An ontology for requirements analysis of managers’ policies in financial institutions

An Ontology for Requirements Analysis of Managers’
Policies in Financial Institutions
C. Feltus1
and A. Rifaut1
1
Centre de Recherche Public Henri Tudor, 29, Avenue John F.Kennedy, L-1855
Luxembourg-Kirchberg, Luxembourg (http://www.tudor.lu)
{Christophe.Feltus, Andre.Rifaut}@tudor.lu
Abstract. Policies are an important organizational tool giving an effective support
for building business systems, from the strategic level down to the operational and
technical levels. In particular, policies are a cornerstone for the governance system
of financial institutions. In international organizations, a lot of policies span all
country-local representatives and span all organizational levels. This work is part
of a series concerning the improvement of requirements engineering methods for
process-based organizations. This requires enhancing a shared vision between
employees of the process responsibilities, by advocating cross-functional thinking
with the focus set to the outcomes of the processes, and defining the outcomes in
relationship with the business goals. We complement the works on business
process models by the managers’ concerns, i.e. the managers’ responsibilities for
value to be delivered by the processes. This research proposes a method for
constructing policy models. Ontology is defined for interoperability purposes of
the models of different organizational levels. The main formal analyse that is used
for verification purposes is the reliability of the policy system and its impact on the
reliability of the operational system which is one important objective of recent
governance regulations.
1 Introduction
Policies are an important organizational tool giving an effective support for
building business systems, from the strategic level down to the operational and
technical levels. In particular, policies are a cornerstone for the governance system
of financial institutions. In international organizations, a lot of policies span all
country-local representatives (e.g. policies addressing the organization strategy, or
the international regulations) and span all organizational levels.

2 C. Feltus and A. Rifaut
This work is part of a series concerning the improvement of requirements
engineering methods for process-based organizations, in particular for financial
institutions. This requires enhancing a shared vision between employees of the
process responsibilities, by enhancing cross-functional thinking with the focus set
to the outcomes of the processes, and defining the outcomes in relationship with
the business goals [1]. We complement the works on business process models [2]
by the managers’ concerns, i.e. the managers’ responsibilities for value to be
delivered by the processes. This research proposes a method for constructing those
policy models, i.e. defining sets of assigned responsibilities in the organization.
Ontology is defined for interoperability purposes between the different models and
grounded in a standard first-order linear temporal logic semantics when more
expressive power is needed than descriptive logics [3]. The main formal analyse
that can be used for verification purposes is the reliability of the policy system and
its impact on the reliability of the operational system. Actually, reliability is one
important objective of recent governance regulations [4][5].
For each process, define the core outcomes
of the business and the manager’s
commitments for fulfillingthem.
Collect the business objectives.
Collect the value delivery assurance
level forthe business objectives.
For each process,
select the assurance
profile
For each process, add accountabilities and
commitments to ensure capabilities
required bythe assurance profile
For each process, define the employees’ commitments, accountabilities
and capabilities and addthe separation of duties for all resources
Analysefinancial,operational,technical
feasibility.Assesscostsandbenefits
For each process, define the
manager’s capabilities (rights) to
fulfil its commitments.
For each process, select
the minimal cardinality
of the cut-sets based on
the human resources
For each process, define the core outcomes
of the business and the manager’s
commitments for fulfillingthem.
Collect the business objectives.
Collect the value delivery assurance
level forthe business objectives.
For each process,
select the assurance
profile
For each process, add accountabilities and
commitments to ensure capabilities
required bythe assurance profile
For each process, define the employees’ commitments, accountabilities
and capabilities and addthe separation of duties for all resources
Analysefinancial,operational,technical
feasibility.Assesscostsandbenefits
For each process, define the
manager’s capabilities (rights) to
fulfil its commitments.
For each process, select
the minimal cardinality
of the cut-sets based on
the human resources
Fig. 1. Method for defining policies ensuring a value delivery assurance level
The main focus of research about policy in IT systems concerns the design of
policies and the design of IT systems that efficiently operate those policies, the
ability of those policies to express concepts such as segregation of duties,
delegation (of rights, permissions, and obligations), accountability, ... [6][7]. Our
proposal complements those results by easing the elicitation of requirements for
managers’ policies and relies on 4 principles. First, the design of policies must be
done in tight relationship with objectives, strategies, and key indicators. Second, all
organizational levels must be addressed including aspects outside the scope of IT
systems and Information System (IS). Third, responsibilities must be fully
decomposed into the capabilities (i.e. permissions and rights), the commitments
(i.e. the obligations or goals to fulfil) and the accountability requirements. Fourth,
policies must always be related to the enforcement of an optimal resource usage in
regard to the defined objectives, strategies, and indicators. This paper details the
method presented in Figure 1.

