Briefs

Apr 18, 2003. NSF researchers to help modern organizations adapt and respond in the information age

ARLINGTON, Va. � The most critical networks in any organization are not necessarily the ones carrying Internet traffic, but the social networks among persons and groups that define an organization's process and knowledge flow. Kathleen Carley's goal is to estimate the size, shape and weaknesses of those social networks to help managers predict how an organization is likely to respond to anticipated and unanticipated changes. Ray Levitt wants to design, from the ground up, organizations without any weaknesses at all.

Carley, the director of Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems at Carnegie Mellon University, and Levitt, academic director of Stanford University's Advanced Project Management Program, are leading two of the eight National Science Foundation (NSF) projects whose efforts are being supplemented by $4 million over two years as part of the Management of Knowledge-Intensive Dynamic Systems (MKIDS) program. The program reflects an aspect of NSF's charter: to support science and engineering research related to national security.

The eight projects are researching how information technologies can help streamline processes for organizations that must respond rapidly to incoming knowledge, dynamic situations and uncertainty. Such organizations include news media, multinational research corporations, global finance institutions and the intelligence community.

The systems envisioned by the MKIDS program go beyond even today's leading-edge "data mining" systems, which attempt to monitor vast streams of data and pinpoint events of interest. Using input such as these events, an MKIDS system would employ scheduling tools to help decision-makers adjust organizational processes by dynamically allocating physical resources, technology services, and human resources. In addition, an MKIDS system would have controller functions that would monitor the organization's response to the scheduling decisions and provide ways to fine-tune the process and "remember" the best practices from ongoing experience.

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