Helping Knowledge Cross Boundaries: Using Knowledge Visualization to Support Cross-Community Sensemaking

An Activity-Based Approach towards Development and Use of E-Government Service Ontologies

“…This framework allows to trace and backtrack the role of ontologies from e-government service use to ontology research: how the ontology users take into account the needs of their clients, how the ontology developers must foresee the rationale of the ontology users, and what does this teach the ontology researchers (based on what epistemological assumptions)? To understand the activities of egovernment service users and providers in detail, we refer to the model of "perspective making -perspective taking" introduced by Boland & Tenkasi [5] as applied to cross-community sense-making by Novak [30]. In this context, semantic artifacts, i.e.…”

“…Beyond the investigation of visible boundary objects (e.g. [30]) we focus on metadata and ontologies as electronic artifacts that (in principle) still can be understood by humans, but are mainly used by other artifacts (e.g. responsibility finding application, personal software assistants) to make meaning explicit for e-government users.…”

“…Hereby an administration can be considered as a collective actor and as a "community of knowing" [5] or "community of practice" [25], but their counterparts (citizens and businesses as service consumer) do not reach the same level of perspective coherence; we can only consider them as the community of not-knowing (see above: citizens are "needs-aware, but not services-aware"). PM in e-government means that the administrations involved develop a shared perspective (with certain interests and vocabulary), including "activities from collaborative problem solving to cooperative gathering and structuring of information to narrative exchanges" ( [30], p. 2). PT mainly happens on the side of citizens and businesses as service users, it comprises "the understanding of implicit structures and contexts determining the meaning of information" ( [30], p. 2).…”

“…PM in e-government means that the administrations involved develop a shared perspective (with certain interests and vocabulary), including "activities from collaborative problem solving to cooperative gathering and structuring of information to narrative exchanges" ( [30], p. 2). PT mainly happens on the side of citizens and businesses as service users, it comprises "the understanding of implicit structures and contexts determining the meaning of information" ( [30], p. 2). Novak points out that cross-community knowledge exchange actually requires interplay of perspective taking and perspective making through which unfamiliar knowledge is "internalized by contextualizing it within one's own thought world and expressing it in one's own terms".…”

“…Novak points out that cross-community knowledge exchange actually requires interplay of perspective taking and perspective making through which unfamiliar knowledge is "internalized by contextualizing it within one's own thought world and expressing it in one's own terms". ( [30], p. 2) (4) Boundary objects: The concept of boundary objects was first introduced by Star & Griesemer [38]. Boundary objects can be used by several (collective) actors in order to satisfy the informational needs of both.…”