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In the current discussions around Blockchain and distributed ledger technologies, we find a lack of theory to conceptualize and understand application scenarios. In this paper we propose to conceptualize distributed ledger technologies as trust mechanisms. Whereas previously one had to rely on a trusted third party (e.g. notary), now one must trust a complex software system – the Blockchain and distributed ledger application– as well as the parties that host the software system and ensure its effectiveness. Based on theories of e-commerce, business networks, and trust, we explore relations between trust and Blockchain design. We analyze three case studies of Blockchain applications in the diamond industry. In each case we study two complementary research questions: (1) how does the blockchain application influence trust, and (2) how do trust based requirements affect the design of a blockchain application? We formulate two propositions and find dynamic interactions between trust requirements, blockchain application design, and transaction trust.

In interacting with digital apps and services, users create digital identities and generate massive amounts of associated personal data. The relationship between the user and the service provider in such cases is, inter alia, a principal-agent relationship governed by a ‘contract’. This contract is provided mostly in natural language text, however, and remains opaque to users. The need of the hour is multi-faceted documentation represented in machine-readable, natural language and graphical formats, to enable tools such as smart contracts and privacy assistants which could assist users in negotiating and monitoring agreements. In this paper, we develop a Taxonomy for the Representation of Privacy and Data Control Signals. We focus on ‘signals’ because they play a crucial role in communicating how a service provider distinguishes itself in a market. We follow the methodology for developing taxonomies proposed by Nickerson et al. We start with a grounded analysis of the documentation of four smartphone-based fitness activity trackers, and compare these to insights from literature. We present the results of the first two iterations of the design cycle. Validation shows that the Taxonomy answers (10/14) relevant questions from Perera et al.’s requirements for the knowledge-modelling of privacy policies fully, (2/14) partially, and fails to answer (2/14). It also covers signals not identified by the checklist. We also validate the Taxonomy by applying it to extracts from documentation, and argue that it shows potential for the annotation and evaluation of privacy policies as well.

Designing security measures often involves trade-offs between various types of objectives. Multiple stakeholders may have conflicting demands and may have different ideas on how to resolve the resulting design conflicts. This paper reports on an application of value-sensitive design. Based on argumentation theory and social values, the paper develops a structured approach for discussing design conflicts, called value-based argumentation. The application domain examined in the paper is concerned with physical safety and security issues that arise in cross-border shipments. We first identify the kinds of dialogues that take place in this domain, in particular, audit dialogues to determine whether security measures comply with regulations. Based on argumentation theory we develop a formal language and a diagramming approach intended to facilitate parties in identifying, discussing and reaching agreement about security risks and corresponding mitigation measures. Trade-offs can be dealt with by making underlying values explicit. Using a stylized example, the approach was successfully taught to practitioners working with EU customs regulations. Practitioners generally found the approach helpful, in particular to bring out implicit underlying motivations. We conclude by discussing how our approach can be generalized to other kinds of dialogues involving design conflicts.

Big data has been acknowledged for its enormous potential. In contrast to the potential, in a recent survey more than half of financial service organizations reported that big data has not delivered the expected value. One of the main reasons for this is related to data quality. The objective of this research is to identify the antecedents of big data quality in financial institutions. This will help to understand how data quality from big data analysis can be improved. For this, a literature review was performed and data was collected using three case studies, followed by content analysis. The overall findings indicate that there are no fundamentally new data quality issues in big data projects. Nevertheless, the complexity of the issues is higher, which makes it harder to assess and attain data quality in big data projects compared to the traditional projects. Ten antecedents of big data quality were identified encompassing data, technology, people, process and procedure, organization, and external aspects.

Compliance is often achieved 'by design' through a coherent system of controls consisting of information systems and procedures. This system-based control requires a new approach to auditing in which companies must demonstrate to the regulator that they are 'in control'. They must determine the relevance of a regulation for their business, justify which set of control measures they have taken to comply with it, and demonstrate that the control measures are operationally effective. In this paper we show how value-based argumentation theory can be applied to the compliance domain. Corporate values motivate the selection of control measures (actions) which aim to fulfil control objectives, i.e. adopted norms (goals). In particular, we show how to formalize the audit dialogue in which companies justify their compliance decisions to regulators using value-based argunlentation. The approach is illustrated by a case study of the safety and security measures adopted in the context of EU customs regulation.