An Ontology for Requirements Analysis of Managers’ Policies in Financial Institutions 3
Table 1. Purpose and outcomes of the Operational Risk Mitigation/Control process
Operational Risk Mitigation/Control (BORO.1)
Purpose The purpose of the Operational Risk Mitigation/Control process is to miti-
gate the assessed operational risks and to manage operational risk impact.
Outcome
1
An operational risk mitigation and control strategy is developed, including
the principles of how operational risk is to be mitigated and how its
realization is to be control, according to the size, the sophistication, the
nature and the complexity of the bank’s activity;
Outcome
2
The existing option to mitigate risk are analyzed and, for each risk, the most
in accordance with bank's strategy is chosen;
…
The rest of this Section presents the case study that will be used and the aims and
context of our research for process-based organizations. The ontology of
operational assurance level of business process is explained in Section 2. For all
step of the construction process analyses of policies are described in Section 3.
Then the ontology of more IT-oriented policies is presented in Section 4, with an
example how to derive those policies from managers’ policies. The last section
concludes on the originality of our work and presents the future works.
Our case study is based on the Basel II Accord [5] that defines the requirements
of operational risk management systems that must be implemented in Banks. Those
requirements have been structured in our previous works [9] (the result is freely
accessible on the website of CSSF, the Luxemburg Bank Regulators, [10]; see the
example in Table 1 about the operational risk mitigation process).
Our case study focuses concerns an operational risk management system
implementation. The corporate operational risk management team (CORMT) has
specialized sub-teams for each Business Unit, in particular for Venture Capital
Management (i.e. CORMT-AM related to the Business Line “Asset Management”)
and for Securities Management (i.e. CORMT-CF related to the Business Line
“Corporate Finance”). The Basel II corporate policy imposes that each business
line is responsible for the day-to-day management of its own risks; however, the
implementation of the risk management system is the responsibility of the
corporate operational risk management team. Each business unit manager assigns
clerks to collect the operational risk data.
Technicallevel
Operationallevel
Tacticallevel
Strategiclevel
E.g. in the IT domain:
applications, components, …Procedures
Business
processes
Business
value
Objectives
Indicators
StrategiesPolicies
Goals
Indicators
StrategiesPolicies
Goals
Indicators
StrategiesPolicies
Standard view of
organizational layers
Concepts
and artifacts of
Goals
Indicators
StrategiesPolicies
Goals
Indicators
StrategiesPolicies
Goals
Indicators
StrategiesPolicies
Goals
Indicators
StrategiesPolicies
Technicallevel
Operationallevel
Tacticallevel
Strategiclevel
Business
processes
Business
value
Technicallevel
Operationallevel
Tacticallevel
Strategiclevel
Technicallevel
Operationallevel
Tacticallevel
Strategiclevel
Business
processes
Business
value
Business
processes
Business
value
Objectives
Indicators
StrategiesPolicies
Goals
Indicators
StrategiesPolicies
Goals
Indicators
StrategiesPolicies
Standard view of
Concepts
and artifacts of
Goals
Indicators
StrategiesPolicies
Goals
Indicators
StrategiesPolicies
Goals
Indicators
StrategiesPolicies
Goals
Indicators
StrategiesPolicies
Fig. 2. The alignment of policies in management methods

1.1 Process Models for Business Process Managers
Our global approach, presented in [11], is based on the organizational pyramid [12]
used in international financial institutions in order to align policies with business
processes described with goal-oriented models [13]. In the context of financial
regulations, a good governance system is based on the 4 organizational layers [14]
(strategic, tactical, operational and technical levels on Figure 2) for aligning
business value[15], business processes, procedures and technical artefacts [16]
(such as IT applications in the IT domain). The core of the ontology used for this
alignment is presented at the bottom of Figure 1: objectives, strategies, policies and
indicators [17]. The formal definition of those 4 core concepts of the ontology
relies on goal-oriented models [18][19], with their semantics presented in the
context of the requirements engineering language i* [20][13].
This framework allows abstracting requirements from implementation details
as much as possible in order for managers being able to assess the effectiveness
and efficiency of the processes in relationship with the business goals. A number of
methods exist for assessing this alignment that have been created for managers,
such as e.g. the Balanced Score Card [21]. Our proposal complements those
methods by using a goal-oriented description of business processes similar to the
one used for process models used in the standard ISO/IEC 15504 [13]. For each
process, this standard imposes to define the main goal of the process (the purpose),
the sub-goals (outcomes) for which an objective judgment can be made upon their
fulfilment on the basis of the indicators of the outcomes. Indicators are categorized
into base practices, work-products, and resources.
Fig. 3. Ontology of business process goal, indicators and assurance profile.

