7.1 Introduction

Recent research [1] indicates that over 30% of the knowledge worker's day is involved in searching for required information.

The amount of raw information available is growing at a phenomenal rate. Lyman and Varian [2] indicate an annual production of 1.5 billion gigabytes of information. This growth buries the relevant information that the user requires under an avalanche of reports, e-mails, documents, and information from portals and Web sites.

Information overload has long been recognised as a significant issue in the workplace [3, 4], with increasing numbers of senior executives believing that the situation is getting worse. Conversely these senior managers also believe that, as an asset, their company's information is mission critical.

Among the many definitions of knowledge management, the simplest is often phrased along the lines of:

"... getting the right information to the right people at the right time".

Behind this definition are two inherent questions which must be answered:

• What is relevant [information] to the user right now?

• Who is relevant [people] to the user right now?

Where once people used to have tightly defined roles in their company or within their project, it is becoming increasingly common for people to take on multiple technical and managerial roles. For instance, an individual could spend the morning working as a project leader on one project, but the afternoon as a technical expert on a separate project. What constitutes the right information is thus becoming increasingly related...