Pellucid focused on designing, developing and validating a flexible software platform for an important kind of knowledge management: to assist organisationally mobile workers in public sector organisations.

THE PROJECT

Pellucid aimed at improving an organisation’s effectiveness and efficiency by formalising, recording, storaging and preserving workers’ experience and knowledge, to avoid the loss of knowledge when they move to another role or department, or even leave the organisation. Equally, the platform tried to support workers during their integration into a new department, by giving access to specific knowledge and experience accumulated in the past.

The piloting and validation phase of Pellucid were carried out in three different sites in Spain and in Italy.

Organisational mobility, in which employees move from one department or unit to another, is becoming increasingly common, and brings its own problems and opportunities. When experienced workers leave a job a large part of their knowledge goes with them, and this is a loss for the organisation, reducing efficiency and effectiveness. The time spent gaining familiarity with a new job is often long and stressful for the worker. This too is a loss for the organisation, which spends money on training, and can be a frustration for the worker, thus reducing the effectiveness of his/her activity and increasing the risk of stress-related disorders.

Many organisations devote some effort to the training of new employees, but very little to the adaptation of those who move from one position to another. In particular, there is very little support from computer-based information systems.

Many organisations now have Intranets for use by their staff, but these are generally static in nature, difficult to search for the required information (which in any case might not be present), and offering no assistance in performing tasks.

The Pellucid platform was designed as a multi-layer, agent-based system to aid organisationally mobile employees in acquiring, reusing and sharing knowledge and experience. Different system components were responsible for handling the interaction with individual users, for interfacing to existing workflow management systems, for information search and access, and for generating appropriate advice based on past experience.

CONSORTIUM

A consolidated research group with a renowned academic and industrial profile.

• CCLRC (GB)
• algoWatt SpA (IT)
• CYFRONET (PL)
• SADIEL (ES)
• Institute of Informatics, Slovak Academy of Sciences (SK)
• Consejería de la Presidencia de la Junta de Andalucía (ES)
• Comune di Genova – Direzione Mobilità e Trasporti (IT)
• Mancomunidad de Municipios del Bajo Guadalquivir (ES)