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.