.lu/ist). The project, with the identifier IST-2001-32429, addresses the objectives of the action line IST2001 - II.1.2: Knowledge management.
The overall project budget is more than 3 million EURO – about 1,9 million sponsored by the European Commission. The Rodan Systems budget is about 900 thousand EURO – a half founded by the European Commission and the majority of the second half by the State Committee for Scientific Research.
The ICONS project focuses on bringing together into a coherent, web-based system architecture the advanced research results, technologies, and standards, in order to develop and further exploit the knowledge-based, multimedia content management platform. Integrating and extending known results from the AI and database management fields, combined with advanced features of the emerging information architecture technologies, will result in a novel Intelligent CONtent Management System (ICONS) platform.
Three clearly defined research streams, controlled by precisely specified milestones and sound project management practices, as well as top quality academic and industrial partners working jointly towards achieving well specified project objectives ensure the success of the ICONS project.
Results of the ICONS project fall into three distinct project deliverable categories. The original research results will be presented in refereed scientific publications. The technological achievements will be presented in the form of a stable working ICONS prototype that will be presented and evaluated over the Internet. Feasibility and added value of the novel technologies will be demonstrated by the “Structural Fund Project Knowledge Portal”.
The participants in the project are the 7 partners:
The overall project objective is to integrate and extend the existing research results and standards in the area of knowledge representation as well as integration of pre-existing, heterogeneous information sources. The knowledge representation research performed by the consortium partners will cover such paradigms as logic (disjunctive Datalog), semantic nets and conceptual modelling (UML semantic data models and the RDF standard), as well as the procedural knowledge represented by directed graphs (WfMC). Established methods and techniques are to provide the theoretical basis for the Intelligent CONtent Management System (ICONS) to be developed on the basis of a selected content management platform. The ICONS prototype is to manage an XML-based multimedia content repository, storing complex information objects and/or representations (proxies) of external information resources such as pre-existing, heterogeneous databases, information processing system outputs, and Web pages, as well as the corresponding domain ontologies. The "Structural Fund Project Knowledge Portal” published in Internet will provide a tangible demonstration of project results.
The consortium of academic and industrial partners, representing documented research skills and development experience in all relevant research and technology fields, will jointly perform research activities organised in workpackages. Research activities cover three principal phases of the project, namely the theoretical research phase, the prototype construction phase, and the methodology and the pilot application phase. The duration of the ICONS project is 24 months and the project progress is to be tightly controlled by the well defined milestones occurring roughly every 6 months.
The theoretical research workpackages, pertaining to the multi-paradigm knowledge representation as well as to integration of pre-existing, heterogeneous information sources, are to provide integrated and extended research results underlying the ICONS architecture. The principal research results focus on a multi-paradigm knowledge representation scheme, providing a generalized platform for constructing and manipulating domain ontologies supporting storage and manipulation of static (logic rules, semantic nets) and dynamic (process directed graphs) knowledge. Means for assessment of the quality and relevance of the obtained research results will be provided by appropriately designed milestones.
The prototype construction workpackages build upon the obtained research results and on the existing content management components selected for further extension and re-engineering by the consortium partners. Thus, the mundane software effort leading to development of the core content management software environment will be avoided, and the development work will concentrate on design and implementation of the advanced knowledge management and heterogeneous information integration software components. The working ICONS prototype will be installed at consortium partners' sites and also made accessible via Internet for thorough evaluation and acceptance testing.
The methodology and application development workpackages will provide the final verification of the project results to be publicly available over Internet in the form of the "Structural Fund Project Knowledge Portal”. Development will follow a disciplined life-cycle specified as the part of the proposed knowledge-based content management system design methodology.
The Structural Fund projects represent a vital opportunity for the new Member States to join the European Community in May 2004 to close the social and economic gap between these countries and the European Community. The challenge is to create conditions for best possible use of the funds made available to them by the EC. The challenge is the number of different SF project types (priorities) and the large number of organisations that are authorised to submit project proposals. In Poland alone an estimated number of 3500 organisations may propose projects to be potentially funded by the structural funds. The budget allocated to these projects in years 2004-2006 amounts to 13.8 billion Euro. The goal of the "Structural Fund Project Knowledge Portal" is to support organizations and individuals involved in the SF project proposal development processes to achieve the highest possible number of high quality eligible project proposals meeting the stringent EC criteria. Even small improvements in project proposal development processes resulting from application of the advanced knowledge management techniques and methodologies will have a substantial economic impact on the regional development of the NAS countries. Indeed a 1% improvement in the structural fund project proposal acceptance level would mean additional 138 million Euro to be invested in the Polish regional economy alone in years 2004-2006.
The theoretical research results comprising evaluation and extensions of the state-of-the-art in the relevant fields will be presented in the form of internal project reports and in the form of generally available publications (conferences, journals, the Web). Milestones to occur within the first 12 months of the project are to provide control points for assessment of novelty and feasibility of results providing the underlying research base of the ICONS prototype. The ICONS architecture and prototype emerging in the second and third semesters of the project and controlled by the appropriate milestones are the principal project result. The methodology and the pilot application developed during the last semester of the project will demonstrate the feasibility and the competitive advantage of the ICONS software.
