all, efficient government organisation is not a pie which can be sliced up at will. Several models ..... Conference calls are becoming easier to set up and maintain.
1
Telecooperation and Telepresence: Technical challenges of a government distributed between Bonn and Berlin Peter Hoschka and Berthold Butscher and Norbert Streitz Gesellschaft für Mathematik und Datenverarbeitung (GMD), D 5205 Sankt Augustin 1, Germany
Hoschka, P. and Butscher, B. and Streitz, N., 1993. Telecooperation and Telepresence: Technical challenges of a government distributed between Bonn and Berlin. Informatization and the Public Sector Abstract. The decision of the German Parliament to relocate the seat of Parliament and Government from Bonn to Berlin is a major challenge and opportunity for information and communication technology. Only by employing the very latest technology will it be possible to implement Parliament's decision for a workable and efficient government distributed between Berlin and Bonn. The paper outlines the fundamental problems arising for cooperation among governmental bodies as a result of spatial separation. It discusses trends and prospects for support through new information and communication technologies and also introduces the POLIKOM research program by which the German government wishes to contribute to resolving the problems.
2
1.
Introduction
The decision of the German Parliament to relocate the seat of Parliament and Government from Bonn to Berlin represents a major challenge and opportunity for information and communication technology. The necessity for cooperation between the two cities compels all interested parties to develop and test technology which is truly useful and usable. The relevance of the situation is creating the required innovative demand on the market and is doing so to a degree which is essential for the development and implementation of new technology. Only by employing the very latest technology will it be possible to implement a solution for a workable and efficient division of labour between Berlin and Bonn. Despite the spatial separation, ministries and Parliament must be able to work (almost) as if they were at the same location. The Berlin-Bonn problem is not unique. A united Europe will give rise to a similar need for cooperation among the various governments and parliaments and between these and Brussels. The same applies for cooperation among business enterprises in Europe and elsewhere in the world. New technologies enhance efficiency, relieve traffic congestion and avoid unnecessary strains on the environment. Facilitating telecooperation and telepresence represents one of the major challenges facing administration and management in the industrialised world. The country assuming a pioneering role in the large-scale practical application of these technologies will inevitably reap a competitive edge. Consequently, state investments in an efficient information and communication network between Berlin and Bonn not only represent a contribution to resolving a specific problem, but also provide an opportunity to markedly strengthen Europe's information-technology industry on the international market by means of innovative projects and large-scale investments. 2.
The Problem
The concrete implementation of the decision by the German Parliament to distribute the parliamentary and governmental work between Bonn and Berlin is no easy task. After all, efficient government organisation is not a pie which can be sliced up at will. Several models for a fair and workable division of labour between Bonn and Berlin are currently under discussion. The vertical model envisages that entire ministries move to Berlin while others remain fully in Bonn. Applying the horizontal model, ministries will be divided into a political core which will move to Berlin and an administrative sector which will remain in Bonn. There are also models comprising mixtures of the two versions. As things currently stand (March 1993), in addition to the Federal Chancellery and the Federal Press Office, the following ministries will move to Berlin either wholly or chiefly – the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, the Interior, Justice, Finance, Economic Affairs, Family, Transport and Construction. Although these ministries are moving to Berlin, some sections will remain in Bonn. The following ministries are expected to remain entirely in Bonn – the Ministries of Research and Technology, Education, Health, Agriculture, Defence, Environment, Post and Telecommunications, and Economic Cooperation. These ministries are to be given a second seat in Berlin so as to allow cooperation with other ministries and with Parliament. The Ministries of Transport, Labour and Social Affairs, and the Ministry for Women and Youth are to move their political section to Berlin while the sections dealing with specialist matters are to remain in Bonn [BT 1992].
3 Whatever the final outcome will be, it is apparent that the spatial distribution will lead to considerable problems for the efficiency of the governmental system. Information and communication technologies are intended to help overcome these problems. 2.1
Communication, Cooperation, and Coordination,
Working jointly on common tasks but being located in various different locations requires support in three areas: communication, cooperation, and coordination [Ellis et al. 1991]. For communication, the transmission of messages is of central importance. The objective of the supporting technology is to allow messages to be exchanged in a variety of ways and via a variety of media and to make this process as convenient and natural as possible. Two types of communication require support: – communication among persons who are at different locations but are present at the same time (synchronous communication) – communication among persons who are at different locations and work together at different times (asynchronous communication). Both forms complement each other and must receive equal support in a communications network [Sproull, Kiesler 1991]. This is important to emphasize since, when the subject of improvements to communication facilities is raised, most thoughts initially turn to synchronous technologies such as the video telephone or video conference facilities. In large institutions, however, the asynchronous communication capabilities are of crucial importance for the efficient functioning of the organization. The exchange of messages alone is insufficient for cooperation. Cooperation requires the establishment and update of a common information base for all participants. Access to this material (documents, files etc.) from all locations is a prerequisite for overcoming spatial separation. Access alone is not enough, however. It must also be possible to edit documents in many different ways and from various locations, both by a single person and jointly by several persons. Spatially distributed cooperation thus also requires technical systems which support the creation and update of a common information base. Each cooperative task organized on the basis of shared work requires coordination. The individual elements and steps of a task have to be initiated, distributed, monitored, and combined in terms of content, time, responsibilities, and resources. Coordination is a function which goes beyond the exchange of messages and requires knowledge about who is supposed to do what and when, etc. In general, coordination becomes more complex the greater the regional distribution of task processing and the more people are involved. The support of spatially separated cooperation can thus be enhanced if coordination tasks are also supported by technical systems [Greif 1988]. An information and communication network between Bonn and Berlin thus demands the integrated construction and expansion of several technology families. But the extent of integration necessary for a comprehensive solution of this complex problem is neither part of current approaches nor recognized as a substantial marketing dimension by the computer industry. It is important to ensure that all three aspects are reflected with equal importance in the planning and development of technological components of these types of environments.
4 2.2
Demand-Oriented and User-Oriented Planning
A realistic strategy must take into consideration that modern office technologies have been slow to gain a foothold in both public administration and industry. Apart from telefax, mobile telephone and local PC applications, recent years have seen no real breakthroughs of any magnitude despite a number of interesting technical options. With regard to the use of information technology, the technology itself is only one influencing factor. Incorporating the technology into an organisation and matching the workflows to new capabilities are of key importance. The innovations must be targeted to the needs and capabilities of the future users and not merely organised on the basis of the technology available. This requirement appears self-evident and is put forward repeatedly. It is not easy to satisfy, however. It cannot be stressed enough just how difficult it is to change long established communication and cooperation practices so that they can make use of communication technology. The use of new technologies also demands a wide range of changes to existing organisational structures and rules. A single example to illustrate the point: the Bundestag and its committees are empowered to demand the attendance of each member of the Federal Government (Art. 43 of the "Grundgesetz"). The right to summon ministers has so far required the physical presence of persons – not their presence on a video screen. The physical presence of persons is also a major criterion for the Standing Orders of the Bundestag, since in committees it decides the presence of a quorum (§ּ67 Standing Orders of the Bundestag), the authority of the chairman, the submission of motions (§ּ71 Standing Orders of the Bundestag) etc. How can and should such rules be changed in view of the technical capabilities facilitating telepresence? A key issue for the success of technology is the extent of usability and usefulness of the systems employed. The design of many information systems available today are rarely driven by the needs and the capabilities of the future users [Grudin 1988]. Therefore, the systems require extensive training and are too complex for casual users. The necessary high level of acceptance can only be achieved if the operation of these systems is based on a limited number of generic principles which are compatible with the prior knowledge of the users. This facilitates transparency of operation and allows to actually utilize the functionality available. Unfortunately, many information systems are far from meeting these requirements today. Only if technological development and organisational development realize innovative concepts to the same extent it will be possible to resolve the problems for governmental work arising from spatial separation [Kyng, Greenbaum 1991]. 2.3
Application Scenarios
The following scenarios of distributed governmental work illustrate how it will be possible to facilitate governmental business by information and communication technology after the move from Bonn to Berlin. Scenario 1: Preparations for a committee meeting (technology of today) It is Monday morning. The committee secretary enters his office in Berlin and activates his PC. The system informs him about his electronic mail, his appointments for the day, and the work awaiting him in the week ahead. He then sees a memo that the next committee meeting is planned for next week. He will have to start preparations for this no later than today. Examining the minutes of the last meeting on a computer in Bonn he finds references to matters which are to be discussed at the next meeting.
