Exploiting User and Process Context for Knowledge Management Systems Ludger van Elst, Andreas Abecker, and Heiko Maus German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), University Bldg. 57, Erwin-Schroedinger-Str., D-67608 Kaiserslautern {elst,aabecker,maus}@dfki.uni-kl.de Workshop on User Modeling for Context-Aware Applications at the 8th Int. Conf. on User Modeling, July 13-16, 2001, Sonthofen, Germany 1 Introduction In application areas like personal information agents and intelligent tutoring sys- tems, user models typically maintain sophisticated representations of personal interest profiles and knowledge / skill levels. These representations can be uti- lized for effective information retrieval and filtering as well as for personalized information presentation. Information delivery services within organizational memories mainly address the same goals, but prevalently derive information needs from the concrete business task at hand (e.g., see [2] ). To this end, business process models are extended by task and role specific information needs. Usually, it is not taken into account which employee actually deals with a given task. Apparently, intelligent infor- mation services in a business environment should combine both, the personal and the business process perspective. In this paper, we present the FRODO architecture for business process oriented Knowledge Management which amalgamates models of tasks, roles and users into a specific context for information supply. Thus, a better integration of indi- vidual and organizational concerns in the Organizational Memory (OM) can be achieved. 2 Process and User Models for Enhanced Information Support The business process orientation in Organizational Memories allows active ser- vices as well as a powerful assessment of information relevance with respect to the actual work context. We will combine this with the User Modeling approach with its strict orientation towards personal needs and requirements. So we can say the context of a knowledge worker’s information needs is determined by three main factors: 1) the individual person, 2) his/her position in the organizational structure, 3) the task at hand. Taking into account all these dimensions promises better results than con- centrating on any subset. For example, different persons may have varying in- formation needs with respect to the same tasks, depending on their personal skills and knowledge. Surely, knowledge can vary individually within a group of people that can perform the same of tasks. On the other hand a large portion of