Looking backward to January 2002 (or even a year earlier, when the project proposal had been prepared) we can see the way we went through. We see that the efforts amounting to 400 person months of total value exceeding 3 mln Euro were well invested and brought excellent results.
The research achievements were not only validated and published on numerous conferences and workshops (78), in journals (12) and books (4), documented in the project deliverables (41 formal project reports, out of which 16 publicly available) but also elaborated up to the detailed design level and implemented within the ICONS knowledge intensive application platform. 19 modules were implemented from scratch or as an extension of the existing open source modules and contributed by partners. The modules cooperating with each other within the precisely engineered ICONS platform architecture provide a comprehensive set of generic services indispensable for development of any type of KM intensive application. The platform validated against the prototype of Structural Funds Project Knowledge Portal proved its viability. The first commercial application of individual modules (e.g. intelligent workflow engine, ontology manager, text categorization, content repository) were also successful (BIP, SUNPLAST and PIUM applications). The most impressive ICONS platform based application is this of European Exchange of Documents – Poland. This large system (20 ministries, 12 000 civil servants, 10 000 incoming documents a months, budget 500 000 EUR) implementation and deployment in such a strict time regime (the first increment December 2003 – March 2004) was possible only due to the fact that it did not start from the scratch but rather built upon services provided by the ICONS platform. The consortium has no doubt that the ICONS platform supported by the ICONS methodology will compete with the leaders in knowledge, content and workflow management systems in Europe and in the US.
The major concern is related to further industrialization of the Structural Fund Project Knowledge Portal (SFP KP; the second major result of the ICONS project). The user-oriented assessment and other dissemination activities confirmed that the system is potentially of great importance for social and economic development of Poland and other accessing countries. Although many notable institutions expressed their interest and willingness to exploit the portal (acknowledged by 12 gathered letters of interest), we were not able to find any real investors. The most promising talks are still carried out with NOT (Polish Federation of Engineering Associations – NOT, http://not.org.pl/english/)and will be continued even after the project completion. The consortium is motivated as it can envisage the forthcoming benefits for national economics and the consortium itself.
The Third General Project Review took place in Warsaw at 10th of November, 2003. 9 deliverables, the prototype of the ICONS platform and the prototype of the Structural Funds (SF) Project Knowledge Portal were subject to the evaluation. For the first time the reviewers were able to see the working application and its knowledge management facilities. The reviewers appreciated the range and strength of the offered knowledge management mechanisms. The technological results developed in the last period and the implementation of previously researched solutions were evaluated as sound and of great potential to any knowledge intensive application. Their successful application in the SF realm provides a proof of concept for the ICONS challenges. The reviewers expressed their concern with respect to usability and user friendliness aspects of the demonstrator. Being aware of these deficiencies, common for this stage of application development, the consortium will implement reviewers' recommendations and will put appropriate resources for planned user-oriented usability experiments.
The project is definitely getting closer to its end. The innovative research work is completed, although evolving to take into account the results of its implementation and deployment. The platform design and implementation is completed as well and provided a convincing proof of concept for the underlying research. Satisfactory results are achieved with respect to the ICONS core modules (pertaining to content and knowledge management layers) as well as to user interface modules (pertaining to human computer interaction layer). The achieved implementation stage excludes any major technological risk associated with the ICONS platform. The design and implementation are continuously maintained to accommodate feedback coming from the exploitation. Indeed, development work of the ICONS demonstrator, Structural Funds Projects Knowledge Portal, revealed a number of deficiencies and improvement proposals of varying importance, which have been registered and are subject to the rigorous corrective and perfective maintenance process. While the validation outcomes of the demonstrator development can not be overestimated, the genuine benefits, following the portal exploitation, are still to come. The Structural Funds Projects Knowledge Portal addresses an important socio-economic problem of the unifying Europe, which is to obtain the highest possible number of high quality eligible project proposals meeting stringent Structural Funds criteria. Thanks to its advanced knowledge management facilities, supporting both routine work as well as highly intellectual and creative proposal preparation activities, SF portal will surely play a role of significant enabler in getting higher ratio of the proposals accepted.
Apart from normal publication activities, the ICONS dissemination and exploitation resulted in the first commercial benefits! First of all we successfully applied the ICONS enhanced workflow engine in some e-government and industrial portals. Secondly innovative ICONS knowledge management concepts turned out to be appreciated in the bid for Polish - European Commission electronic mail system for Polish Ministry of Scientific Research and Information Technology. These examples of early successful exploitation of ICONS results make the development team even more determined in further industrialisation and commercialisation of the achieved results.
Generally speaking, the progress is adequate to the amount of resources spent, appropriate with respect to the initial project plan and satisfactory with respect to the task assigned for the last semester (the ICONS prototype thorough validation carried out mainly in the course of development and deployment of a pilot application).
