Collaborative Business Process Management - A Literature-based Analysis of Methods for Supporting Model Understandability

Due to the growing amount of cooperative business scenarios, collaborative Business Process Management (cBPM) has emerged. The increased number of stakeholders with minor expertise in process modeling leads to a high relevance of model understandability in cBPM contexts. Despite extensive works in the research fields of cBPM and model understandability in BPM, there is no analysis and comprehensive overview of methods supporting process model understandability in cBPM scenarios. To address this research gap, this paper presents the results of a literature review. The paper identifies concepts for supporting model understandability in BPM, provides an overview of methods implementing these concepts, and discusses the methods’ applicability in cBPM. The four concepts process model transformation, process model visualization, process model description, and modeling support are introduced. Subsequently, 69 methods are classified and discussed in the context of cBPM. Results contribute to revealing existing academic voids and can guide practitioners in cBPM scenarios

An overview of process model quality literature - The Comprehensive Process Model Quality Framework

The rising interest in the construction and the quality of (business) process models resulted in an abundancy of emerged research studies and different findings about process model quality. The lack of overview and the lack of consensus hinder the development of the research field. The research objective is to collect, analyse, structure, and integrate the existing knowledge in a comprehensive framework that strives to find a balance between completeness and relevance without hindering the overview. The Systematic Literature Review methodology was applied to collect the relevant studies. Because several studies exist that each partially addresses this research objective, the review was performed at a tertiary level. Based on a critical analysis of the collected papers, a comprehensive, but structured overview of the state of the art in the field was composed. The existing academic knowledge about process model quality was carefully integrated and structured into the Comprehensive Process Model Quality Framework (CPMQF). The framework summarizes 39 quality dimensions, 21 quality metrics, 28 quality (sub)drivers, 44 (sub)driver metrics, 64 realization initiatives and 15 concrete process model purposes related to 4 types of organizational benefits, as well as the relations between all of these. This overview is thus considered to form a valuable instrument for both researchers and practitioners that are concerned about process model quality. The framework is the first to address the concept of process model quality in such a comprehensive way

New taxonomy of easy-to-understand access services

The Convention on the Rights of People with Disabilities states that access to information through written and electronic communications is essential for personal development and full participation in society. In digital scenarios, media services, such as audio descriptions, subtitles, or sign language, facilitate access to content with a focus on sensory barriers. Still, there are shortcomings in addressing other needs, such as cognitive ones. This article aims to suggest a taxonomy of the emerging easy-to-understand access services that cater for the needs of audiences who struggle with understanding audiovisual content for varied reasons, such as low literacy, reading or learning difficulties, temporary impairments, or insufficient language skills. The taxonomy uses Gottlieb’s (2005) semiotically-based classification to define E2U access services within the landscape of Audiovisual translation and to classify them according to their semiotic identity as compared to the standard access services.La Convención sobre los Derechos de las Personas con Discapacidad establece que el acceso a la información escrita y electrónica es esencial para el desarrollo personal y una participación social plena. En escenarios digitales, los servicios de accesibilidad como la audiodescripción, el subtitulado o la lengua de signos facilitan dicho acceso, especialmente en el caso de barreras sensoriales. Sin embargo, en el ámbito cognitivo aún quedan barreras por salvar. Este artículo presenta una taxonomía de servicios de accesibilidad que usan métodos de simplificación para facilitar el acceso a personas con dificultades de comprensión, ya sea por problemas de lectura, aprendizaje, discapacidad temporal o niveles insuficientes de lengua. La taxonomía presentada utiliza la clasificación semiótica de Gottlieb (2005) para ubicar estos servicios de accesibilidad dentro de la traducción audiovisual y para clasificarlos según su identidad semiótica en comparación con los servicios de accesibilidad estándar.This article has been partially funded by the EU project IMAC grant number 761974, EASIT 2018-1-ES01-KA203-050275, RAD PGC2018-096566-B-I00 and the Catalan Research Council grant number SGR113

Qualitative Characteristics of the Auditor’s Report

The objective of the study is to elaborate the set of qualitative characteristics of the auditor’s report, which should serve as the basis for the development of its format and content corresponding to the interests of users. The study results are based on a basic philosophical theories and principles, researches of scientists in the theory and practice of auditing, accounting, financial reporting and information, laws and regulations in the sphere of accounting, financial reporting and auditing. The problems of identifying the quality criteria of audit information taking into account objective and subjective characteristics of information are investigated. It is substantiated that the quality characteristics of the auditor’s report must be presented in several groups: those that comply with the principle of objectivity and those that take into account the socio-psychological characteristics of information; fundamental, supporting and enhancing; those that determine the content of the information in the auditor’s report, and those that determine the form of its presentation. The correlation of qualitative characteristics is analyzed and two classifications of qualitative characteristics of the auditor’s report is presented in the study: the first is based on the statement that the truth is a main purpose of audit functioning and presentation of the auditor’s report; the second is based on the priority of the needs of users of the auditor’s report. The application of proposed qualitative characteristics enables forming the auditor’s report taking into account informational requirements of users and increasing the audit effectiveness that will lead to the quality of audit as a communication process

