Close
  • Latest News
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Networking
  • Cybersecurity
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Storage
  • Sponsored
  • Mobile
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
Read Down
Sign in
Close
Welcome!Log into your account
Forgot your password?
Read Down
Password recovery
Recover your password
Close
Search
Logo
Logo
  • Latest News
  • Artificial Intelligence
  • Big Data and Analytics
  • Cloud
  • Networking
  • Cybersecurity
  • Applications
  • IT Management
  • Storage
  • Sponsored
  • Mobile
  • Small Business
  • Development
  • Database
  • Servers
  • Android
  • Apple
  • Innovation
  • Blogs
  • PC Hardware
  • Reviews
  • Search Engines
  • Virtualization
More
    Home Applications
    • Applications
    • Cloud
    • Database
    • Storage

    Teragram Software Sorts World Bank Global Archive

    By
    Anne Chen
    -
    August 15, 2005
    Share
    Facebook
    Twitter
    Linkedin

      The World Bank, a $20 billion financial arm of the United Nations, employs categorization technology to help it meet its goals of funding education and increasing the standard of living in 184 developing countries.

      “With 60 years worth of historical and current documents, we have a very complex and rich information environment,” said Denise Bedford, a senior information officer at the World Bank, based in Washington.

      “We do development work around the world, which means that information is being created and captured in many locations and in many languages. This can be a complex environment in which to manage information.”

      /zimages/4/28571.gifClick here to read reviews of categorization software.

      To better organize, store and process its voluminous archives, the bank relies on Teragram Corp.s TK240 categorization software, paired with a smart strategy for collecting metadata. The combination has dramatically improved the flow of information. Before using categorization technologies, World Bank employees processed three electronic documents per hour; today, they have the ability to process as many as 50,000 electronic documents per hour.

      The World Bank collects data for more than 30 areas—such as education, water supply and sanitation, and agriculture—for its development efforts and general tracking of human conditions worldwide. Information collected ranges from critical project and loan data to e-mail, financial studies and historical research articles.

      To simplify its complex workflow, the World Bank 10 years ago implemented an intranet that enabled workers to categorize their resources. The plan called for staff to fill out a template to provide metadata that the bank could use to categorize information.

      However, the result was a mass of unorganized, unsearchable metadata, Bedford said. “We created huge translation problems … because we created metadata in English for French, Spanish and Portuguese documents, which means search in those languages [was] impossible,” she said.

      In 2002, the World Bank authorized Bedford to begin an RFP (request for proposal) process for an off-the-shelf solution that not only captured useful metadata but also classified and summarized documents. The bank selected Teragrams TK240 categorization solution, citing the simplicity of its interface and its ability to perform contextual searches in multiple languages.

      The World Banks institutional profile includes descriptions of metadata the organization wants to capture, as well as indicators such as topic, document keywords, loan numbers and more.

      World Bank employees send documents to a homegrown document management system that uses Oracle Corp.s InterMedia database feature, which stores and manages multimedia data. The TK240 software then reads the document, applying language identification to it and assigning metadata tags based on predefined indicators, searching for more than 180,000 keywords in 1,000 categories.

      The TK240 summarization engine searches the document for conceptual identifiers before assembling an XML copy of the document with the metadata tags that resides in tandem with the original document in the document manager. The authors inspect finished documents and save them to the InterMedia database.

      The bank recently used TK240 to categorize approximately 61,000 documents at the World Bank Institutes Library of Learning, in Moscow. Those documents included electronic course content as well as information published to the World Banks intranet and to its external Web site. The bank is set to begin processing some 3.6 million documents in the Library of Learnings records management system, Bedford said.

      The World Bank may use the categorization software to tackle e-mail in the future, Bedford said.

      Senior Writer Anne Chen can be reached at anne_chen@ziffdavis.com.

      /zimages/4/28571.gifCheck out eWEEK.coms for the latest news, reviews and analysis about productivity and business solutions.

      Anne Chen
      As a senior writer for eWEEK Labs, Anne writes articles pertaining to IT professionals and the best practices for technology implementation. Anne covers the deployment issues and the business drivers related to technologies including databases, wireless, security and network operating systems. Anne joined eWeek in 1999 as a writer for eWeek's eBiz Strategies section before moving over to Labs in 2001. Prior to eWeek, she covered business and technology at the San Jose Mercury News and at the Contra Costa Times.
      Get the Free Newsletter!
      Subscribe to Daily Tech Insider for top news, trends & analysis
      This email address is invalid.
      Get the Free Newsletter!
      Subscribe to Daily Tech Insider for top news, trends & analysis
      This email address is invalid.

      MOST POPULAR ARTICLES

      Latest News

      Zeus Kerravala on Networking: Multicloud, 5G, and...

      James Maguire - December 16, 2022 0
      I spoke with Zeus Kerravala, industry analyst at ZK Research, about the rapid changes in enterprise networking, as tech advances and digital transformation prompt...
      Read more
      Applications

      Datadog President Amit Agarwal on Trends in...

      James Maguire - November 11, 2022 0
      I spoke with Amit Agarwal, President of Datadog, about infrastructure observability, from current trends to key challenges to the future of this rapidly growing...
      Read more
      Applications

      Kyndryl’s Nicolas Sekkaki on Handling AI and...

      James Maguire - November 9, 2022 0
      I spoke with Nicolas Sekkaki, Group Practice Leader for Applications, Data and AI at Kyndryl, about how companies can boost both their AI and...
      Read more
      Cloud

      IGEL CEO Jed Ayres on Edge and...

      James Maguire - June 14, 2022 0
      I spoke with Jed Ayres, CEO of IGEL, about the endpoint sector, and an open source OS for the cloud; we also spoke about...
      Read more
      Careers

      SThree’s Sunny Ackerman on Tech Hiring Trends

      James Maguire - June 9, 2022 0
      I spoke with Sunny Ackerman, President/Americas for tech recruiter SThree, about the tight labor market in the tech sector, and much needed efforts to...
      Read more
      Logo

      eWeek has the latest technology news and analysis, buying guides, and product reviews for IT professionals and technology buyers. The site’s focus is on innovative solutions and covering in-depth technical content. eWeek stays on the cutting edge of technology news and IT trends through interviews and expert analysis. Gain insight from top innovators and thought leaders in the fields of IT, business, enterprise software, startups, and more.

      Facebook
      Linkedin
      RSS
      Twitter
      Youtube

      Advertisers

      Advertise with TechnologyAdvice on eWeek and our other IT-focused platforms.

      Advertise with Us

      Menu

      • About eWeek
      • Subscribe to our Newsletter
      • Latest News

      Our Brands

      • Privacy Policy
      • Terms
      • About
      • Contact
      • Advertise
      • Sitemap
      • California – Do Not Sell My Information

      Property of TechnologyAdvice.
      © 2022 TechnologyAdvice. All Rights Reserved

      Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which TechnologyAdvice receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. TechnologyAdvice does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.

      ×