Customs administrations are exploring system-based approaches to regulatory supervision, taking the entire set of controls in a process into account. In addition to Trusted Traders, which are recognized by a certification process, customs are considering to identify so called Trusted Trade Lanes: companies that collaborate in a trade lane in a reliable manner. In this paper we explore the concept of a trusted trade lane. We identify essential characteristics of a trusted trade-lane, and develop various scenarios in which trade lanes may develop and find ways to demonstrate to the authorities and commercial partners that they conform to these requirements. The characteristics have been evaluated in a workshop with experts. The scenarios are tested against three pilot projects, that aim to improve supply chain visibility. © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2016.

Much legal evidence is being generated by and stored in information systems. In this paper we look at evidence from an auditing point of view. Auditors rely on evidence of the party being audited, who may have a legitimate or illegitimate interest to manipulate it. To assess the quality of audit evidence, we argue for an approach called model-based auditing. It is based on a mathematically precise model of the expected relationships between the flow of money and the flow of goods or services. Such equations are used for cross verification. If the equations do not hold, either something is wrong (violation) or some underlying assumption is false (exception). To show the usefulness of the approach, we look in particular at a case study of a legal dispute about automated contract monitoring. A precise revenue model is instrumental in demonstrating that the data set does indeed constitute appropriate evidence to settle the case.

The eXtensible Business Reporting Languagea(XBRL) has been developed to standardize financial reporting. It could also improve internal business processes. Yet there is no scientific research to substantiate this claim. In this paper we use discrete-event simulation to determine the impact of XBRL on internal business processes. Simulation models of the existing and possible new situation are developed in a case study within the accounting domain. The redesigned processes are validated in a workshop. XBRL allows the merging of accounting and fiscal reporting processes resulting in a reduction of the duplication of activities and higher information quality. In particular, it is demonstrated that information quality, efficiency and lead-time can be improved by adoption of XBRL. In addition to technology-standardization on XBRL, data-standardization is a necessary precondition for realizing benefits.

This paper discusses the challenges of legal norms in specialist domains - the interplay between industry/professional standards and legal norms, the information gap between legal and specialist domains and the need for interpretation at all stages of compliance - design, operation and justification. We propose extensions to the Eunomos legal knowledge management tool to help address the information gap, with particular attention to aligning norms with operational procedures, and the use of domain-specific specialist ontologies from multiple domains to help users understand and reason with norms on specialist topics. The paper focuses mainly on medical law and clinical guidelines.

Maintaining regulatory compliance is an increasing area of concern for business. Legal Knowledge Management systems that combine repositories of legislation with legal ontologies can support the work of in-house compliance managers. But there are challenges to overcome, of interpreting legal knowledge and mapping that knowledge onto business processes, and developing systems that can adequately handle the complexity with clarity and ease. In this paper we extend the Legal Knowledge Management system Eunomos to deal with alternative interpretations of norms connecting it with Business Process Management systems. Moreover, we propose a workflow involving the different roles in a company, which takes legal interpretation into account in mapping norms and processes, using Eunomos as a support.

Part 4: Architecture, Security and Interoperability; International audience; We discuss a reference model for security measures to preserve integrity of information. Unlike traditional approaches which focus on an defensive approach to preserving integrity, we also present offensive measures to stimulate integrity of information, by providing feedback from usage. The reference model is used to analyze the security measures proposed in the design of the Dutch national Electronic Patient Dossier (EPD), in particular the projected application for medication records. We conclude that much of the defensive measures were covered, but that some offensive measures are lacking, in particular measures related to trust. This may have harmed adoption.

Regulation based on Continuous Control Monitoring could reduce the administrative burden for companies. Often, companies already have elaborate internal control and quality management systems. Instead of periodic physical inspections, regulatory supervision can partly be automated and performed on a continuous basis. The regulator gets access to a validated copy of key data elements from the company’s internal information systems, which serve as indicator of compliance to specific control objectives. In this paper we describe an information architecture for continuous control monitoring, and show how it can be applied to supervision of regulatory compliance. The approach is illustrated by a pilot project in the Netherlands of applying continuous control monitoring to food safety regulations in the meat processing industry. Participants concluded that the approach is technically feasible but requires a different mindset towards regulation, and a clear business case.