5 Incorporating related material currently under discussion he prepares a draft agenda on his PC. He then transmits the agenda by electronic mail to the committee chairman, who is currently in Bonn, for his approval. The committee chairman reads the draft agenda on his PC, revises it and finalizes it by telephone with the secretary. They also decide which other documents (in addition to the agenda) will need to be sent to the committee members. After finishing the telephone call, the secretary also integrates the handwritten notes which have been added to the draft by the committee chairman in Bonn and dispatched to the secretary by fax. The secretary then transmits the draft agenda by electronic mail to the offices of the various spokesmen and arranges a telephone conference for the next day in order to discuss the agenda with them. This conference results in no substantial change to the agenda which is now dispatched to all committee members by electronic mail. The documents which are relevant for the meeting are collated from several archives in Bonn and Berlin (insofar as these documents are already available on computer) and are stored in a special electronic folder for this meeting. Each committee member who wants a copy of a document from the folder can request this using his PC. He will receive the copy either via electronic mail or, if the documents are very large, by regular mail. The Minister of Foreign Affairs will need to be heard on one point of the agenda. However, he has another meeting in Brussels at the precise time of the meeting. A video conference facility with large-screen projection allows him to participate in the committee meeting in Bonn, at least as far as the discussion of this particular point is concerned. While the committee members would prefer to have the minister in physical attendance and the German constitution even allows them to demand this, they are satisfied in this case with his "telepresence". Scenario 2: Editing a speech by the Chancellor (technology of tomorrow) As part of the debate on the 1997 budget, the German Federal Chancellor wishes to make a speech on the Government's move from Bonn to Berlin which has already been partially completed. He would like to revise those elements of the current draft speech relating to the economical consequences for the Bonn area. Time is short. The speech writer is not in Berlin. He is located by mobile radio in Brussels using a paging system. The latest economical data are collated from the archives of several ministries in Bonn and Berlin as well as from municipal archives in Bonn. A multipoint workstation conference circuit with video and audio links between Brussels, Bonn and Berlin allows the relevant persons to evaluate the material. Some of this material is transmitted to the Federal Chancellery in Berlin for assessment where the relevant passages of the Chancellor's speech are revised. Although one of the involved persons is attending a meeting in Brussels, he is required to prepare a press release. Consequently, the complete manuscript of the speech is transmitted from Berlin via mobile radio and satellite to his notepad. He writes the summary during the meeting, telephones the Federal Press Office in Berlin during the break to agree the draft and transmits it to Berlin over the telephone line by means of electronic mail. While the telephone call is being made, the system takes the opportunity to update the speech writer's notepad in Brussels. It transmits the incoming electronic messages (mail and telefaxes) to his computer, enters the latest requests for appointments and informs him of the status of a number of jobs currently in progress. At the same time, the system fetches the notes and memos which the speech writer has prepared on his travels and sends them to the recipients via a suitable transport medium. The coordination system on the notepad ascertains from the data received that the Ministry of Economic Affairs has not yet supplied the contribution firmly promised for the next speech by the
6 Chancellor. The speech writer sends an urgent reminder via mobile radio to the person responsible and also transmits a copy to his own secretariat asking it to follow the matter up. Scenario 3: Discussion of an amendment to the Income Tax Act (technology of the future) The Minister's Office and the cabinet section of the Federal Ministry of Finance are located in Berlin, while the tax department is in Bonn. The head of the Minister's Office in Berlin reads the proposed amendment by the director of the tax department in Bonn on his multimedia workstation. Using a simulation model for the income tax, which is running on a computer in Bonn, he runs through another alternative for the children allowance. He finds this variant politically more agreeable. He copies a graphic from the result of the simulation, records his opinion via voice input, uses an electronic pen to enter a number of handwritten changes to the memo of the tax department and returns everything to Bonn by multimedia electronic mail. The director of the tax department in Bonn has serious doubts about the modifications. In order to accelerate matters, he establishes a desktop conference with the Minister's Office. Both can see the same section of the memo in question on a high-resolution screen, they can hear each other and can see each other in their respective offices. During the discussion, each can use an own cursor to point out parts of the document, make corrections by hand and via keyboard and experience each other's reactions virtually face-to-face. Nevertheless, the two are unable to agree on a financial point. They therefore extend the conference to include the head of the planning department at the Ministry of Education in Bonn. They reach her without difficulty, even though at this moment she is visiting a colleague in Berlin. After providing identification by means of a chip card, her colleague's workstation functions just like her own one in Bonn. All the documents and programs she has stored in Bonn are at her disposal and she can see and hear the two other parties of the discussion. After a solution has been reached, the final editorial changes are made jointly on the screen and the new memo is dispatched to the heads of the Ministry's budgetary and planning departments – one in Berlin, the other in Bonn – for their signatures. Chip cards are used to prove the authenticity of the electronic signatures. A workflow system monitors the signing processes, informs the head of the cabinet section in Berlin on the status of events and re-presents the document after the signing process has been completed. Finally, the head of the tax department returns the agreed proposal to the Minister's Office in Berlin via electronic mail and arranges for it to be filed in the Ministry's electronic archive. 2.4
Technical Development Trends
The following development trends are of importance for supporting distributed governmental work: - The network environment: Transmission rates which are up to three orders of magnitude greater than those in current networks, and wireless connection technologies which facilitate distributed cooperation among mobile persons. - Computing systems: Multimedia workstations with processing capacities some two orders of magnitude greater, with high-resolution screens, stereo sound, handwriting input facility and high storage capacity. These systems will be available in many different sizes ranging from desk top workstations to notepad and handheld palmtop computers.
7 - Audio-visual telecommunication: Simplified operation and high-quality audio and visual presentation and conferencing on workstations, on wall-sized screens, and as part of meeting rooms designed to achieve communication which is as natural as possible (telepresence). These trends create the prerequisites for integrated communication and cooperation and, consequently, for substantial improvements in the support of distributed governmental work. To create a suitable infrastructure, the communication network between Bonn and Berlin requires both the narrowband ISDN network and a broadband transmission network. Ministries, administration, and parliament need their own local broadband telecommunication systems (B-PBX, B-LAN) which are internetworked regionally in Bonn and Berlin via broadband networks (Metropolitan Area Networks - MAN ). Both cities are interlinked via an optical highway with very high transmission speeds (up to 2,4 Gbit/s). This 'Government Network' is organized like a 'Corporate Network' and will be interlinked to the public network operated by the German PTT (DBP-Telekom). Additional access to a future broadband mobile communication network will also be realised by this public network interworking. Also important are new technologies in audio and video processing and the integration in workstation architectures, e.g. powerful compression and decompression technologies. It is becoming apparent that those workstations will play a key role as multimedia terminals. The processor rates (50 MIPS and above) and storage capacities which are available allow moving-image information to be processed in real time. The increased performances of the terminals also form the basis for the development of more intelligent application systems matched to man's style of communication which, for example, are capable of some degree of learning and adaptation, are able in some cases to handle inaccurate or contradictory user inputs or can offer help tailored to a given situation or user. Such high-performance terminals used in conjunction with broadband networks form a basis for new kinds of cooperation support systems which are capable of effectively covering a broad spectrum of asynchronous and synchronous cooperation. These developments will serve as the basis for a whole series of new systems and services offering additional application functionality [Baecker 1993] [Greenberg 1991] [Johansen 1988] . A number of examples are given below. This selection is merely intended to provide an impression of the capabilities which will exist in the future and is not intended to be exhaustive. - Computer-supported telephony: The integration of computer and telephone saves time and provides additional information and functionality. It makes audio communication altogether more efficient, more convenient and, if used correctly, easier. For example, dialling is no longer performed using numbers but via names. Conference calls are becoming easier to set up and maintain. Incoming messages written or spoken - can be displayed, stored, forwarded or automatically answered under computer control. The computer can be requested to distribute incoming calls on an individual and selective basis. Other possibilities include: linking by paging and mobile radio systems, electronic mail with voice annotations, sending and receiving of telefaxes via computers. - Cooperative editing of documents: Participants at various locations can all view the same passage of a text, picture or - in general - a multimedia document on their monitors, can point to specific positions on the screen using a remote pointer (telepointer) and jointly edit these documents (shared windows, shared applications). The system helps to regulate access rights and version updates. In conjunction with voice and video communication, this technology can be used to discuss and edit
8 documents very efficiently in a team-oriented environment. The cooperating participants can either operate from their individual desktops or in group meeting rooms with large pen-operated interactive whiteboards and individual notepads for each participant. All systems are connected to each other. More elaborate scenarios require combinations of meeting rooms and additional desk top conferencing from remote locations. - Moving-image communication in various forms: Videotelephony between two or more parties, as a video conference with special studios, normal conference rooms or simply in offices by video telephone, workstation or large-scale projection, with document camera and remote pointer. The quality of the audio and video presentation should be adjustable up to stereo and HDTV, which requires tailorable broadband network support in the inhouse and wide area. - Archiving systems: Allow consistent storage and convenient access to large multimedia databases from various locations. When using document architecture standards (such as ODA, SGML, HyTime), further processing of the documents is also facilitated in heterogeneous system environments. In addition, the archives as the repositories of all documents processed during group work provide additional services as e.g. versioning support. - Organizational services: Support of management and coordination of cooperative tasks, e.g. control of the work flow, monitoring of administrative procedures, preparation of meetings, group scheduling and calendaring, providing common awareness of cooperative work processes, user notification of work progress and much more. Which of the technically feasible services will actually be required and selected for a governmental system distributed between Berlin and Bonn and which will succeed can only be found out during the course of a well organized innovation process. 2.5
Innovation Process
The information and communication technologies currently available already provide a wealth of support options which are either not being used at all in the governmental system or are not being used extensively enough. The first task is thus to ensure the greater availability of current technology on the basis of the existing networks, e.g. added-feature telephones, telefax, electronic mail, use of the German Broadband Network (VBN) and a wide range of PC applications. This task is already very substantial in terms of its scope. Even if new technological developments do not play a key role here, the overall concept which is required for this must incorporate the trends of future technologies and be capable of expansion. Procurement problems and the complex process of technology introduction lie at the heart of this task. The problems of introduction and the effort of design, organisation, training and advice required in conjunction with these must not be underestimated. The challenging goal of achieving a quality of cooperation virtually equivalent to having everyone at the same location cannot be attained with the technology currently available on the market. New technology is required. It is therefore necessary, as a parallel measure to the introduction of existing technology, to organise an innovation process which makes the required new technologies available in time. Only in this way can a procurement programme be placed on a future-oriented and innovative platform and continuously adapted to the latest technological developments. A primary prerequisite for an innovation process of this type is the creation of a broadband network infrastructure in Bonn and Berlin as well as between the two cities. The second task is thus the planning and construction of such an infrastructure. This will involve the local equipment (BPBX, BLAN) in the individual governmental
9 bodies, the regional links of the local networks (B-ISDN, MAN) and the establishment of optical highways between Bonn and Berlin. The existing plans of the German DBPTelekom for constructing a broadband infrastructure by expanding the VBN network and introduction of ATM technology must be expedited with some urgency. Furthermore, substantial work still has to be invested in such areas of the network sector as network management, topology and intelligent networks. A third task consists of organising a process for the development of new technologies. This includes both the testing of technology already available in the laboratories but as yet untested and the development of entirely new innovative systems. Since the practical implementation of such technologies can often only be explained in a particularly abstract form, demonstration and test laboratories should be built as quickly as possible in which as many as possible of the new options can be illustrated in a realistic way using real scenarios from governmental work. Experience has shown that laboratory experiments alone are insufficient for innovations in the field of communication and cooperation. Only through serious integration of the associated technology in a concrete, spatially distributed organisation it is possible to accumulate the necessary experience and assessments. Appropriate pilot studies are therefore needed. The results of these pilot studies can be used in turn to determine the need for modifications or completely new technological developments. An innovation strategy thus consists of three sub-processes: - facilitating procurement and introduction of existing technology addressing the new situation, - planning and implementing a broadband network infrastructure, - generating knowledge and instigating new technological developments via research prototypes thus supporting the procurement process and providing it with the required innovative basis. 3.
Major Areas of Research
Recent years have seen major advances in computer applications in individual sectors of the office environment. These include graphic user interfaces, desktop publishing systems, document management systems integrating text and graphics, electronic mail systems and multimedia presentation systems. These have been accompanied by the parallel development of new technologies for high-speed networks, optical storage units and parallel computers. However, it is necessary to devise fundamentally new concepts in a whole series of fields in order to provide efficient and effective support to spatially separated cooperation. Fig. 1 identifies the areas which are in particularly urgent need of research.
10 Innovative interfaces for cooperative applications Multimedia info-service
Cooperative editing
Group coordination
Shared information base
Security services
Organisational knowledge base
Multimedia teleservices, Internetworking Fig. 1: Research Areas of Telecooperation and Telepresence
3.1
Innovative Interfaces
Computer systems are offering not only more but also more sophisticated functionality at an increasing rate. In contrast, usability of computers does not keep pace with this development. Despite graphical user interfaces and pointing devices for direct manipulation techniques, operation of the technology is still very complex and insufficiently intuitive. This is especially true for the casual user. The increasing integration of computers into large networks with numerous additional capabilities will further increase the discrepancy between functionality and usability. Once computers are part of a large network, another dimension of usability issues has to be considered, i.e. the cooperative use of shared information. Thus, the design of user interfaces has to address a new set of requirements resulting from asynchronous and synchronous cooperation situations. Entirely new innovative solutions for using interactive systems must therefore be developed and implemented. In the very past, systems provided character-based interfaces which could only be operated via a keyboard. Users, computers, data, media, directories, files, and programs could only be addressed via their name. While using a command language for interaction might be fast and efficient for an expert user in a limited domain it is not appropriate for novice and casual users. As a consequence, numerous improvements for user interfaces have been developed. The increasing complexity of computer systems and the quantity of information available means we are becoming less and less able to find what we are looking for. On the other hand, using a computer system is more than locating information. It is also creating and using information within a comprehensive task context. This requires that user interface design has to take into consideration the limitations and capabilities of the human information processing system. One way to exploit the capabilities of the human mind is to build on the user's knowledge about real world domains. This was the starting point for developing user interfaces on the basis of what is known as the "desktop metaphor". While this has been a first attempt to map system's objects to concepts of the user's prior knowledge, there are still open questions on how to present these objects to the user. Currently, these approaches are constrained by two-dimensional presentation formats. The increasing availability of new techniques for presentation and visualisation of three-dimensional objects, as e.g. employed by simulation programs, provides the basis for new types of metaphors. These systems might allow us to synthesize virtual realities on the screen as for example buildings which allow the user to walk through them in a virtual manner.
11 Thus, instead of a situation which relies on the user remembering the right name of an information object, a user interface could provide the same impression as if the user were to look around his own office environment, walk across the corridor to another office, etc. Of course, we all know that an untidy, not well organized office can also cause some problems in finding papers, folders, etc. But the major advantage of this approach is that it addresses our spatial sense of orientation and the imaginative capabilities when working with the computer. A user should be able to create his virtual office and incorporate it, for example, into the virtual building of an organisation. Our perception could then generate and utilise mental images similar to those generated in real situations. It will thus be possible to handle a series of computer-supported activities in a very different way. Instead of using an electronic mail system, it will be possible, for example, to place a message "manually" on the recipient's desk. A document can be filed in the filing cabinet of a virtual office. The user interface must therefore invoke impressions of space and time in order to utilise more of our visual capability when working with the computer. However, this certainly does not necessarily mean that photorealistic images need to be generated and even they would not suffice. More powerful and effective concepts, especially new metaphors have to be developed for dealing with the organisation and use of information for individual users but also, and in particular, for groups [Gibbs, Stuart 1990]. With respect to cooperative work situations, there are two aspects to be considered. The short term aspect refers to working environments as they are currently available with "shared screens". Here, it is necessary to extend these approaches to "shared work spaces" for group aware applications handling all the multi-user problems of current technologies. The more medium and long term aspect is to go beyond traditional audio/video conferencing facilities and provide environments where members of a working group although located far away from each other in real terms could come together in virtual spatial proximity to each other in a virtual telemeeting room in a fictitious building. Both aspects are necessary for supporting telepresence and telecooperation. In addition to employing new metaphors and media, there are also other approaches for enhancing the usability of information technology. Methods from the field of artificial intelligence allow the development of user interfaces which to a certain degree are capable of learning and adaptation, are able to handle inaccurate, incomplete or contradictory user inputs, can provide intelligible information on their capabilities and features, or can offer help information tailored to a concrete working situation or individual user [Hoschka 1991]. These two developments – new media and artificial intelligence – offer the opportunity to narrow the widening gap between functionality and usability. 3.2
Cooperative Authoring of Hypermedia Documents
One of the key applications of remote cooperation technology is the joint editing of documents of any type. Before users can locate, use, and edit information and documents, these must first exist, i.e., must have been generated by one or more “authors". Then, they become part of the processing cycle of use and reuse of information. Document processing involves four main problem areas: - Content, structure, and modularity of documents - Multimedia aspects of documents - Cooperative authoring of documents
12 - Presentation and reception of documents. In this context, we assume a rather generalized concept of "document" as a collection of structured information which serves as the basis for integrating the various types of information present in a cooperative work environment. In order to address the problem areas above in a comprehensive manner, we have to conceive documents as electronic documents. This does not exclude that - on demand - they can be printed and distributed as paper documents but then, of course, restricted to the capabilities of the paper medium. Hypermedia – A new quality of knowledge communication In addition to traditional documents which, while already being generated electronically, are still conceived as linear paper documents, hypermedia documents are becoming increasingly important and, in the future, must be given equal consideration. The hypertext concept forms the basis for a new class of (electronic) documents whose defining feature is non-linearity, this being reflected in network structures and associative reference chains both within and between documents [Conklin 1987]. If the nodes of such a hyperstructure contain, in addition to text and simple graphics, also audio, pictures, video, and animation, then we speak of a hypermedia document. Documents of this type mark a substantial leap in quality in the field of communication media. Linear (traditional) documents present information elements in a fixed sequence independent of the needs of the individual reader. The elements of non-linear documents (hyperdocuments), however, can be read in any desired sequence and to any required degree of detail depending on the reader's particular interests. This allows background material to be included even if this is not needed by every user. Readers can quickly access the information of interest to them without having to follow a fixed structure. From the presentation and reception point of view, it is becoming more and more apparent that many of the problems experienced by readers could have been alleviated by measures taken when the documents were first generated. One aspect of this is that the author's knowledge structures (e.g., the rhetorical and argumentative structures) can be represented explicitly and communicated directly via the document [Streitz et al 1989]. Reading and editing documents requires time, i.e., the reader is located in the dimension of time. This fact is ignored with traditional documents. Books do not vary with time but are located solely in spatial dimensions. This restriction must be overcome in the long term. There must be a synthesis of static media (books, magazines) and continuous media (audio, video) which uses the benefits of one medium to overcome the weaknesses of the other. Hypermedia documents also place quite new requirements on individual authors and groups of authors. Departing from a fixed reading sequence, problems of orientation and coherence arise. The multinetworked "node-link" structure can easily result in readers “getting lost in hyperspace”, i.e. losing the overview of the global document structure and the relationships between nodes. Authors must therefore provide users with orientation and comprehension aids. Furthermore, adjacent nodes must bear a logical relationship to each other and must not assume the reader understands material that is not available at this particular instant and at this particular stage of the user's “travel” through the hyperdocument. If authors are to satisfy these requirements, they need specific tools known as “authoring systems.” These systems must be able to support the entire scope of the authoring activities at various levels of the document structure. The areas of support
13 include definition of objectives, planning of the document, examination of background material, creation of content and preliminary structures, development of argumentation structures, rhetorical reworking of the material and, finally, tailoring of the final hyperdocument to different target groups. The modular structure of hyperdocuments allows the simple and easy "on-the-fly" composition of user-oriented and task-specific perspectives for examining complex documents and information bases (structured paths, e.g. governed by reading behaviour, guided tours, etc.) In order to tackle the problems of global and local coherence, specific means for constructing and presenting hyperdocuments must be provided [Thüring et al 1991]. In the case of large and complex hyperdocuments containing also a high proportion of multimedia content, we believe in a cooperative division of labour between authors creating content and structure and layout specialists being responsible for composition and presentation aspects. Hypermedia – object and medium for cooperative work Important documents generally require the participation of several authors and often pass through multiple revision phases. Hyperdocuments not only form the “object and content” of the cooperation but are also a suitable “medium” for such. The concept of annotations inherent in the hypermedia concept permit an effective and structured exchange of (multimedia) annotations when revising drafts. Coordination tools (cf. Section 3.3) are used by the participants for the exchange of information (comments etc.) regarding content, the course of events to date, and the procedure for future work. In addition to explicit coordination tools integrated with the authoring environment, a multimedia annotation tool is required allowing text, audio, and video annotation of the objects contained in a hyperdocument to support asynchronous coordination. Audio annotations assist authors in informal communication and coordination. Video annotations (e.g. a recording of an earlier video conference situation) can enable new group members to obtain details of earlier discussions on a specific point and make this section of the document more readily understood (group memory). The division of labour is facilitated by the modular nature of hyperdocuments which allows flexible composition and decomposition with maximum reusability of the individual modules. Authors can access a common hypermedia database equipped with a versioning facility [A. Haake 1992]. The system notifies an author when coauthors access or modify objects that the author has marked as being of special interest for him. At the same time, a desktop conference (with video/audio communication) can be initiated and the object of common interest (e.g. part of an argumentation) is available for shared, synchronous viewing and editing (WYSIWIS - What You See Is What I See). On the other hand, authors still retain private work areas in separate windows at the same time (cf. Fig. 2).
14
Shared Drawing Private Space Shared Argumentation
Fig. 2: The figure shows a cooperative authoring system consisting of a video conference device and various work areas on the screen. These work areas can be private or can be displayed an shared simultaneously on several workstation computers. Special work areas support authoring activities such as planning of a document, argumentation, and rhetorical structuring.
In the course of creating a document, authors move back and forth between phases of asynchronous and synchronous group work. Authoring systems thus should enable the smooth transition between the two modes of collaboration [J. Haake, Wilson 1992]. For this purpose, it is necessary to define a social model of the cooperation in which the various combinations of these phases and the rights to access, annotate, and revise parts of the document are agreed and regulated. This implies the continued functioning of annotation and version mechanisms which can be implemented in hyperdocuments with the appropriate types of nodes and links. An example of a system which provides a substantial part of the functionality described above is the cooperative hypermedia authoring environment SEPIA developed by GMD [Streitz et al. 1992]. 3.3
Group Coordination
The coordination of individual activities is a key task of group work. Systems for cooperative task processing are needed to assist in coordinating asynchronous and spatially distributed work in teams and organisations by providing support for the planning and execution of shared work activities. The objective is better transparency with regard to the planning and status of work for everyone involved [Pankoke-Babatz 1989]. Experience with earlier systems has shown that, in supporting the coordination of distributed work, the users must be able to tailor and configure the system themselves. Only systems which the user himself can adapt to suit his individual needs will possess the flexibility required to handle changes and unforeseeable events which are characteristic of group work [Kreifelts 1991]. The capabilities of such systems should be as follows:
15 - Support in structuring and planning group work (who does what, with whom, until when, what with?). - Monitoring and documentation of work progress. - Possibility of changing work plans dynamically during execution. - Sharing required materials and exchange of task related messages. - Individual and group planning of work and time schedules. An example of such a coordination system is the Activity Assistant developed by GMD [Kreifelts 1993]. The key feature of the activity assistant is that it is able to provide participants with a consistent picture of shared work activities even when asynchronous changes are made to work plans during execution, and despite the spatial distribution of the participants. The activity assistant is used typically for organising work in small groups (2–10 persons) with a planning horizon of up to several months. The system can also be used by individual persons for self-organisation by providing support in the individual planning of work and time schedules. A smooth transition is possible from self-organisation to group organisation. Group work is described in the activity assistant as an "activity". Activities consist of a number of tasks with actors and schedules which are linked in a work relationship. Activities and tasks can be described and manipulated as with an outliner in word processing systems. The following three components are essential for supporting group work: - A document store can archive all documents attached to a task. The documents can be jointly used by all involved, in accordance with accessing rules defined by the users themselves. - A message store contains all messages exchanged by the users during task processing. References to documents in the document store are supported. A standard electronic mail system serves as the basis. - An information and monitor system provides information on all important events occurring during task processing and on the status of the task. The system registers events such as new tasks, modifications, entry of new documents and messages, changes of task descriptions, the responsibility, the schedules, the processing status and so on. Activities and tasks appear at the user interface in different contexts or "views" – as entries in a "task list", from a "calendar" perspective and in the overview of the messages received (mailbox). Users can switch between these different views or change to a detailed presentation of the task which shows the current status of work in the respective context (cf. Fig. 3).