Further plans In order to fully consume available resources in the light of very promising ICONS results the reviewers suggested project extension up to the end of April 2004. The consortium really appreciated and accepted this possibility aware of the fact that some of the activities, pertaining to publicity, dissemination and exploitation, need time (rather then intensive efforts) to be carried out effectively.
The consortium perceives the extension as an opportunity for better preparation of the achieved results for the further commercialization and exploitation. The special stress in the additional time will be devoted to:
At the beginning of March 2003 ICONS underwent the consecutive formal review. 14 reports and 2 milestones, results produced in the period form July 2002 to February 2003, were subjected to evaluation. The reviewers’ evaluation varied from good to very good except for aspects related to the user interface, where some additional work is still needed.
In the period of interest most of the planned research work has been successfully completed. It is fully reflected in the formal definition of the multi-paradigm knowledge schema covering structural aspects related to the processed content format, procedural aspects pertaining to workflow processes, and declarative aspects addressing knowledge modelling and inference capabilities.
A significant progress has been achieved with respect to the knowledge management platform being developed within ICONS, as well. The comprehensively defined architecture presents in detail the platform’s services and technical solutions of the highest level of abstraction. The proposed technical process of further development has been accepted and the implementation plan has been confirmed as feasible. Altogether, this work constitutes the base for achievement of the consecutive milestone pertaining to ICONS architecture.
As the project came into its second half more and more attention (in compliance with the project plan) is put on the development of a demonstration application, the so-called "Structural Fund Project Knowledge Portal". Its objective is to validate ICONS solutions and, more importantly, to address an important socio-economic problem of the unifying Europe. The objective and scope of the ICONS demonstration application has been defined in the conceptual design document. The reviewers acknowledged the importance of the addressed challenge, which is to obtain the highest possible number of high quality eligible project proposals meeting given stringent project criteria. Moreover, the reviewers confirmed the adequacy of the ICONS knowledge management platform for the above stated objectives. The first version of the ICONS methodology has been accepted as well.
ICONS continues its work according to the project plan. Starting from January 2003 the major stress is put on the platform implementation (work distributed among 4 partners), completion of the research (mainly in optimisation of the distributed architecture) and final elaboration of the methodology. Some preliminary work is being done on "Structural Fund Project Knowledge Portal", despite the fact that the rigorous development of the application is planned to start not earlier than the second semester of this year.
The next breakthrough will be the completion of the platform development and commencing the work on the platform based demonstration application development (July 2003). These results are to be reviewed in September 2003.
On 2 July 2002, the first general project review took place in Brussels, Belgium. The first semester of the ICONS project (January 1 - July 1) has been positively evaluated by the reviewers, which means that the project can be continued.
During this period, the consortium carried out the work establishing firm foundations for the further effective and efficient project progress. Now, we even more appreciate the approach following from the old Chinese proverb “if you do not know where you are, any map will help you”, that we have applied in the project.
First of all, we know where we are going – due to the effort of all partners to understand, re-validate and express in a clear way the goals and objectives of the project (D01 – Project Presentation).
Secondly, we know where we currently are, having developed valid and up to date maps as well as a reasonable and objective compass to choose the best way. For this, we have subsequently recognized the state-of-the-art pertaining to the project (D01 – Project Presentation), reviewed and selected relevant industry standards (D04 - Standards Base), identified and initially assessed reusable software packages (D05 - Technological Base), and defined the foundations for research (D06 - Research Base).
Finally, we have excluded a significant amount of less suitable alternatives, which will focus our efforts on the accomplishment of the project's objectives. This was accomplished by defining a schematic architecture of the target ICONS prototype (D01 – Project Presentation).
Moreover, we are equipped with instruments to lead our march effectively and efficiently with continuous assurance of the genuine progress: managerial practices (D02 – Consortium Agreement) have been defined and put into work, while achievement of quality expectations is to be ensured by a rigorous assessment process (D03 – Evaluation Criteria).
Hence we continue the project well equipped with most of the risks being kept under control.
The best way to formally summarise the progress achieved in the first semester is by referring directly to the original definition of milestones [ICONS CONTRACT] that are actually achieved during the period of interest:
M1: Selection of standards and the software tools to provide the technological basis for the ICONS architecture. The goal is to select the standards and software environments providing the basis for the ICONS prototype development. The principal selection criterion for the software environment is to minimize the development effort and to maximise the re-use of the existing software components provided by the consortium partners.
M2: Selection of the principal research results to be applied and extended within the ICONS project. Several areas of the ICONS project are heavily dependent on the past and ongoing research efforts of the consortium partners. The aim is to formulate a coherent theoretical base, integrating the relevant research results and ongoing efforts of the consortium partners, pertinent to the ICONS architecture. Decisions taken at this stage are to determine the further evolution of the ICONS research and development work.
Other results, which are not so tangible and direct, however in our belief of great importance, include: