A Proposal for Client Based User Profiles For Open Search in Large and Highly Connected Organisations

Retrieving the right information by navigating through different information sources on the web and in large organizations has proven to be a prominent issue for individuals.
This problem has been tackled by search engine providers, where users construct queries to retrieve the relevant information from a collection of indexed web pages or internal organizational information sources. While being able to retrieve the information on the web or from organizational data sources, not introducing a level of personalization to search engines limit the ability to adapt to users’ short-term
and long-term interests, making them hard to use over time.
On the other side, personalization can invade the privacy of users, by collecting and storing personal and sensitive information. In the context of large organizations, it is extremely important to be explicit with user data collection and usage. Based on the analysis of different search engine systems, user profiling methods, and literature survey on information sharing in large organizations, a conceptual extension that integrates aspects of data privacy and protection into an open search architecture for large organizations has been introduced. The extension aims to improve the process
of information retrieval and information discovery in large organizations by introducing a level of personalizations to the system