Norm-enforcement models applied in human societies may serve as an inspiration for the design of multi-agent systems. Models for norm-enforcement in multi-agent systems often focus either on the intra- or interagent level. We propose a combined approach to identify objectives for an architecture for self-regulating agents. In this paper we assess how changes on the inter-agent level affect the intra-agent level and how a generic BDI architecture IRMA can be adapted for self-regulation. The approach is validated with a case study of AEO certification, a European wide customs initiative to secure the supply chain while facilitating international trade.

To keep a network of enterprises sustainable, inter-organizational control measures are needed to detect or prevent opportunistic behaviour of network participants. We present a requirements engineering method for understanding control problems and designing solutions, based on an economic value perspective. The methodology employs a library of so-called control patterns, inspired by design patterns in software engineering. A control pattern is a generic solution for a common control problem. The usefulness and adequacy of the control patterns is demonstrated by a case study of the governance and control mechanisms of the Dutch public health insurance network for exceptional medical expenses (AWBZ). © 2010 Operational Research Society Ltd. All rights reserved.

Compliance is often achieved 'by design' through a coherent system of controls consisting of information systems and procedures. This system-based control requires a new approach to auditing in which companies must demonstrate to the regulator that they are 'in control'. They must determine the relevance of a regulation for their business, justify which set of control measures they have taken to comply with it, and demonstrate that the control measures are operationally effective. In this paper we show how value-based argumentation theory can be applied to the compliance domain. Corporate values motivate the selection of control measures (actions) which aim to fulfill control objectives, i.e. adopted norms (goals). In particular, we show how to formalize the dialogue in which companies justify their compliance decisions to regulators using value-based argumentation. The approach is illustrated by a case study of the safety and security measures adopted in the context of EU customs regulation.

Building collaborative relationships with trusted businesses is a long-term strategy for EU governments. Recently, for the EU Tax and Customs Administration (TCA), the realization of this goal has become more visible with the emerging concept of the Authorized Economic Operator (AEO). Businesses in the member states can apply for the AEO certificate. When it is being granted, simplified control procedures and trade facilitation will be provided by the TCA. A possible "win-win situation" can be achieved, with increased trade efficiency and lowered administrative burden. However, without proper selection of trusted business partners, governments may be worse off due to the adverse selection problem caused by information asymmetry. In this paper, we analyze the cause and effect of the adverse selection in the Government-to-Business relationship building. Further, we show that an IT enabled risk assessment approach can effectively eliminate the G2B information asymmetry and solve the adverse selection problem. The AEO assessment approach of DutchTCA is analysed to give a real life application on how IT is enabling the general risk management approach of the DutchTCA.

A Normative Multi-Agent System consists of autonomous agents who must comply with social norms. Different kinds of norms make different assumptions about the cognitive architecture of the agents. For example, a principle-based norm assumes that agents can reflect upon the consequences of their actions; a rule-based formulation only assumes that agents can avoid violations. In this paper we present several cognitive agent architectures for self-monitoring and compliance. We show how different assumptions about the cognitive architecture lead to different information needs when assessing compliance. The approach is validated with a case study of horizontal monitoring , an approach to corporate tax auditing recently introduced by the Dutch Customs and Tax Authority.

Aqvist's paradox of epistemic obligation can be solved, if we use knowledge-wh instead of knowledge-that in specifications of the `need to know': the knowledge which an agent in a certain organisational role is required to have. Knowledge-wh is knowledge of an answer to a question, which depends on the context. We show how knowledge-wh can be formalised in a logic of questions, which is combined with standard deontic logic to represent epistemic obligations. We demonstrate that under the new interpretation, the paradox can no longer be derived. The resulting logic is useful for representation of access control policies.

Norms are implemented by administrative procedures. This paper addresses the delegation of control in administrative procedures. Instead of having to check all details, a controlling actor can trust the data provided by other actors, provided they can demonstrate to be `in control'. In this paper we provide a conceptual analysis of situations in which control has been delegated. The approach is based on an analysis of the dependencies between activities performed by the actors involved and on evidence documents. To motivate and illustrate the approach, we discuss a case study about the redesign of EU customs procedures for collecting excise duties.

