Modelling the Provenance of Data in Autonomous Systems

Determining the provenance of data, i.e. the process that led to that data, is vital in many disciplines. For example, in science, the process that produced a given result must be demonstrably rigorous for the result to be deemed reliable. A provenance system supports applications in recording adequate documentation about process executions to answer queries regarding provenance, and provides functionality to perform those queries. Several provenance systems are being developed, but all focus on systems in which the components are textitreactive, for example Web Services that act on the basis of a request, job submission system, etc. This limitation means that questions regarding the motives of autonomous actors, or textitagents, in such systems remain unanswerable in the general case. Such questions include: who was ultimately responsible for a given effect, what was their reason for initiating the process and does the effect of a process match what was intended to occur by those initiating the process? In this paper, we address this limitation by integrating two solutions: a generic, re-usable framework for representing the provenance of data in service-oriented architectures and a model for describing the goal-oriented delegation and engagement of agents in multi-agent systems. Using these solutions, we present algorithms to answer common questions regarding responsibility and success of a process and evaluate the approach with a simulated healthcare example.

Requirements for Provenance on the Web

From where did this tweet originate? Was this quote from the New York Times modified? Daily, we rely on data from the Web but often it is difficult or impossible to determine where it came from or how it was produced. This lack of provenance is particularly evident when people and systems deal with Web information or with any environment where information comes from sources of varying quality. Provenance is not captured pervasively in information systems. There are major technical, social, and economic impediments that stand in the way of using provenance effectively. This paper synthesizes requirements for provenance on the Web for a number of dimensions focusing on three key aspects of provenance: the content of provenance, the management of provenance records, and the uses of provenance information. To illustrate these requirements, we use three synthesized scenarios that encompass provenance problems faced by Web users today.