16
TASK LIST • POLIKOM start review • Prepare presentations • Send invitations • Reserve room
CALENDAR VIEW
MAILBOX • Agenda for next meeting • POLIKOM start review • New task: Invitations • Done: Reserve room
Shows the schedules for the tasks and the events during task processing in a calendar
Individual task Schedules Actors Details Information system on events and task status
Document store
Electronic mail message store
Fig. 3: The activity assistant – a tool for group coordination – offers different views of the activities and tasks of a group: What has to be done? Who will do it? What is the current status? Is there anything new?
The activity assistant also supports mobile work with notebooks and other portable computers. The work relating to a given task and the exchange of information continues even if one or more members are working from outside, e.g. while travelling. Once back in his office, the user docks his portable computer to the stationary system. All information is updated and synchronized: The latest messages are displayed and the user's own messages which he has prepared while away are dispatched. Appointments the user has made in the meantime are entered into his stationary calendar, new appointment requests having arrived in the office are indicated and coordinated. The entire flow of messages and information in the group is thus in synchrony again. Update and synchronization can also be performed on business trips by linking up the portable computer via the telephone. 3.4
Organisational Knowledge Base
Cooperation in teams and organisations is always embedded in an organisational context. Consequently, the parties participating in a cooperation are generally incorporated into larger organisational units, they have superiors and colleagues, may also have a secretariat and a representative, when absent. There is an organizational environment which it is often useful for cooperation partners to know. The organisational knowledge also includes information on how persons can be reached – their postal address, telephone and fax numbers, electronic mail address, whether they are able to print colour graphics or receive electronic mail with voice annotations etc. A cooperation support system must also help locate the right people for a cooperation. Who is responsible for a specific type of task in an organisation? Who can be turned to when help is needed? A system must also be able to answer questions of how a specific organisational task is to be handled. Which procedures exist for a given task? Who is the first to be called in? Which document formats need to be used? These and many other items of information form part of the implicit knowledge which today cannot generally be accessed systematically and without which cooperation
17 would be cumbersome and laborious. The significance of organisational knowledge is particularly great if the participants are distributed over various sites and are unfamiliar with the circumstances and practices at the other sites. An "organisational knowledge base" (OKB) is intended to provide support for these problems. It contains information on the basic objects within an organisation such as the workforce, buildings, rooms, computer systems, communication equipment, printers etc. The OKB also provides information on organisational structures, e.g. departments, groups, committees, projects, roles etc. The relationships between these objects, as reflected in organisational norms such as procedures, document formats, access rights etc., are also contained in the OKB (cf. Fig. 4). The information in the OKB is in multimedia form, i.e. it can also contain audio and video. The services of the OKB are directly available to the end-user. A browsing system allows the user to search in the knowledge base. Innovative interfaces open up very promising options for navigation and orientation in this complex information base. However, the OKB also offers a programming interface to make its services available to other application programs. The OKB thus serves applications as an object server which is able to supply organisational knowledge. Existing cooperation systems are isolated and self-contained. Large quantities of data on users, their addresses, roles etc. therefore are administered separately for each system. The updating effort for such systems are correspondingly high and the acceptance they enjoy correspondingly low. What is needed instead is a base system offering the required object services for all applications. The OKB consistently extends the concepts which form the basis of the directory systems for supporting communications systems (now standardised in X.500) [Prinz, Penelli 1992]. Organisational Browser
Organisational knowledge
Programming interface
BASIC OBJECTS Persons, buildings, rooms, communication systems etc.
STRUCTURES
Departments, groups, committees, projects, roles etc.
Directory system
RULES Office procedures, style sheets, access rights etc.
Database system
Fig. 4: Users can access the data of the organisational knowledge base via an organisational browser and application programs via a program interface (API). The technical base is provided by directory systems as per standard X.500 and a distributed database system.
Of crucial importance for the efficiency of an OKB is that it can be administered on a distributed basis. This does not refer first and foremost to distributed storage (although this is also necessary) but rather to the distributed responsibility for establishing and maintaining the information base. Rapid ageing of data is preprogrammed where centralized solutions are adopted. Only decentralised responsibility for maintaining the information base will ensure that the database of an OKB is up-to-date.
18 An organisational knowledge base provides important improvements for the use and acceptance of cooperation support systems. It provides information on organisational objects, structures and rules, administers these on a distributed basis and makes them available to users and application systems. The OKB creates an information environment in which spatially distributed groups can better cooperate [Prinz 1993]. 3.5
Multimedia Information Service
The need for information in all work situations constantly becomes more urgent. On the other hand, knowledge on what information may be available and—more importantly—useful constantly decreases. As a consequence, large amounts of information have to be investigated, filtered and finally utilised before decisions can be made or tasks can be executed. Any individual easily becomes overburdened by this challenge. To provide each individual (semi-) automatically with the right information at any specific time, an information service has to be introduced into our electronic world [Putz, Neuhold 1991]. Based on descriptions of users, their tasks and responsibilities, the information service will track, select, and properly represent the "right" information at the right time to the user. To provide such a service, an integrated environment has to be developed that accepts multimedia information (i.e., information that includes texts, images, animation, speech, sound videos) from an open list of input sources (authors, studios, but also scanners, recorders, and even programmers). This information has to be processed from an editorial point of view to select and prepare it before it will be included into a general information pool. Depending on the known needs of the "information" users, appropriate information will be selected and offered in individualised form, thereby utilising the new capabilities of hypermedia technology and the new paradigms of visualisation. Information Sources
Editor's Workstation
External Information Services including Multimedia Mail
User Environment User Profile
Paper Documents
Technical and Organizational KnowledgeBases
Information Base
Information enhancement and aggregation; Definition of generic layouts
Information Selection and Presentation
Image/Video Archive
Audio Archive Fig. 5: Structure of a Multimedia Information Service
In acquiring and processing the incoming multimedia data, they must first be transformed to data system-neutral formats (e.g. SGML for texts and SGML extensions for multimedia information) using automatic structure and significance recognition
19 processes. An editorial team and its electronic assistant then (semi-) automatically enrich these data by classifications, indexing, and semantic labelling of links between the hypermedia components and by introducing links to background and archival information. The information prepared in this way will be included in an information pool, which forms the basis for the individualized presentations of information. The presentation mechanisms employed here can be based on proven structures of current-day media such as the multi-column, highly structured layouts of newspapers, the principles used in presenting pictorial material in advertisements, or the dynamic expressiveness of audio and video presentations. Incorporating interactive functionality also lends such presentations new dimensions [Hüser, Weber 1992]. Information enrichment also provides the basis for active support in accessing information services such as lexicons, encyclopaedias, archives, and information from technical and organisation knowledge bases (see also 3.4 and 3.6). Examples of how to provide part of the functionality of services described before have been developed at GMD in terms of the IEN [Hüser, Weber 1992] and is-News [Putz, Neuhold 1991]. The resulting information system should comprise the following components: - Knowledge-based tools for acquiring information from an open set of sources and for enriching information through system-neutral, generic labelling (HyTime) and automatic structuring for flexible re-utilisation. - A multimedia editorial workstation for knowledge-based and (semi) automatic processing and automatic networking of information including semantic consistency checks, like thesaurus-supported classifications based on computer-linguistic approaches. Furthermore, it includes the creation and simulation of generic layouts for the selected types of publications. - An adaptive user interface that responds to interest profiles and user work situations to allow the adaptation of the hyperdocument structures with regard to contents and presentation forms. - Automatic distribution services (e.g. multimedia mail services) and services for the viewing and utilisation of that information in cooperative work environments. 3.6. Information Repository The electronic information stores of the future will be truly large both in terms of the quantity of information they contain and with regard to the possible utilisation of this information. Information will be either stored in multimedia hyperdocument form or it can represent supportive information to help in accessing, manipulating, and sharing information in a multitude of organisational environments. Both aspects need to be modelled in new ways and stored in new types of database systems [Klas et al. 1990]. Only then will it be possible to handle the large quantities of data efficiently, consistently, and reliably. On the one hand, information must be available to other system components such as the group coordination systems so that, for example, when appointments are scheduled automatically the appropriate documents will also be made available. On the other hand, the information must be directly available to users for navigational and retrieval purposes. The following illustration shows the interrelationships between the various components which are of relevance for such an information repository.
20 Programming interface
User
MULTIMEDIA OBJECTS
RETRIEVAL Filtering Navigation Linkage
TRANSACTION ADMINISTRATION Concurrency Control Recovery
Network
Network Storage system 1
Storage system 2
Storage system 3
Fig. 6: Distributed Information Server as Base System
Information in a distributed government will originate at geographically distant locations. Distributed storage monitored by an heterogeneous database management system allows information to be accessed consistently from various remote locations. The actual storage locations will remain transparent. The time delays and version problems occurring with physical dispatch processes—including electronic mail—are eliminated by the database system transaction administration [Muth et al. 1992]. Here, too, new concepts are required which allow several users to cooperate instead of isolating them from each other as is currently the case. Only integrated data administration is able to automate and simplify these procedures. For example, using versioning and time point information, the information repository can submit the necessary documents to a group coordination system. The system will then submit the documents to the right persons for signature and will dispatch them to the addressees in the proper organisational manner. In the future, documents will not be restricted to text images and graphics but will also contain other media such as audio and moving pictures. Multimedia hyper-documents provide the basis for a "more assorted" communication. A feature which facilitates the work process particularly in the case of asynchronous cooperation. It must be possible that all media employed for such communication can be stored in multimedia databases. This demands new capabilities in data modelling. For example, it must be possible to present precise temporal relationships needed for the synchronisation of voice and video. Integration tools must be provided which allow the application developer or even the end user to refer to all these sources and to match them to individual needs. In this regard, both syntactical and semantic differences between existing data and the user's perspective of them must be overcome [Fankhauser, Neuhold 1992]. Object-oriented database systems, rule-based integration methodologies, as well as active database components provide one of a range of suitable platforms to this end. To make information stored in various documents easily accessible to users, a separate access component has to be provided, and new query languages have to be developed to specify the necessary document selections on the basis of their multimedia information content.
21 Examples of how to provide part of the functionality of services described before have been developed at GMD based on the object-oriented data base system VODAK [Neuhold, Turau 1992]. However, for the user today, the scarce resource when working with information systems is his own attentiveness and ability to concentrate. It is therefore not sufficient to simply make information retrievable in the technical sense. Instead users of large information repositories must be provided with tools which are capable of actually supplying them with this information on the basis of vaguely and incompletely—if not wrongly—expressed information needs. It is the task of the information repository to identify and offer the wanted information. To this end, particular importance has to be attached to new evaluation methods and to visualisation and navigation tools. New methods of information retrieval directly access relevant document passages based on semantic and pragmatic information. On the other hand, the user must also be able to work on the documents in cooperation with other users. Users must be able to filter information to suit their current requirements, to accentuate and annotate it on the basis of personal criteria, and to interlink it to other information. Here it must be possible to place individual information elements in context, to maintain these contexts as part of a personal or group-related information system and to store these as future points of reference. The database system must allow complex changes to be maintained or to be aborted. It must ensure reliability through the restoration of documents which may have been momentarily lost through a system error or breakdown. Frequently, changes will be defined by several persons jointly. Such joint changes require a consistent administration of the information stored in the information repository even in the case of concurrent, possibly contradictory, manipulations. New types of concurrency control procedures in such database management systems will monitor concurrent access of a working group whose members are located far away from each other. 3.7
Security Services
Systems supporting the actions of persons must exhibit a number of characteristics if they are to be acceptable: - The user must be able to perceive which effects his actions have in the system and on other users. - A system activity triggered by the user must either be executed accurately and completely or must be seen not to be executed at all. - A person affected by a system activity must be able to trace back which user triggered the effect and how. These characteristics are vital prerequisites for the justifiable and responsible use of support systems in business and administration. They place high demands on the technical design, implementation and administration procedures of the technical systems. In particular, they demand security procedures which protect the technical system from manipulation and unauthorised use and supply evidence of action sequences in the event of a conflict. Since information technology must be increasingly able to integrate several applications, to link more than a single institution or organisation and to handle continuous changes in the user community, classical system security procedures alone are no longer sufficient. Systems solely based on the use of passwords, the assignment
22 of security levels for objects and persons, and log files are inadequate in themselves in a multi-organisation environment. Procedures are needed which make the safeguarding of secrets, the verification of data and software integrity, and the identification and authorization of system users the duty of the person responsible for the local system. This person then bears the appropriate responsibility and burden of proof vis-à-vis his network partners and is also capable of bearing these. The most important components of such procedures include: - An authentic user identification which, under the user´s discretion, verifies either certain user characteristics only ("credentials") or his full identity (name, address etc.). - The unmanipulable self-check of the computers, operating systems and programs for authenticity. - The authentication of all information exiting the local and physically secure system environment. Technical solutions now exist for these components which work with pairs of cryptographic keys one of which is confidential and the other publicly known, and ensure that electronic „statements“ can be verified. The key research task consists of linking these procedures with the organisational knowledge base (cf. 3.4) and of integrating them into the various support systems so that it is possible automatically to conduct authorization checks on the "need to know" principle, to trace back transactions and to authenticate documents. The system SecuDE developed by GMD is an environment for the development of such security services [Schneider et al. 1993]. Since the corresponding system solutions exert a profound influence on the procedural structures of cooperation between persons and demand new institutions set in a position of trust, e.g. such institutions as key certification centres or automatic notaries, careful analysis of the effects of these technologies and their compatibility with our legal system is essential before systems for general use may be introduced. 3.8
Multimedia Teleservices
The functionality of the teleservices developed to date within the framework of international standardization embraces the transfer of data between computers (File Transfer: FTAM), the transmission of business-oriented data (Electronic Data Interchange: EDI) and the transfer of electronic mail between users having access to globally networked workstations (Message Handling System: MHS). These services relate primarily to communication relationships which for the most part require bilateral links. The development of document architectures which can be employed in different application sectors (business communication, medicine, publishing etc.) right up to multimedia data structures involving the information types text, graphics, voice/audio and still/moving images demand new communication services and architectures as well as functions for administering these distributed applications. In this context, the communication relationships are expanded from bilateral to multilateral links (group communication). This approach of distributed communication and administration of multimedia documents is dealt with in two spheres of action in the "Multimedia Teleservices" developments:
23 - Basic multimedia services offer basic functions for the cooperative design, transmission and storage of multimedia documents. - The management platform provides components and functions which are necessary for the provision of information, the administration of multimedia services and the communication of management information. Basic multimedia services In the working area of "basic multimedia services", a new multimedia mail service is specified on the basis of CCITT Recommendation X.400 and developed in prototype form. This service allows the exchange of multimedia documents containing text, graphics, audio and still/moving images. In this context, concepts developed in rudimentary form in the BERKOM reference model are translated with regard to a multimedia document architecture, application-oriented communication protocols and components of the application environment and are tested in the broadband internetworking platform [Ricke, Kanzow 1991]. This prototype system should incorporate existing X.400 message systems (preferably) without having to modify them and use standard user agents (UAs). Bottlenecks when dispatching very large messages, as can be expected with moving images and audio in particular but also with high-resolution still images, should be reduced by the facility of being able to dispatch references to multimedia information instead of the information itself. If the recipient wants the information to be presented, it must be possible to transmit on demand using communication relations other than store-and-forward. Where the recipient has insufficient storage capacity, a real-time transmission component with access to a global A/V store should be used to ensure appropriate presentation of moving images and audio. Key aspects of the work include the integration of different representation forms, the support of synchronous and asynchronous communication and the selection of components/services on the basis of quality requirements. The specification and implementation of a multimedia mail system in the described form - based on the X.400 standard, use of external references to multimedia information, information transmission other than store-and-forward within the framework of message systems thus constitute the first steps towards realising multimedia teleservices. A logical expansion of the multimedia teleservices in a following phase is the inclusion of realtime-oriented functions such as the joint viewing of multimedia documents at spatially distributed workstations, the joint drafting and editing of these documents and AV-supported conferences among several participants at their various workstations at different locations. The multimedia data structure, as already specified with the multimedia mail teleservice, also forms the basis for the joint editing and exchange of multi-media documents [Schürmann 1992]. Management platform To support distributed multimedia applications, administrators and users, a standard management system is needed which is able to coordinate and monitor the components of these applications and control their behaviour. This is necessary in an open service environment in order to be able to implement functions such as service and network configuration, accounting and billing, monitoring of security aspects, performance and errors, and appropriate analyses based on uniform concepts for the various applications. The prerequisite for the standard management of different applications is a management platform which allows the management functionality to be integrated easily into the applications being implemented [Dittrich 1992].