Generating Natural Language Explanations For Entailments In Ontologies

Building an error-free and high-quality ontology in OWL (Web Ontology Language)---the latest standard ontology language endorsed by the World Wide Web Consortium---is not an easy task for domain experts, who usually have limited knowledge of OWL and logic. One sign of an erroneous ontology is the occurrence of undesired inferences (or entailments), often caused by interactions among (apparently innocuous) axioms within the ontology. This suggests the need for a tool that allows developers to inspect why such an entailment follows from the ontology in order to debug and repair it. This thesis aims to address the above problem by advancing knowledge and techniques in generating explanations for entailments in OWL ontologies. We build on earlier work on identifying minimal subsets of the ontology from which an entailment can be drawn---known technically as justifications. Our main focus is on planning (at a logical level) an explanation that links a justification (premises) to its entailment (conclusion); we also consider how best to express the explanation in English. Among other innovations, we propose a method for assessing the understandability of explanations, so that the easiest can be selected from a set of alternatives. Our findings make a theoretical contribution to Natural Language Generation and Knowledge Representation. They could also play a practical role in improving the explanation facilities in ontology development tools, considering especially the requirements of users who are not expert in OWL

Qualitative Characteristics of the Auditor’s Report

The objective of the study is to elaborate the set of qualitative characteristics of the auditor’s report, which should serve as the basis for the development of its format and content corresponding to the interests of users. The study results are based on a basic philosophical theories and principles, researches of scientists in the theory and practice of auditing, accounting, financial reporting and information, laws and regulations in the sphere of accounting, financial reporting and auditing. The problems of identifying the quality criteria of audit information taking into account objective and subjective characteristics of information are investigated. It is substantiated that the quality characteristics of the auditor’s report must be presented in several groups: those that comply with the principle of objectivity and those that take into account the socio-psychological characteristics of information; fundamental, supporting and enhancing; those that determine the content of the information in the auditor’s report, and those that determine the form of its presentation. The correlation of qualitative characteristics is analyzed and two classifications of qualitative characteristics of the auditor’s report is presented in the study: the first is based on the statement that the truth is a main purpose of audit functioning and presentation of the auditor’s report; the second is based on the priority of the needs of users of the auditor’s report. The application of proposed qualitative characteristics enables forming the auditor’s report taking into account informational requirements of users and increasing the audit effectiveness that will lead to the quality of audit as a communication process

Qualitative Characteristics of the Auditor’s Report

The objective of the study is to elaborate the set of qualitative characteristics of the auditor’s report, which should serve as the basis for the development of its format and content corresponding to the interests of users. The study results are based on a basic philosophical theories and principles, researches of scientists in the theory and practice of auditing, accounting, financial reporting and information, laws and regulations in the sphere of accounting, financial reporting and auditing. The problems of identifying the quality criteria of audit information taking into account objective and subjective characteristics of information are investigated. It is substantiated that the quality characteristics of the auditor’s report must be presented in several groups: those that comply with the principle of objectivity and those that take into account the socio-psychological characteristics of information; fundamental, supporting and enhancing; those that determine the content of the information in the auditor’s report, and those that determine the form of its presentation. The correlation of qualitative characteristics is analyzed and two classifications of qualitative characteristics of the auditor’s report is presented in the study: the first is based on the statement that the truth is a main purpose of audit functioning and presentation of the auditor’s report; the second is based on the priority of the needs of users of the auditor’s report. The application of proposed qualitative characteristics enables forming the auditor’s report taking into account informational requirements of users and increasing the audit effectiveness that will lead to the quality of audit as a communication process. Keywords: audit, quality of audit, auditor’s report, qualitative characteristics Qualitative Characteristics of the Auditor’s Repor

Counterfactuals and Causability in Explainable Artificial Intelligence: Theory, Algorithms, and Applications

There has been a growing interest in model-agnostic methods that can make deep learning models more transparent and explainable to a user. Some researchers recently argued that for a machine to achieve a certain degree of human-level explainability, this machine needs to provide human causally understandable explanations, also known as causability. A specific class of algorithms that have the potential to provide causability are counterfactuals. This paper presents an in-depth systematic review of the diverse existing body of literature on counterfactuals and causability for explainable artificial intelligence. We performed an LDA topic modelling analysis under a PRISMA framework to find the most relevant literature articles. This analysis resulted in a novel taxonomy that considers the grounding theories of the surveyed algorithms, together with their underlying properties and applications in real-world data. This research suggests that current model-agnostic counterfactual algorithms for explainable AI are not grounded on a causal theoretical formalism and, consequently, cannot promote causability to a human decision-maker. Our findings suggest that the explanations derived from major algorithms in the literature provide spurious correlations rather than cause/effects relationships, leading to sub-optimal, erroneous or even biased explanations. This paper also advances the literature with new directions and challenges on promoting causability in model-agnostic approaches for explainable artificial intelligence