1.2 Operational assurance profile
A number of case studies [22][9][23] have shown that with this goal-oriented
model, the goals concerning managers can easily be described (together with the
expected outcomes) and linked to the business goals and the business system
implementation goals. Indeed, in addition to process-specific outcomes shown in
the preceding table, other generic outcomes (not shown) concern the process
performance management (i.e. planning and monitoring, availability of resources
and information, …), the work-product management (work-product control and
review, …), the process definition, the process deployment, … In Section 2, those
typical outcomes are the main concern of operational policies imposed by business
process managers. In [9] it is shown how the interaction between processes can be
precisely analyzed at that high-level of abstraction suited for business unit
managers, allowing them to delegate process implementation and still being able to
assess that the implemented system is faithful to the requirements. On Figure 3 is
shown the ontology for modelling process goals and indicators. For clarity
purposes, the concepts “process system implementation” and “goal” have not been
displayed on the diagram, but the concepts “purpose”, “outcome”, “indicator”
(refining the outcomes) and “business goal” (this latter not shown) are sub-classes
of the concept “goal”.
Op. risk
system implemented
(achievement)
Risk
categories reviewed
(doing)
Risk
categories reviewed
(doing)
Obligation Obligation
Oblig-
ation
Operational
risk managed
(goal)
Op. risk
system used
(achievement)
Oblig-
ation
Head of CORMT
Member CORMT-AM Member CORMT-CF
Head of BU
Venture-Capital
Risk data assessed
(doing)
Obligation
Member BU Venture-Capital
Op. risk
system implemented
(achievement)
Risk
categories reviewed
(doing)
Risk
categories reviewed
(doing)
Obligation Obligation
Oblig-
ation
Operational
risk managed
(goal)
Op. risk
system used
(achievement)
Oblig-
ation
Head of CORMT
Member CORMT-AM Member CORMT-CF
Head of BU
Venture-Capital
Risk data assessed
(doing)
Obligation
Member BU Venture-Capital
Fig. 4. Vertical responsibility refinement
With this ontology assurance profiles are sets of outcomes that defines the
operational assurance of each system implementation. The generic outcomes have
a comprehensive set of pre-defined indicators. Those generic outcomes and
indicators are typical concerns of managers. So, it easy for them to select the best
assurance level and assess its financial, organizational and technical feasibility. For
instance, the “venture capital work-product management” assurance profile
includes all outcomes imposing that the venture capital documents are controlled
and reviewed. Process system implementations (e.g. one for each country) must be
compliant to this profile. This assurance profile depends on the business domain of
the business process, showing the specificities of each country-local system

implementation made by managers. When an assurance profile is selected, it is
easier to constructively build an integrated set of policies (i.e. set of assigned
responsibilities) ensuring the profile.
2 Policies for Business Process Managers
This section details the ontology used for defining policies that is adequate for
business process managers which aim is to address the completeness of the
responsibilities included in a policy to ensure the operational reliability as required
by the selected operational assurance profile. Recall that a policy is a set of
responsibilities, including the associated goals, and assignments to resources.
Fig. 5. Ontology of vertical responsibility refinement
2.1 Vertical responsibility decomposition
The ontology distinguishes between, first, high-level policies concerning the work
of managers aiming at the creation, maintenance, and optimization of their process
(“responsibility-for-achievement”), and, second, the policies imposed on, for
instance, clerks when doing the work (or executing the procedures) described in
the business processes (“responsibility-for-doing”).
In the example shown on Figure 4, the corporate goal of managing operational
risks is split into two main parts: first the implementation of the operational risk
management system is assigned to the head of the CORMT, and the second part,
the operational use of the system is assigned to each business unit manager (e.g.
the head of venture capital business unit). They have to organize the work of
employees belonging to their unit: the specialized team members (CORMT-AM
and CORMT-CF) must have the knowledge (through coaching or attendance to
courses) for dealing with operational risk categories. In Figure 4, (neutral)
graphical notations are used (instead of showing ontology instances) to ease the
readability: ovals are responsibilities represented by their goals, arrows with labels
are assignments (that will be explained hereafter), and arrows without labels are
goal refinements. Recall that this is a goal-oriented model and this is why
responsibilities are identified with their goal (Figure 5) just like processes are
modelled with their goals decomposition (Figure 3). The three kinds of refinements
in Figure 5 are just refinements of the responsibilities’ goals. This is an advantage
for steering processes because the goal-refinements are driven by the assurance
profile and by the responsibility decomposition.
In most of requirements engineering models of business processes, the scope of
the model tend to show that for the risk data being collected, it is sufficient for the
clerk to (timely and accurately) input the data (and for CORMT-AM or CORMT-