24 In addition to management of the distributed applications, multi-network management of the communication infrastructure is also required. Relevant management information for the various network types must be processed and made available externally so that e.g. problems occurring in a subnetwork can be reported and, where necessary, eliminated by means of a reconfiguration. Furthermore, the configuration of the entire network such as is required at a given time for a specific application must allow dynamic control by application-specific quality parameters. This occurs, for example, if moving-image information is additionally to be exchanged during a communication relationship. In the working area "management platform", a development environment will therefore be realized on the basis of the OSI Management Standards which supports developers in integrating management into the various communication and application units (managed objects). Furthermore, a standard management communication platform will be provided (CMIS/CMIP) so as to allow transparent access to remote managed objects in management applications. Integrated into this platform is a standardized directory service (X.500 directory system) which can be used to manage globally relevant management information. 3.9
Internetworking
Computer network technology is no longer in its infancy. The first computer networks were put into operation over 20 years ago. However, computer networks are currently undergoing monumental developments due to the advances being made in fiber-optic technology. Computer networks can be subdivided roughly on the basis of the geographical extent into local area networks (LAN, radius < 10 km), metropolitan area networks (MAN, < 100 km) and wide area networks (WAN, > 100 km). Local networks are generally used within the confines of an enterprise or governmental unit in order to interlink several computers (usually less than 50) in a relatively enclosed user group. Such LANs are standardized nowadays and provide transmission rates up to 16 Mbps and are available on the market. MANs form a new group in computer network technology and are used for connecting a large number of systems within a given region. Such networks have transmission capacities in excess of 100 Mbps and allow the direct connection of several hundred systems or form a "backbone" to which several LANs or other computers and/or servers are connected directly. Products have only become available in this sector very recently. Standards have played an important role here from the very outset: the IEEE 802.6 standard of a "Distributed Queue Dual Bus" MAN has now gained a secure foothold worldwide. WANs have so far been restricted to a maximum transmission rate of 64 kbps, their switching procedures being both line-switched in the case of ISDN and packetswitched as with the X.25 packet networks. They are offered by public networks and value-added service providers. The modest transmission rates in comparison to those of the LANs and MANs are inadequate for global application of multimedia teleservices. A solution here is coming up by the broadband ISDN which is currently being standardized and undergoing testing and which, with its asynchronous transmission mode, can provide transmission channels with variable transmission rates up to 155 Mbps. As this short outline shows, numerous possibilities already exist for interlinking different computers. In conjunction with the current introduction of fiber-optic technology in all three sectors, these possibilities will increase quantitatively and will also improve enormously from a quality aspect, i.e. in terms of both the capacity and
25 quality of transmission. However, this large number of options for constructing computer networks throws up a further problem which efforts in the field of internetworking are intended to resolve. The objective in this field is to interlink the various "communication islands", i.e. the various computer networks, currently existing alongside each other and thus to construct a powerful communication platform. For this purpose, work is being conducted on concepts and systems ("Internworking Units") which allow various networks and network types to be coupled in a largely uniform, flexible and modular manner. This work requires a thorough knowledge of the current communication standards, current developments in the various network technologies and the translation of this knowledge into interworking architectures and real systems. A communication platform will be built in the internetworking environment which consists of coupled networks of various speeds ranges (2 Mbps, 10 Mbps, 34 Mbps, 155 Mbps) and various transmission technologies (LAN, MAN/DQDB, B-ISDN-ATM) and which offers applications a flexible transport service tailored to their quality requirements. By providing this transport service available throughout the entire coupled system, the teleservices which are to be developed become independent of the specific network technology the terminal is connected to. For the construction of such a communication platform, modular communication units will be developed which can be used as both a terminal access and as an internetworking unit [Luckenbach 1991]. 4.
The POLIKOM Research Programme
After in June 1992 the German Parliament had officially announced that its relocation to Berlin would require highly sophisticated information technology to be employed the Federal Ministry of the Interior launched a research study in order to evaluate the investments necessary to establish an information link between Bonn and Berlin (IVBB). The study is currently done by a consortium consisting of the German National Research Center for Computer Science (GMD) and two consulting firms (DETECON and Kienbaum). It is to investigate the organisational effects of distributing ministries between Bonn and Berlin as well as on a requirements analysis of the information and communication technology to be acquired. In parallel the Federal Ministry of Research and Technology has instructed GMD to draft a research programme named POLIKOM (POLis + KOMmunikation). It is dedicated to two complementary goals. In the short range a first implementation of the information link is to be accomplished. This first version is to interconnect the dislocated offices at least on a level that is accomplished in today's inhouse systems - enriched by desk top multimedia and tele-presence functionality. It will be based on a set of carefully selected existing products as well as on newly developed products. The long range research is directed towards more ambitious goals. They are inspired by the vision of a virtual organisation that allows people to cooperate more independently from temporal and spatial constraints and at the same time provides more effective means of coordination. The results are not only intended to be incorporated in future versions of the IVBB. Instead the plans are to foster the development of a range of more generic concepts and products within the domain of collaborative work in dislocated offices. POLIKOM is intended to establish a joint effort of leading companies, research institutes and universities - coordinated by GMD. It is planned to provide the programme with a budget of DM 120 mill. for a period of 6 years. The programme's conceptual foundation, including a detailed description of research topics and
26 strategies, has been outlined in a report prepared at GMD. The report stresses the importance of new technology still to be developed. At the same time it stresses the task to provide a concrete solution to the challenges caused by the relocation. Therefore the design of products has to be committed to usability and organisational efficiency. In order to accomplish this goal it is necessary that the prospective users will participate in system design in time. The report suggests a variety of measures to ensure user involvement. They include the establishment of boards joint by representatives of users, researchers, and vendors. Early prototypes as well as fully equipped model offices are suggested to encourage the users to express their preferences and concerns. In order to allow the technology's potential to be fully exploited it is intended to model and simulate organisational alternatives as well as strategies of system introduction (rather evolutionary than revolutionary). In order to fulfil the technical aspects of usability it is strongly recommended to employ standards wherever possible. The report outlines the design of the prospective distributed information system by specifying a set of building blocks. They include - among others - sophisticated teleconferencing, tools for co-authoring of documents, an organisational knowledge base, work flow and task management, user interfaces designed for cooperative work, shared multi-media archives, and reliable security mechanisms (similar to the areas of research described in detail above). The main technological challenge that POLIKOM faces however is to ensure integration. In order to provide a framework for conceptual integration it is suggested to develop an object-oriented domain model of collaborative work in the office. It is intended to set up a close cooperation between POLIKOM and BERKOM, another research project in Germany, initiated by the German Telecom, focusing on the development of future broadband tele-communication services. 5.