We provide a conceptual analysis of several kinds of deadlines, represented in Temporal Modal Defeasible Logic. The paper presents a typology of deadlines, based on the following parameters: deontic operator, maintenance or achievement, presence or absence of sanctions, and persistence after the deadline. The deadline types are illustrated by a set of examples.

In this paper is we apply insights from mechanism design to the design of agent interaction protocols. We show how this allows us a more flexible approach to the design of agent interaction protocols. By way of an analysis of a dialogue game from the literature we show how a protocol with many constraints on the moves allowed can be replaced by one in which we relax the rules, but make stronger assumptions on the type of participant that is involved in the dialogue. We can then use techniques from game theory and mechanism design to show that many of the constraints in the original protocol can be derived as properties of rational behavior.

There are two main traditions in defining a semantics for agent communication languages, based either on mental attitudes or on social commitments. In this paper we show how the role metaphor can be used to bridge the gap between these two approaches. First, we show how dialogues can be modelled as games - a form of normative systems - and how mental attitudes can be attributed not only to agents, but also, in a public manner, to the roles of the game. The dialogue moves allow an agent playing a role to modify the rolesý mental states, as specified by the counts-as conditionals (also known as constitutive norms) defining the game. The player of a role is expected to act as if it has the mental attitudes attributed to its role during the dialogue and to prevent its roleýs mental attitudes from becoming incoherent, as it does for its own private mental attitudes. Secondly, we show how roles as descriptions of expected behavior maintain the normative character of social semantics. Due to the bridge between the two approaches, results and tools from one approach can be used in the other one.

There are two main traditions in defining a semantics for agent com- munication languages, based either on mental attitudes or on social commitments. In this paper, we translate both traditions in a different approach in which the di- alogue state is represented by the beliefs and goals publicly attributed to the roles played by the dialogue participants. On the one hand, this approach avoids the problems of mentalistic semantics, such as the unverifiability of private mental states. On the other hand, it allows use to reuse the logics and implementations developed for FIPA compliant approaches.

In this paper we illustrate how a role-based semantics for agent communication languages can embed the two main existing models of agent communication languages, respectively based on 'mental attitudes' and 'social commitments' semantics. These two models have been presented as incompatible approaches, but recently we illustrated for persuasion dialogues and using our normative multi-agent systems framework, that they can be seen also as complimentary ones. Independently from our own multi-agent model, in this paper we illustrate for the speech act 'inform' how the role based semantics embeds the other two semantics.

This paper is about control mechanisms for virtual organizations. As a case study, we discuss the Renewables Obligation (RO), a control mechanism that was introduced in the United Kingdom to stimulate the production of renewable energy. We apply a conceptual model based on normative multiagent systems (NMAS). We propose to model both the participants and the normative system as autonomous agents, having beliefs and goals. Norms, which can be internalized by the agents as obligations, are translated into conditional beliefs and goals of the normative system, which concern both detection and sanctioning measures. We show that the model can handle both the regulative and the evidential aspects of the case.

This paper describes the use of coherence constraints as a means to regulate agent interaction. Coherence constraints describe relationships between the content of utterances, and the context. They can be used for example to express that an answer must refer back in a meaningful way to the question that it answers. We also discuss several possible ways in which the enforcement of coherence constraints can be implemented in a multiagent system. Finally we describe a possible implementation in the 3APL platform, which shows the feasibility of this form of interaction regulation.

We are interested in interactive access control to web services in virtual organizations. We discuss argument games in which the set of credentials requested by the service provider to access a service is established by means of an interaction between a client acting as a proponent and a server acting as an opponent.

In the paper we study the dynamics of roles played by agents in multiagent systems. We capture role dynamics in terms of four operations performed by agents: ‘enactment', ‘deactment', ‘activate', and ‘deactivate'. The use of these operations is motivated, in particular for open systems. A formal semantics for these operations is provided. This formalization is aimed at serving as a basis for implementation of role dynamics in an agent programming language such as 3APL.

