The BT intranet: information by design

British Telecom´s intranet hosts an array of information products that are an integral part of the way its employees do business. The article presents a glimpse of how BT uses concepts like media engineering to develop usable and maintainable information products-information by design. The BT intranet supports several information products that are now an everyday part of business within BT: the desktop directory not only supplies contact information, but also shows where people fit into the organization; a validated software site contains packages that have been tested and approved for use within the company; administrative services, such as expense claims, can be filled out and validated automatically as they flow through the organization, removing much of the manual work; internal news and guidance documents are posted on the intranet; and proposals for research and development projects, including their subsequent approval and delivery record, are recorded and tracked by an online system. Other documents provide details of the company´s systems architecture, training programs, internal job vacancies, standards activities, and business strategy. We describe two applications of particular interest-a company-sponsored degree program and an engineering project data exchange site