Co-operative answering to natural language email queries

The CEC Project GOAL (Esprit 6283) aims to develop generic software tools to support a new project management paradigm, in which projects are collaborative, decentralised and inter-organizational. Each partner in such a project will operate a GOAL tool, which includes a knowledge base describing that partner's role in the project. Overall project information is therefore distributed amongst the partners: to provide convenient access to this information we have implemented a system which providesàdded value' message reception services to a GOAL tool. This system uses a `local' knowledge base to respond with cooperative answers to natural language queries which are submitted by electronic mail. At this stage of development the system is a prototype, but it is also, we believe, a successful proof of concept and a demonstration of how Artiicial Intelligence technologies { like natural language processing, automated reasoning and deductive databases { can support the management of inter-organizational projects.