Conclusions
The German Parliament decided in June 1991 to relocate the seat of government and parliament from Bonn to Berlin but to leave around half of the governmental agencies in Bonn. Germany will be the first country in the world with a government so conspicuously separated in geographic terms. This plan of a distributed administration can only succeed if modern information and communication technology is used intensively. The objective of the technical support is that ministries and Parliament should be able to work (almost) as if they were at the same location - despite the spatial separation. Geographically distributed work requires support in three areas - communication, cooperation and coordination. Supporting the distributed work between Bonn and Berlin thus demands integrated development of different technology families. In this paper we discuss the technical trends in this fields and show what the needs for future developments are. The technical perspectives will give rise to a whole array of new application systems. Using three scenarios of distributed governmental work, we illustrate how communication, cooperation and coordination can be facilitated by such new systems. We discuss some of these systems in detail, e.g. cooperative hypermedia systems, coordination support systems, shared information services, problems of internetworking and security, and new man-machine interfaces for cooperative working. The technology itself is only one of several influencing factors. Incorporating the technology into an organisation and matching the workflows to the new capabilities are
27 of key importance. Only if technological development and organisational development are equally innovative will it be possible to resolve the problems for cooperation brought about by spatial separation. The challenge of a distributed government between Bonn and Berlin requires an innovation process. The technologies currently available already provide a wealth of support options. But the challenging goal of achieving a quality of cooperation virtually equivalent to having everyone at the same location cannot be attained with the technology currently available. It is therefore necessary to organise an innovation process which makes the required new technologies available in time. This is the goal of the research program POLIKOM which is currently planned by the German government. Acknowledgements We would like to thank Knut Bahr, Ulrich Frank, Thomas Kreifelts, Andreas Lemke, Peter Muth and Wolfgang Putz, who provided contributions to this paper. We are grateful also to Thomas Christaller, Erich Neuhold, Radu Popescu-Zeletin, Eckhard Raubold and Dennis Tsichritzis, who were members of a planning committee for the POLIKOM program and contributed significantly to the ideas and concepts in this paper. References Baecker, R. M., eds. 1993. Readings in Groupware and Computer-Supported Cooperative Work. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, San Mateo, CA. BT, 1992. Zweiter Zwischenbericht der Konzeptkommission des Ältestenrats vom 17. Juni 1992. Bundestagsdrucksache12/2850. Unpublished Report, Deutscher Bundestag, Bonn. Conklin, J., 1987. Hypertext: An introduction and survey. IEEE Computer, vol. 20: 1741. Dittrich, A., 1992. The BERKOM Management Platform. In: Proceedings of the Autumn 1992 Open Forum Technical Conference (Utrecht, 1992). Ellis, C. A. and Gibbs, S. J. and Rein, G. L., 1991. Groupware: some issues and experiences. Communications of the ACM 34: 38-58. Fankhauser, P. and Neuhold, E., 1992. Knowledge Based Integration of Heterogeneous Databases. In: Proceedings of IFIP Conference DS-5 Semantics of Interoperable Database Systems (Lorne, Victoria, Australia 1992) Gibbs, S. and Stuart, A. V., eds. 1990. Multi-user Interfaces and Applications. North Holland, Amsterdam. Greenberg, S., eds. 1991. Computer Supported Cooperative Work and Groupware. Academic Press, London. Greif, I., eds. 1988. Computer Supported Cooperative Work. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, San Mateo, CA. Grudin, J., 1988. Why CSCW applications fail: Problems in the design and evaluation of organizational interfaces. In: Proceedings of the Conference on Computer-Supported
28 Cooperative Work (CSCW´88) (Portland, Oregon, 1988), ACM Press, New York: 8593. Haake, A., 1992. CoVer: A contextual version server for hypertext applications. In: Proceedings of the Fourth International ACM Conference on Hypertext (ECHT '92), (Milan, Italy,1992.) ACM Press, New York: 43-62. Haake, J. and Wilson, B., 1992. Supporting Collaborative Writing of Hyperdocuments in SEPIA. In: Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW'92) (Toronto 1992). ACM Press, New York: 138-146. Hoschka, P., 1991. Assisting-Computer - A New Generation of Support Systems. In: W. Brauer and D. Hernandez, eds. Verteilte Künstliche Intelligenz und Kooperatives Arbeiten. Proc. 4. Int. GI-Kongreß Wissensbasierte Systeme. Springer, Berlin: 219230. Hüser, C. and Weber, A., 1992. The individualized electronic newspaper: An application challenging hypertext technology. In: R. Cordes and N. Streitz, eds. Hypertext und Hypermedia 1992. Springer, Heidelberg: 62-74. Johansen, R., 1988. Groupware: Computer Support for Business Teams. The Free Press, New York, London Klas, W., Neuhold, E., and Schrefl, M., 1990. Using an Object-Oriented Approach to Model Multimedia Data, Computer Communications, Special Issue on Multimedia Systems. Vol. 13: 204-216. Kreifelts, T., 1991. From office procedures to customizable activities. In: W. Brauer and D. Hernandez, eds. Verteilte Künstliche Intelligenz und Kooperatives Arbeiten. Springer, Berlin: 148-159. Kreifelts, T. and Hinrichs, E. and Woetzel, G., 1993. Sharing To-Do Lists with a Distributed Task Manager. Accepted for Publication in: Proceedings of the Third European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (ECSCW´93) (Milano, 1993). Kyng, M. and Greenbaum, J., eds. 1991. Design at Work: Cooperative design of computer systems. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Hillsdale, NJ. Luckenbach, T., 1991. BERGATE-Interconnection of MAP/TOP Networks via Broadband ISDN. Journal of Internetworking: Research and Experience 2. Muth, P., Rakow, T., Klas, W., and Neuhold, E., 1992. A Transaction Model for an Open Publication Environment. In: Ahmed K. Elmagarmid, eds. Database Transaction Models for Advanced Applications. Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, San Mateo, Ca.: 159-218. Neuhold, E. and Turau, V., 1992. Database Research at IPSI, SIGMOD RECORD Vol. 21: 133-138. Pankoke-Babatz, U., eds. 1989. Computer-Based Group Communication - The AMIGO Activity Model. Ellis Horwood, Chichester. Prinz, W. and Pennelli, P., 1992. Relevance of the X.500 Directory to CSCW Applications. In: D. Marca and G. Bock, eds. Groupware - Software for Computer Supported Cooperative Work. IEEE Computer Society Press, Los Alamitos: 209-225. Prinz, W., 1993. TOSCA: Providing organizational information to CSCW applications. Accepted for Publication in: Proceedings of the Third European Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work (ECSCW´93) (Milano, 1993).
29 Putz, W. and Neuhold, E., 1991. is-News: A Multimedia Information System. Data Engineering, Vol.14 : 16-25. Ricke, H. and Kanzow, J., eds. 1991. BERKOM Breitbandkommunikation im Glasfasernetz. R.v.Decker´s Verlag, Heidelberg. Schneider, W. and Grimm, R. and Luehe, J. and Nausester, R. D., 1993. Security Development Environment (SecuDE) Vol.1: Principles of Security Operations, Vers.4.0. Vol.2: Security Commands, Functions and Interfaces, Vers. 4.0.1. Unpublished Report, GMD, Darmstadt, Sankt Augustin. Schürman, G., 1992. The Multimedia Mail Service. Unpublished Technical Report, GMD-FOKUS, Berlin. Sproull, L. and Kiesler, S., 1991. Connections: New ways of working in the networked organization. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA Streitz, N., Hannemann, J., and Thüring, M., 1989. From Ideas and Arguments to Hyperdocuments: Travelling through Activity Spaces. In: Proceedings of the Second ACM Conference on Hypertext (Hypertext '89) (Pittsburgh, USA 1989). ACM Press, New York: 343-364 Streitz, N., Haake, J. , Hannemann, J., Lemke, A., Schuler, W., Schütt, H., and Thüring, M., 1992. SEPIA: A Cooperative Hypermedia Environment. In: Proceedings of the Fourth International ACM Conference on Hypertext (ECHT '92), (Milan, Italy,1992.) ACM Press, New York: 11-22. Thuering, M., Haake, J., and Hannemann, J, 1991. What's ELIZA doing in the Chinese Room - Incoherent Hyperdocuments and how to Avoid them. In: Proceedings of the Third International ACM Conference on Hypertext (Hypertext '91) (San Antonio, USA 1991). ACM Press, New York:161-177.
