May 15, 2004

Finding Needles in the Haystack

Robert Gettlin

Washington professionals are awash in information. Every day, offices throughout Capitol Hill, on K Street, and in departments and agencies are swamped by a wave of e-mails, memos, news reports, publications, and phone calls, not to mention all of the conferences, meetings, and time spent surfing the Web.

People use a variety of coping techniques, experts say. Some try to consume as much data as possible, while others largely tune out the noise. But according to public-affairs specialist William Bailey, everyone hit by an information glut wrestles with a basic question: "How do I get my hands on what I need to know to make smart decisions?"

Bailey, who has spent more than 30 years in government and public affairs for Merck, Mutual of Omaha, and other organizations, says he and some colleagues came up with an answer a few years ago, when they formed a company called Illumen.

"The common denominator in every conversation I have with clients is that they have too much on their desk," says Bailey. "They tell me, 'Not only am I drowning, but I'm getting information too late for making a decision.' "

Over breakfast at the Mayflower Hotel four years ago, Bailey and three friends -- journalists Fred Barnes and Morton Kondracke, and Thomas Donnelly, a founding partner of the lobbying shop Jefferson Government Relations -- decided they would try to build a better mousetrap. Plenty of Internet search engines, as well as computerized databases, were already available. But "it was still the old-needle-in-a-haystack problem," Bailey says. "A lot of time is lost sorting through the haystack."

The group lined up other investors, who now number 30, mostly family and friends. The founders recruited talented developers to write proprietary software that was melded to existing programs, and the company developed a technology that uses some artificial intelligence for a new online search and information-management tool. Since September 2003, they have been selling their creation -- also called Illumen -- to corporate government-affairs offices, trade associations, lobbying and law firms, public-relations agencies, and other organizations.

The firm now has 117 clients in Washington, ranging from companies (like Dow Chemical and United Parcel Service) to trade groups (like the American Chemistry Council and the National Restaurant Association) to law firms (like Shaw Pittman) and to lobbying shops (like Canfield & Associates and the Navigators).

The key adaptation in Illumen is that it is a personalized workflow tool. In trolling through 8,000 sources for content -- news media; Web sites; federal, state, and local government databases; and much more -- Illumen does not use what are known as "meta tags," or broad keyword definitions, that typical search engines employ. Rather, Illumen captures highly specific information based on categories that the user sets up in a personal profile.

"There is huge bandwith of data out there that people are trying to capture," says Illumen President and CEO Peter Anthony. But rather than using "the shotgun approach" of a typical search engine, he says, Illumen "delivers pinpoint accuracy" because its searches are based on individual instructions by category.

Take as an example the corporate tax bill that was just approved by the Senate. Using a typical search engine, a lobbyist who represents a particular company with a stake in the legislation would likely get back a mountain of data. With Illumen, the lobbyist would have created a category on the client and on corporate tax legislation, and the search would deliver information that relates specifically to the client's interests.

Laura Johnston, director of communications for the National Farmers Union, has to keep association leaders in her state chapters up to speed on issues ranging from agriculture subsidies to global trade to mad-cow disease. "There is no way I can look at all the sources of information," says Johnston. "If I do a Google search, I'll get 25 Web sites. Illumen finds exactly what I have told it to look for."

The decision to go with the product wasn't a slam dunk at first, Johnston says. At about $6,000 to license one user of Illumen, the cost was significant. But by cutting out other publications and information sources that are no longer necessary, she says, the new technology has paid for itself.

Anthony says that the cost of subscriptions for five individual users per client is about $24,000 a year, while 10 users would run about $40,000 annually

At the National Association of Securities Dealers, Tom Holloman, manager of media relations, uses Illumen for a specific purpose -- to keep tabs on what journalists are saying about NASD. "We get a ton of media calls every day," Holloman says. "I use Illumen to find out what all these people are writing."

Carrie Langdon, public-affairs communications manager for International Paper in Washington, says her office especially likes the Illumen feature that provides a quarterly update on the staffs of every office on Capitol Hill. Moreover, Illumen tracks not only all federal legislation and regulations, but also every bill introduced in all 50 state legislatures.

"There is so much information in this town," Langdon says. "We had to find a way to keep from drowning in it."

National Journal