Trust Online for Information Sharing
Cat Kutay
Computer Science and Engineering, The University fo New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
Keywords: Indigenous Knowledge, Community Narrative, Information Networks.
Abstract: The use of the Internet for information sharing between government departments and between government
and community organisations is growing. However the issue of trust needs further study as this
communication could benefit from Web 2.0 technologies. This project was initiated by a network of
Indigenous people in government and community who wished to make more efficient use of information
sharing online, without people external to the culture and aspirations being able to influence the content, or
comment on the work being shared. The culture has a strong protocol for sharing information or knowledge,
and this is rarely valued outside this community. Furthermore, the experience as a minority culture within a
colonised society has increased the caution in public display of people’s interests or concerns.
1 INTRODUCTION
Trust is not just about willingness to share but also
about the value of what we share. For Aboriginal
people in NSW the decision about what is important
information is different to those in the mainstream
culture. While Federal Government has been
concerned with privacy issues around sharing of
information under Web 2.0, there needs to be more
consideration of the type of information different
cultures share, and to support that. This includes the
need to inhibit the sharing of information that is not
acceptable to minority cultures, such as respecting
periods of mourning.
The project for the development of suitable web
services for Aboriginal information and knowledge
sharing in NSW was developed around the following
community needs:
1. Community projects often receive Government
funding and wish to share the success, and the
reason for their success, with others who run similar
projects. Also Indigenous government workers need
to be able to analysis these projects to improve the
support they give. This requires the development of
repositories for knowledge access and extraction.
2. Organisational learning involves the retention
and linking of tacit knowledge. The use of audio
recordings to retain and share knowledge is
preferred by many indigenous groups and provides a
more accessible form of recording tacit knowledge.
3. University involvement in the project originated
with a community request to support knowledge
sharing protocols with software and to research how
these traditional communication methods may
provide new perspectives on Internet sharing.
4. Government and community workers wish to
share information on upcoming events, jobs, projects
and funding options. This required a communication
interface and analysis of information presentation
for online sharing
We describe briefly the first three projects to provide
the context to the research, but the main focus is the
fourth project dealing with information sharing.
2 COMMUNITY PROJECTS
In previous work we developed a conceptualisation
of search engines and artefact annotation in an
online community used for Indigenous knowledge
sharing (Kutay, 2011). We extended the work of
Pirolli and Card (1997) focusing on enhancing the
information retrieved, rather than seeing the search
result as the final ‘feed’ of the scavenger. We based
the design on a traditional form of knowledge
interchange in community learning, the corroboree,
or story telling through dance, performance and
music.
The corroboree format is hard to envisage online,
as in real life the process requires many hours of
216
Kutay C..
Trust Online for Information Sharing.
DOI: 10.5220/0004162902160222
In Proceedings of the International Conference on Knowledge Management and Information Sharing (KMIS-2012), pages 216-222
ISBN: 978-989-8565-31-0
Copyright
c
2012 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)
preparation by the elders gathered to organise the
ceremony. We considered how community meetings
prior to the ceremony organise the ‘performance’
that provides the knowledge sharing. During the
preparation they discuss their desires: the context of
the corroboree, what is significant in the present
situation for the people, which is related to user’s
desires within the environment. They evaluate the
community’s goals and beliefs: this involves
considering the themes that need to be covered for
learning about the present context, which links to the
audience’s goals. They interpret and interact with
this environment: this develops the cohesion of the
narrative, what will be presented for the social and
creative linkage of information. Thus they decide
what will be performed.
Once this corroboree has started individuals
contribute stories or songs relating to how their own
knowledge fits into the previous narrative and so
select the stories that are shared.
2.1 Taking the Concept Online
In the online environment there are no ‘elders’ or
over-arching knowledge holders to link the results of
an online search into coherent knowledge. In present
search engines the system provides isolated packets
from which the user has to draw sense. The project
for coherency of isolated knowledge packets online
used tools for providing (cf. Rogers and Scaife
2007):
Knowledge representations within the real world,
providing a real performance;
Re-representation of information in various
format such as images, or use of audio and text
annotation;
Thematic support for searching through domain,
temporal and spatial sorting; and
Graphical context for the user’s search activity.
The design concepts that we developed from these
approaches were divided into the three main
activities on the portal. Firstly the user searches for
relevant material. Then within the results of that
search they want to explore the search results,
including any accessible annotations attached to
these artefacts. Finally they may want to add their
own annotations and notes for future searchers.
The issues that arose in the design of Indigenous
sites were the need to promote (Kutay, 2011):
Trust – knowledge can be misused or
misinterpreted if used out of context,
Access – ability to receive feeds particularly
suitable for mobile access is vital for many users,
Language – the language used on sites must be
simple written English or audio,
Immersion – a ‘modern’ look to the site with
links to social networks, ease of navigation and
practical presentation of the themes
Relevance – the interface, choice of content
matter, and the way information could be handled on
the site had to be relevant to the culture of the users.
3 ORGANISATIONS
In Australian and North American Aboriginal
groups the oral tradition is a skill learnt and passed
on as a discipline, involving repetition, praise and
critique (Rosenzweig and Thielen, 1998) to train the
young in this method of knowledge retention and
information sharing. Yet the importance of
Aboriginal oral memories in terms of retaining a true
history of Aboriginal collective identity and
knowledge is generally denigrated in the non-
Aboriginal view, as oral records are perceived as
coloured by personal experience (Mellor, 2001), and
in constant flux.
The online sharing and comparing of stories to
provide both a commonly agreed, stable and
accessible record of knowledge is an important
aspect of Indigenous culture online. The difference
between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and
non-Aboriginal knowledge is summarised in Byrne
at al. (2008) and Christie (1994) and these
differences provide a model for general audio
sharing online as described in (Kutay & Ho, 2009).
The socialisation of learning to include Web 2.0
resources enables users to maintain update
information online. The learning is therefore focused
around collaboration in learning, as well as learning
knowledge developed collaboratively. In the
previous work we used a learning model for
dynamic creation of organisational knowledge and
compare this to the SECI model (Nonaka, 1994), in
particular looking at transforming tacit to explicit
knowledge. The design also provides a mapping
between technology and learning processes.
We extended the concepts developed in the
Indigenous mode of knowledge sharing to a model
that supports mainstream organisational learning.
For instance our approach is mirrored in research
into organisational learning where annotation tools
are enhanced using a user-centric approach that
includes the knowledge status of the annotator
(Ballim et al., 2004).
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217
4 PROTOCOLS
Aboriginal Australian story telling is a communal
form of oral history designed for the inheritance
structure of a society with minimal hierarchical. The
narrative that Aboriginal people maintained uses
group story telling process to select the stories that
are valuable and worth repeating, those that have
meaning for them. This is comparable to the social
constructivist learning process described by Berger
and Luckmann (1996).
The research into the usability of existing web
services and redesigning these for Indigenous
communities has been hampered by the irrelevance
of much online material, computer illiteracy and
lack of trust in the medium (Dyson and Leggett
2006); (Kutay, 2010). People are wary that their
knowledge will be used inappropriately, out of
context or separated from the community narrative
(Nakata and Langton, 2005); (Kutay, 2011). This is
compounded by what is seen as insufficient
government protection and lack of community
control (Janke, 1999). For indigenous people to
utilise the internet, issues of relevancy and usability
must be considered while developing trust in terms
of security of access and ensuring the material
remains in the context selected for it, and retaining
the scope and flexibility of cloud computing where
possible.
Research at The University of New South Wales
is developing web services to provide:
Access control system that links to ownership of
artefacts and mourning protocols
XrML description to manage access control of
files based on kinship
Collaborative annotation tool that incorporates
access protocol and reuse for learning
The data access control is to enforce protocol
through reference to a distributed database on
genealogy and kinship responsibilities. This requires
secure tools to write new or changed protocol
structures for mainstream multimedia sharing sites.
In general the use of protocols or policies to
enhance the flexibility of online learning is worth
investigation, as is the specific features that apply to
Aboriginal knowledge sharing (Kutay, 2009). The
provision of the web services focuses on options to
embed access protocols in distributed web services
(Wang et al., 2009) and autonomous information
sharing (Skogsrud et al., 2009). Also there is a need
to extend trust to cloud service provision with
distributed authorization control (Varandharanjan,
2005) to securely display culturally restricted
material on public sharing web sites.
5 EXEMPLAR
The new technology of our age is the sharing of
information electronically across the globe. It is
important that Aboriginal people involved in this
development. Also we should note that recent
learning theories stress that learning does not
necessarily translate solely into knowledge gains:
rather it can be measured in terms of increased
participation and interaction of individual with their
group or community in knowledge development. It
is the support and analysis of online interaction and
sharing of information that we use here as an
example of Indigenous knowledge sharing.
When government workers and community
organisations met to discuss the options for
information sharing online, the School of Computer
Science and Engineering (UNSW) offered support.
We worked together to find web services with
suitable social support that will provide an
environment in which the Aboriginal people can,
with confidence and ease, share their resources.
A combined meeting set up the requirements for
the web site, however the network is divided into a
growing number of separate regions around Sydney,
each servicing the Aboriginal community in their
region, and each with different information to share.
The site that was developed has been running for
over 4 years and we felt it was time to report on
what was, and was not, a success in this work.
5.1 Requirements Gathering
The Information site was set up as a content
management system framework and a wrapper to
various services. While other systems have been
developed focusing on annotation and sharing
(Saraiva and da Silva, 2009); (Chakravarthy et al.,
2006); (Schroeter et al., 2003) this work extends to
the management of information in many forms
(email, calendar events, pamphlets and photos) and
linking into more social media. (cf. Lavoué, 2011).
While previous work has suggested audio-visual
support useful, the people using the system did not
have access to audio or video equipment such as
web-cam and often did not have speakers on their
work computers.
While providing common services to all sub-
regions, there was a need to provide customisation
and extend components according to local needs.
The generic components of the system requested by
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the different network meetings included separate
website access for each network region in Sydney
to:
Regional maps showing services in area
Directory of services and service types in area to
locate on map
Online email service to reduce download and
repeated forwarding of emails
Moderated email system that allow emails to be
moved across various topics and regions
Daily digest mail available to subscribed emails
Website email form as well as standard email
access to mail service
Document storage to link as attachment to emails
Calendar of events linked to email notification to
regional coordinators
Support for coordinators and representatives in
the use of the site.
5.2 Architecture
The architecture is designed around the original
Sydney regional website with a configuration file
that was altered for each region. All features were
set up on the main regional website and then each
region could access their local component. This was
so that organisations that spanned many regions can
have access from one interface, while local users
could filter out other regions.
Trust
For Aboriginal users the issue of trust online has
revolved around (Kutay, 2011):
Misuse of information generated by Aboriginal
people, by non-Aboriginal people
Being identified as Aboriginal and hence being
abused
Information that should be private at certain
times (eg mourning) being shared publically
Aboriginal people want their services controlled
by Aboriginal people to ensure such protocols will
be followed
Information that ‘belongs’ to one person being
shared by another as an authority
It is perhaps the last point that has little analogy in
mainstream information sharing, however we will
briefly explain the others first.
The information on the site cannot be easily
linked through other services, so users feel this
remains in the context they intended for it, for
example the calendar events (see Access below). We
have used moderation to reduce the abuse of the site,
but still require users to add contact details, such as
email, for further information. This also provides the
users with acknowledgement of the ownership of
information.
The site has remained relatively free of spam and
abuse. Probably due to the small network actually
interested in the service and the open nature of the
site, there has been no attempt to hack or access the
site. This has increased the trust in the site, and the
interest in using the web for more services. Also
having control of the site content, and being able to
enforce protocols such as respect for ownership of
information, has empowered those coordinators who
have been involved and they are proud of the service
they provide.
The ownership of knowledge also provides a
way of determining the authority of the material. As
in the case of language, people will know who
submitted the information and will value it in that
light. While the coordinators have prio respect in the
community, they have become an authority through
their position in the online community. However,
while coordinators regularly change when a new
person moves into a more central node role in the
network, those no longer in that role would not
consider interfering or taking control as it is not their
responsibility anymore.
Access
The site provides some feeds but the calendar is not
compatible with other technologies to achieve this.
Cloud services such as Google calendar now exist,
but do not offer the privacy and the ability to tailor
the interface and the functionality to the network’s
requirements. Our research looks at new formats of
access control to cloud services and this is a case in
point.
The region selected by a user limits the events
shown, while events can be added to all regions,
hence the user as well as the original contributors
filter information.
Language
The language of the site is in Aboriginal English.
Contributions by those from various sections of
Australian culture are very different in form. It has
been suggested by some coordinators that the
language (as much as the author) provides a filter for
how much credence or relevance to accredit an
information piece. According to some it is not that
the language of such contributions is less familiar; it
is just that the language is used to discuss less
relevant material.
Immersion
The site has failed to keep up its interface to date,
due to lack of development funding. We are now
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219
seeking resources and support to upgrade to a new
look and feel that has a more ‘modern’ appeal. The
initial site was very basic template due to costs, but
this can be made to look more ‘smooth and elegant’
with minimal work. Also the lack of the Aboriginal
colours (red, black and yellow) on the site, a
decision of the original coordinators, is now
considered to have adversely affected access.
Otherwise the gradual construction of the site
through addition of new features every year or so
has keep the interface simple, and the basic CMS
construction has simplified navigation.
Relevance
The coordinators were very wary at first of adding
too much to the web site, as it would lose its focus
and its usefulness. They wanted the users to become
more familiar with the service before they expanded
it, and the have a feeling of control and ownership as
it grew.
The material is also moderated for relevance to
the site. It does not deal with political events or
specific immediate family events and issues, only
information that is relevant to the community.
Figure 1: Interface components.
5.3 Organisation
At present the site forms a fairly diverse collection
of information, as the network is very broad in
focus. There is little work we can do to tie the
various strands together in a more coherent form of
information sharing. However we can allow viewing
one piece of information through different interfaces
or formats.
Interoperability
Various services have multiple interfaces, or are
accessed by many services, so the interoperability of
the components for the site was always an issue.