In this paper we are interested in argument based reasoning for access control, for example in the context of agents negotiating access to resources or web services in virtual organizations. We use a logical framework which contains agents with objectives concerning access to a resource or provision of a service, including security objectives. The access control mechanism is described by a set of policy rules, that specify that access to a resource or service requires a specific set of credentials. Our contribution is a formalization of the reasoning about access control using a planning theory formalized in Dung's abstract argumentation framework. We build on Amgoud's argumentation framework for plan arguments, which is based on an adaptation of Dung's notion of defence. Our formal argumentation framework allows arguments about the backward derivation of plans from objectives and policy rules (abduction), as well as arguments about the forward derivation of goals from general objectives. We show that reasoning about the feasibility of goals requires mixed goal-plan arguments, and we show how to formalize the plan arguments in Dung's framework without adapting the notion of defence.

In this paper we introduce a logic of abstract argumentation capturing Dung’s theory of abstract argumentation, based on connectives for attack and defend. We extend it to a modal logic of abstract argumentation to generalize Dung’s theory and define variants of it. Moreover, we use the logic to relate Dung’s theory of abstract argumentation to more traditional conditional and comparative formalisms, and we illustrate how to reason about arguments in meta-argumentation.

Co-located with : JELIA 2004 - 9th European conference on logics in artificial intelligence; International audience; In this paper we discuss Liau’s logic of Belief, Inform and Trust (BIT), which captures the use of trust to infer beliefs from acquired information. However, the logic does not capture the derivation of trust from other notions. We therefore suggest the following two extensions. First, like Liau we observe that trust in information from an agent depends on the topic of the information. We extend BIT with a formalization of topics which are used to infer trust in a proposition from trust in another proposition, if both propositions have the same topics. Second, for many applications, communication primitives other than inform are required. We extend BIT with questions, and discuss the relationship with belief, inform and trust. An answer to a question can lead to trust, when the answer conforms to the beliefs of the agent.

In this paper we investigate the specification and verification of infor- mation systems with an organizational structure. Such systems are modelled as a normative multiagent system. To this end we use KBDIOCTL, an extension of BDICTL in which obligations and permissions are represented by directed modal operators. We illustrate how the logic can be used by introducing and discussing various properties of normative systems and individual agents which can be rep- resented in the logic. In particular we discuss the enforcement of norms.

In this paper we introduce the so-called Beliefs-Obligations-Intentions-Desires or BOID architecture. It contains feedback loops to consider all effects of actions before committing to them, and mechanisms to resolve conflicts between the outputs of its four components. Agent types such as realistic or social agents correspond to specific types of conflict resolution embedded in the BOID archecture.

In this chapter we discuss our research on multimodal interaction in a virtual environment. The environment we have developed can be considered as a ‘laboratory’ for research on multimodal interactions and multimedia presentation, where we have multiple users and various agents that help the users to obtain and communicate information. The environment represents a theatre. The theatre has been built using VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language) and it can be accessed through World Wide Web (WWW). This virtual theatre allows navigation input through keyboard function keys and mouse, but there is also a navigation agent which tries to understand keyboard natural language input and spoken commands. Feedback of the system is given using speech synthesis. We also have Karen, an information agent which allows a natural language dialogue with the user. In development are several talking faces for the different agents in the virtual world. We investigate how we can increase the user’s commitment to the environment and its agents by providing context and increasing the user’s feeling of ‘presence’ in the environment.

The central research question of this paper is how notions developed in interactive computing such as abstract behavior types, the coordination language Reo, and Boolean circuits with registers, can be used to extend logical input/output nets, or lions for short. Lions are based on input/output logic, a deontic logic which is not used as a (non-classical) inference engine deriving output from input, but as a secretarial assistant for logically assisted transformations from input to output. We consider two extensions of input/output logics and lions. First, we consider input/output logics defined on infinite sequences (or streams) of inputs and outputs. Secondly, we consider lions with AND and register gates, formalizing the behavior of channels and connectors. We discuss also the role of interactive computing in normative multi-agent systems motivating the development of lions.

In this paper we propose a conceptual model of virtual organizations as normative multiagent systems. The dynamic aspects of virtual organizations are modeled using aspects of speech act theory and Searle's theory of the construction of social reality. We illustrate the use of our model by discussing an example of distributed access control policies. We show how the model captures the distinction between local and global authorities, and between local and global norm enforcement policies.