CF to validate the data entered). However, this is only the description of
“responsibility-of-doing”, i.e. the low-level operational aspect. However,
depending on the level of reliability that is required, the goal is reached if and only
if all “sub-responsibilities-of-doing” are fulfilled together with the “responsibi-
lities-of-achievement”. In real case studies the bottom of the tree, i.e. the
“responsibility-of-doing” are rarely sufficient. Indeed, the “principle of exception”
of management theory, shows that it is nearly impossible to detail all managers’
responsibilities into “responsibilities-for-doing” due to unforeseen events. In the
ORDIT methodology [24][25] similar concepts are presented, but not fully
formalized in goals-oriented models and business process models for managers.
Operational
risk managed
(goal)
Op. risk budget
(achievement)
Op. risk
accountability
(achievement)
Op. risk
system used
(achievement)
Right
Right
ObligationObligationObligation
Op. risk account-
ability feedback
(achievement)
Obligation
Board of directors Board of directorsHead of BU Venture-Capital
Operational
risk managed
(goal)
Op. risk budget
(achievement)
Op. risk
accountability
(achievement)
Op. risk
system used
(achievement)
Right
Right
ObligationObligationObligation
Op. risk account-
ability feedback
(achievement)
Obligation
Board of directors Board of directorsHead of BU Venture-Capital
Fig. 6. Full cover of responsibility decomposition
2.2 Full cover of responsibility decomposition
When decomposing responsibilities, all 3 aspects must be covered: in order for a
person being committed to fulfilling a responsibility and accepting to be
accountable for that responsibility, that person always must get the right for having
the capabilities needed to fulfil both its commitment and accountability. A missing
aspect, induced weaknesses in the responsibility system decrease its reliability.
In the running example (see Figure 6), the corporate goal of having an
operational risk management system can be split into the following responsibilities:
the business unit manager is responsible for the day-to-day operational risk
management, whereas the corporate risk manager is responsible for creating an
operational risk system. Of course, both managers must have the capabilities (e.g.
budgets) corresponding to these responsibilities. Moreover, in order to ensure their
commitment, both managers must be accountable for their responsibilities (i.e.
their commitments) and the usage of their rights (i.e. the usage of the capabilities
received). Similarly, when managers are assigning “responsibilities-for-doing”,
then they have to provide all resources needed for employees belonging to their
unit to have sufficient time allocated for operational risk data assessment.
The capabilities required are the resources needed such as some budget and
manpower, the description of the tasks, input/output information, … Those
capabilities are rights for the person responsible of the commitment, but it is an