Also the site was reliant on the contributions of the
novice public while completely moderated. Also the
separate sites are moderated by separate
coordinators, so overarching policy has to be
developed as issues arise.
Documents: The document repository needs to
support the storage of email attachments, details on
events and material shared by the network members.
At present the attachments have to be manually
stripped from emails and saved, but we are
researching how this step can be automated.
Events: The events are placed on a region’s
calendar, and can be also included in the regional
calendar. A publically added event will trigger an
email to the coordinator. Documents can be
uploaded to provide more information on events.
Emails: The emails are stored in a private
mailbox online. Coordinators can select to move
them to a public mailbox or delete them. Also a
daily digest is generated and emailed out on a
mailman list.
Forms: The site provides forms to guide users to
supply all the required information in an email to the
jobs vacant list. The lack of subjects on all emails
sent to the coordinators remains an issue.
Functionality
The users are generally novice, but also they
consider they are doing this information sharing as a
part of their work, while the government or
community sector that employs them does not
usually recognise this. Hence their time available to
upload or moderate material is limited. The usability
of the site had to be well developed as each new
service was added to reduce the load the extra
information source could cause.
For instance if an event is added, any pamphlet
relating to that event has to be linkable to the
calendar event. Also the service information in the
directory includes location data (which can be
entered through a Google map pin) to link to the
front map.
5.4 Protocols
The main protocols are developed in the face-to-face
meetings of the network, then enacted online
through the coordinators’ moderation and the users
choice of topics for submission. The coordinators
provide the elders, those most experience with web
communication or the most central in the local
network structure, and hence those most aware of
the local issues and interests. They set up the topics
relevant to their region.
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We have not developed a blog or forum on these
sites. This level of interchanges is not considered
relevant as the site is purely for information sharing,
not for discussion and debate. This enables the site
to cater to a broader range of people, without
alienating any view.
All information is already public before it goes
on the site. It is not a site to provide private
information to the public arena. It is information that
is commonly held in one part of the community, and
gives them an opportunity to share it with others in
the community. This reduces the need to attribute
and protect material, and allows the users to become
more familiar with the tools in what is a familiar
communication format.
5.5 Issues
The main concern with the site was initially
developing trust of the service. The users were not
familiar with the Internet, and not aware of the
advances in web services over the last ten years in
the form of Web 2.0 that provided them an informal
but secure means of contributing to online
information. Learning this required being involved
with these Internet services.
The second issue was the interface. While the
community and government workers expressed
concern with the ‘usability’ of the site, the main
factor seemed to be the look of the site, if it was
modern in format. At the same time the issue of
usability related to general computer literacy in the
community, which is low, as well as the restrictions
on computer access at work in many government
organisations. For instance, we had to get permission
to access an online email service, and most workers
could not use Facebook or other social media that
would have improved interaction on the site.
As the site progressed the concern was mainly
with the interoperability of the site. Especially the
documents section played many roles, as repository
for email attachments, brochures for calendar events,
and photo sharing for Joint Network events.
This problem will only increase as we now move
to provide access for the users through social media.
In eLearning, it is acknowledged that social
interaction is a motivational form of knowledge
sharing (Kay et al., 2007). In sharing community
information and encouraging engagement in this
sharing there is a need to link to social media, as this
is the area which Aboriginal people can practise
more familiar and informal forms of information
sharing (Smith et al., 2000). The need to integrate
social networks with serious information sharing
systems requires ontological and web services
support (see Deparis et al., 2011), and to provide an
area the users trust within these.
5.6 Feedback
The main response to the web site is the great
reduction in emails. Given that the community is
close knit, there is a tendency for people to forward
emails to their lists, often including the sender. The
coordinators are usually a central node in the local
networks and so repeatedly received their emails.
The other area that is highly popular is the
publically editable calendar for social events such as
the annual Aboriginal week of celebrations.
However it would be good to have this linked into
other calendar services, such as computer based
services. The existence of different calendar services
is clearly an issue, but their compatibility is
increasing and the next upgrade will be to focus on
providing easier options to upload and download
events.
Also importantly the site provides one of the
main services outside Facebook that is regularly
used by Indigenous people in Sydney. It provides an
in depth and versatile form of information sharing.
6 CONCLUSIONS
The network service is not a particularly innovative
system, but the collaborative effort involved in its
design and the ongoing link with the community
through its development provides an interesting
view into information sharing in the Aboriginal
community. The joint network meeting regularly
provide feedback on the site and continually
suggests upgrades. We are indebted to these
coordinators for their ongoing commitment to
making the site an area they feel comfortable sharing
information with their peers. We also acknowledge
that their feedback has provided the source material
for our analysis of how and why the site has
developed in the format it did.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author would like to acknowledge three
members of the Sydney Koori Interagency who
instigated this project and who donated much of
their time in the design and training for this system:
Lisa Murphy, Robert Leslie and Cassie Jackson.
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