A generic provenance framework to document public policy making processes

Public policies impact the day to day activities of individuals. Effective public policy outcomes result in general acceptance among the community. The transparency in policy making process and participation during policy creation holds significant positions for developing trust among the community. Established domains such as e-health employs provenance for creating transparency and trust among the researchers. Public policy making can also use provenance to develop trust and transparency in their processes. At present, however, public policy makers employ various means to manage public policy making. Having no unified platform for the policy making process presents challenges in respect of searching and locating the evidence that was used during policy creation and for ensuring trust and transparency among actors. The absence of such a support also presents challenges for participation in public policy making. To address the given challenges, this research presents the provenance framework that manages the public policy making provenance data and enable participation of diverse actors.Due to dynamicity attached to public policy making, a provenance framework needs to be adaptable. Therefore, a model-driven approach has been used to frame the public policy making provenance framework. In addition to a model-driven approach, a mechanism is required that can enable the capture of public policy processes. However, the knowledge-intensive dynamics of public policy making presents challenges for using process-based solutions. Therefore, this research work describes a process-agnostic approach inspired from a network-based packet switching approach for tracking policy making processes. Managing public policy provenance data is not the only facet that develops trust. What is required is the facilitation of citizens and non-government bodies in the policy creation process. Therefore, a provenance framework has been designed by considering the principles of smart governance which results in a smart cities solution. In order to evaluate the framework, a proof-of-concept has been designed and implemented. An evaluation has been carried out to determine the suitability of a model-driven and a process-agnostic approach for policy making provenance framework in smart cities. For the evaluation purposes, three public policy making case studies Shops Opening Hours’ Resolution, Air Quality Monitoring, and Neighbourhood Planning were employed. The three case studies were used to derive various experiments to test the provenance framework. The experiments captured the dynamic and knowledge-intensive aspects of the provenance framework. The results collected from the execution of the experiments demonstrated the aptness of a process-agnostic approach and model-driven approach for the policy making provenance framework. Lastly, an end user evaluation was carried out to assess the effectiveness of the provenance framework. The positive responses of end users showed the usefulness of the provenance framework

Dynamic reconfiguration of business processes

Organisations require that their business processes reflecttheir evolving practices by maintaining compliance with their policies,strategies and regulations. Designing workflows which satisfy these re-quirements is complex and error-prone. Business process reconfigurationis even more challenging as not only a new workflow must be devisedbut also an understanding of how the transition between the old andnew workflow must be managed. Transition requirements can includeboth domain independent, such as delayed and immediate change, oruser-defined domain specific requirements. In this paper we present afully automated technique which uses control synthesis to not only pro-duce correct-by-construction workflows from business process require-ments but also to compute a reconfiguration process that guarantees theevolution from an old workflow to a new one while satisfying any user-defined transition requirements. The approach is validated using threeexamples from the BPM Academic Initiative described as Dynamic Con-dition Response Graphs which we reconfigured for a variety of transitionsrequirements

Assured automatic dynamic reconfiguration of business processes

In order to manage evolving organisational practice and maintain compliance with changes in policies and regulations, businesses must be capable of dynamically reconfiguring their business processes. However, such dynamic reconfiguration is a complex, human-intensive and error prone task. Not only must new business process rules be devised but also, crucially, the transition between the old and new rules must be managed. In this paper we present a fully automated technique based on formal specifications and discrete event controller synthesis to produce correct-by-construction reconfiguration strategies. These strategies satisfy user-specified transition requirements, be they domain independent – such as delayed and immediate change – or domain specific. To achieve this, we provide a discrete-event control theoretic approach to operationalise declarative business process specifications, and show how this can be extended to resolve reconfiguration problems. In this way, given the old and the new business process rules described as Dynamic Condition Response Graphs, and given the transition requirements described with linear temporal logic, the technique produces a control strategy that guides the organisation through a business process reconfiguration ensuring that all transition requirements and process rules are satisfied. The technique outputs a reconfiguration DCR whose traces reproduce the controller's reconfiguration strategy. We illustrate and validate the approach using realistic cases and examples from the BPM Academic Initiative.Fil: Nahabedian, Leandro Ezequiel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Investigación en Ciencias de la Computación. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Investigación en Ciencias de la Computación; ArgentinaFil: Braberman, Victor Adrian. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Investigación en Ciencias de la Computación. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Investigación en Ciencias de la Computación; ArgentinaFil: D'ippolito, Nicolás Roque. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Investigación en Ciencias de la Computación. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Investigación en Ciencias de la Computación; ArgentinaFil: Kramer, Jeff. Imperial College London; Reino UnidoFil: Uchitel, Sebastian. Imperial College London; Reino Unido. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Investigación en Ciencias de la Computación. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Investigación en Ciencias de la Computación; Argentin

Assured automatic dynamic reconfiguration of business processes

In order to manage evolving organisational practice and maintain compliance with changes in policies and regulations, businesses must be capable of dynamically reconfiguring their business processes. However, such dynamic reconfiguration is a complex, human-intensive and error prone task. Not only must new business process rules be devised but also, crucially, the transition between the old and new rules must be managed. In this paper we present a fully automated technique based on formal specifications and discrete event controller synthesis to produce correct-by-construction reconfiguration strategies. These strategies satisfy user-specified transition requirements, be they domain independent - such as delayed and immediate change - or domain specific. To achieve this, we provide a discrete-event control theoretic approach to operationalise declarative business process specifications, and show how this can be extended to resolve reconfiguration problems. In this way, given the old and the new business process rules described as Dynamic Condition Response Graphs, and given the transition requirements described with linear temporal logic, the technique produces a control strategy that guides the organisation through a business process reconfiguration ensuring that all transition requirements and process rules are satisfied. The technique outputs a reconfiguration DCR whose traces reproduce the controller’s reconfiguration strategy. We illustrate and validate the approach using realistic cases and examples from the BPM Academic Initiative