obligation for another person (to provide the capabilities for the first one, see
Figure 6). Accountability is important: one is accountable for both its commitment
and the usage of its rights (i.e. the time usage, the access to some information, the
budget, …) The 3 concepts involved in this decomposition (classes “Responsibility
capability”, “Responsibility commitment”, “Responsibility accountability”) are
subclass of the class “Responsibility” (not shown on Figure 5).
3 Analyses of policy requirements models
Relying on goal-oriented models within which all formal definitions are related to
goals, formal analyses are made through the analysis of the goal model. In practice,
lightweight formal analysis tools such as model checkers, or automatic theorem
provers are used. It has been shown that those tools, although having a limited
formal analysis capability, are efficient with goal-oriented models because most of
errors can be pointed out by making local analyses of the goal model. [26][27]. Our
analysis tool is based on the SWI-Prolog-XPCE Semantic Web Library package
[28] in conjunction of the Otter automated theorem prover [37][36] and using
bounded-model checking techniques for dealing with temporal logic formulae [29].
As said above, there is no intent to have a formal proof of the properties (hence, no
intent to prove the inexistence of counter-examples), but the intent is to exhibit
counter-examples. Formal analyses are presented hereafter.
Reliable responsibility assignment (minimal cut-set) analysis. Policies are a
tool for managers for creating a robust business process implementation system. In
particular, lots of review and control responsibilities that are defined in organiza-
tions and described in our model through the use of operational assurance profiles,
could be seen as redundant work. A traditional concept in reliability theory is the
minimal cut-set of a system [30]. In our case, the cut-set of a process implementa-
tion is a set of goals that when no longer reliable can put at risk the business goals.
Our model allows 3 different minimal cut-sets analyses of the system. First, the
minimal cut-sets of the process assurance profile that points out the different
redundancies (such as a reviewing process). Second, the minimal cut-sets with the
responsibility-for-achievement that represents a degree of redundancy: if the clerk
fails to fulfil its responsibility, the manager might be able to mitigate that failure.
Third, the minimal cut-sets in regard to the completeness of responsibilities
concerning reliable commitments, accountabilities and required capabilities.
Separation-of-duties analyses [31] are made with minimal-cut sets. Indeed,
separation-of-duties aims at increasing the minimal cardinality of all minimal-cut
sets. So, the failure of the process implementation will require the failure of more
independent resources (managers and clerks), hence decreasing its probability.
This analysis is appropriate for non-intentional misbehaviours of managers and
clerks. Basel II statistics indicates the majority of operational risks in financial
institutions occur due to those weaknesses. Dishonest, fraudulent and criminal
behaviours have a limited impact [32].
Minimal obligation set and least privilege analysis. The set of obligations can
be analysed in order to be minimal in accordance to the business goals and in
accordance to the required assurance profile. For each policy, the refinement of the

policy goal into responsibilities must be complete, and the set of responsibilities
must be minimal (i.e. the policy goal is not entailed when removing one
responsibility of the policy). Least privilege requires that the minimal set of rights
be granted in order for the obligations being realizable. Moreover, the
responsibility of accountability imposes that the usage of rights are accounted for.
This implies that the minimal set of rights is also allowed. This actually depends on
the selected assurance profile. For instance, in our case study, a clerk having the
“responsibility-for-doing” of assessing the operational risk data will have the right
of using time-slots for doing that just in case the selected assurance profile includes
the resource allocation outcome of the process performance management purpose.
maybe_non_minimal_policy(Policy) :-
bagof(GoalFormalDefinition #<=> B,
Responsibility^(Goal^(Resource
(rdf_db:rdf(Policy, has_responsibility, Responsibility),
rdf_db:rdf(Responsibility, obligation_is_assigned_to, Resource),
rdf_db:rdf(Responsibility, has_goal, Goal),
rdf_db:rdf(Goal, has_formal_definition, GoalFormalDefinition)
)), ConstraintSet),
rdf_db:rdf(Policy, policy_has_goal, PolicyGoal),
rdf_db:rdf(PoliyGoal, has_formal_definition, PolicyGoalFormalDefinition),
length(ConstraintSet,L), L1 is L-1, + run_OTTER(
select_constraint(ConstraintSet, L1), PolicyGoalFormalDefinition #<=> 0 ).
Fig. 7. SWI-Prolog code for identifying non-minimal policy obligation sets
The example shown in the Figure 7, detects a non-minimal obligation set by
removing one obligation that do not produce any goal violation for the new
refinement. (Note that out tool cannot to detect all non-minimal obligation sets due
to the limitations of bounded model checking.) The Prolog predicate
“select_constraint” just selects successively (on backtracking) all possible subsets
of constraints having a cardinality given in the argument, and the predicate
“run_OTTER” feeds the automated theorem prover with the formulae. (The
namespaces of concepts are not shown for a better readability or the Prolog code.)
Fig. 8. Policy profile for usage control policies
Delegation of responsibilities analyses. [31] The delegation of responsibilities is
implicitly handled in the model. Indeed, one can say that when a manager splits its
“responsibility-for-achievement” into a number of “responsibility-for-doing” that
are assigned to clerks, this is a kind of delegation. Dynamics aspects of the
delegation can be defined in the temporal formulae. However, all delegation chains
have their length and pattern fixed into the goal refinement model because, in

financial institutions, the length of delegation chains cannot be fully dynamic.
Analyses on responsibility models (coded in Prolog) are described in [33], but no
method is given for constructing those models from business processes and goals.
Fig. 9. Dynamics of usage right decisions and of attributes
4 The mapping onto policies for IT systems
It is not the intent of this section to describe in details this ontology, but it aims at
showing the principles of the mapping between policies for managers and policies
for IT systems. The mapping onto policies for IT systems is made through the
Usage CONtrol policy family of models [34] because it can represents classical
policy models and can be implemented, for instance, with XACML [35].
permission(Role, Object, Right) :-
rdfs:rdfs_individual_of(Object,
'Work_product'),
rdfs:rdfs_individual_of(Role, 'Resource'),
rdf_db:rdf(Act, has_resource, Role),
((rdf_db:rdf(Act, has_input,Object),
Right=input
);(rdf_db:rdf(Act, has_output,Object),
Right=output )).
ucon_rbac_allowed(Subject, Object, Right) :-
rdfs:rdfs_individual_of(Subject, 'Subject'),
rdfs:rdfs_individual_of(Object, 'Object'),
rdf_db:rdf(Practice, has_resource, Subject),
( rdf_db:rdf(Practice, has_input, Object) ;
rdf_db:rdf(Practice, has_output, Object) ),
rdf_db:rdf(Subject, has_role,Role),
rdf_db:rdf(Object, has_work_product, Work_product),
permission(Role, Work_product, Right).
permission(Role, Object, Right) :-
rdfs:rdfs_individual_of(Object,
'Work_product'),
rdfs:rdfs_individual_of(Role, 'Resource'),
rdf_db:rdf(Act, has_resource, Role),
((rdf_db:rdf(Act, has_input,Object),
Right=input
);(rdf_db:rdf(Act, has_output,Object),
Right=output )).
ucon_rbac_allowed(Subject, Object, Right) :-
rdfs:rdfs_individual_of(Subject, 'Subject'),
rdfs:rdfs_individual_of(Object, 'Object'),
rdf_db:rdf(Practice, has_resource, Subject),
( rdf_db:rdf(Practice, has_input, Object) ;
rdf_db:rdf(Practice, has_output, Object) ),
rdf_db:rdf(Subject, has_role,Role),
rdf_db:rdf(Object, has_work_product, Work_product),
permission(Role, Work_product, Right).
Fig. 10. Prolog code querying the rights allowed to resources (subjects) for a target (object)
The policy model UCON (Figure 8) generalizes of the usual access control policy
model to usage control policy model. This family of models (or meta-model) is
based the well-known concepts: a subject gets some rights for target resources.
However, the focus is no longer on how to structure the attributes of the subjects
and resources (for instance, in a hierarchy of roles and permissions as in RBAC
[34]), but to structure the decision concerning the rights. This is why in addition to
authorizations there are obligations and external conditions that are defined.
Moreover, the dynamics of the decision is considered through the concepts of
ongoing decision controls, and the mutability of attributes. With the concept of
policy profile, RBAC profile (not shown on the Figures) is a specialisation of the
UCON profile “pre authorization immutable” (Figure 9). The Figure 10 illustrates
the link between each ontology by giving the Prolog predicates that are used to
query the rights allowed to resources (subjects) for a target (object). The RBAC
concept of “role” is just mapped onto the concept “subject attribute” of Figure 8.

5 Conclusions and work plan
By using a set of concepts structuring the alignment of policies (goals, indicators,
policies, strategies), structuring the assurance profile of business processes
(purpose and outcomes), structuring the policies themselves, one can provide a set
of analyses that help managers to build their policies, and allow experts to use
lightweight goal-oriented formal analyses. The reliability of policy system can be
formally defined and be the basis of usual requirements on policies such separation
of duties, delegation of responsibilities, … To our knowledge, the operational
assurance profile is not present in requirements engineering models of business
processes. Although sometimes parts of the models concern operational assurance
of the process, it is often too technical and/or spread within the model that makes
difficult for managers to understand and analyse the models.
The work in progress concerns the definition of the value delivery assurance
underlying good governance principles. The reliability of policy systems is an
important basis for analysing the value delivery assurance. A tool is under
construction, based on our ontology-based database. New real case studies in
financial institutions are still in progress (e.g. a model of venture capital fund-of-
funds management). The link between the our models and the technical policies is
still under study with UCON in order to provide a technical layer for the policies
defined by the managers which is based on new technologies, such as DRM.
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