Normative requirements for business process compliance

Norms regulate the behaviour of their subjects and define what is legal and what is illegal. Norms typically describe the conditions under which they are applicable and the normative effects as a results of their applications. On the other hand, process models specify how a business operation or service is to be carried out to achieve a desired outcome. Norms can have significant impact on how business operations are conducted and they can apply to the whole or part of a business process. For example, they may impose conditions on the different aspects of a process (e.g., perform tasks in a specific sequence (control-flow), at a specific time or within a certain time frame (temporal aspect), by specific people (resources)). We propose a framework that provides the formal semantics of the normative requirements for determining whether a business process complies with a normative document (where a normative document can be understood in a very broad sense, ranging from internal policies to best practice policies, to statutory acts). We also present a classification of normal requirements based on the notion of different types of obligations and the effects of violating these obligations.

Normative requirements for regulatory compliance: An abstract formal framework

By definition, regulatory rules (in legal context called norms) intend to achieve specific behaviour from business processes, and might be relevant to the whole or part of a business process. They can impose conditions on different aspects of process models, e.g., control-flow, data and resources etc. Based on the rules sets, norms can be classified into various classes and sub-classes according to their effects. This paper presents an abstract framework consisting of a list of norms and a generic compliance checking approach on the idea of (possible) execution of processes. The proposed framework is independent of any existing formalism, and provides a conceptually rich and exhaustive ontology and semantics of norms needed for business process compliance checking. The possible uses of the proposed framework include to compare different compliance management frameworks (CMFs).

Evaluating business process compliance management frameworks

This research contributes a formal framework to evaluate whether existing CMFs can model and reason about various types of normative requirements. The framework can be used to determine the level of coverage of concepts provided by CMFs, establish mappings between CMF languages and the semantics for the normative concepts and evaluate the suitability of a CMF for issuing a certification of compliance. The developed framework is independent of any specific formalism and it has been formally defined and validated through the examples of such mappings of CMFs.

Avaliação de sistemas de prevenção de falhas em processos de manufatura na indústria automotiva com metodologia de auxílio à decisão

Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES)

O projeto arquitetônico e a antecipação do projeto de segurança contra incêndio: interferência mútua, interação necessária

The great demand for Federal Institutions of High Education (IFES) design, triggered by the favourable political moment, boosts the public works market and brings with it the stigma of seeking the lowest cost and meet the federal Law 8.666/93 (Bids). In this context, this research makes an analysis of compliance with Fire Safety’s normative requirements in IFES’s architectural designs, taking this point as an evaluation of quality of designs. For the study, were used, IFES’s designs, specifically from UFERSA – Universidade Federal Rural do Semiárido and UFRN – Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, selected by the relationship use x public served and yet, in the replication of these buildings’ construction. The research was developed through the identification of the Fire Safety applicable legislation to the designs in question, with the determination of the demanded conditions that are architect’s autonomy or that affect the architectural design. Tabulated the requirements, through data collection and measures gathered in the blueprints, was made a comparison and verification of the compliance with these. The results of this evaluation reveal that the minimum requirements was not fulfilled and that IFES’s architectural designs, taken as object in this study, certainly will suffer restrictions in their regularization process with the Fire Department. It is concluded that is necessary an improvement in the IFES’s designs to meet the minimum fire safety regulations and improvement in quality. Moreover, the results direct to the understanding that level of knowledge about Fire Safety received in undergraduate by architects is insufficient for appropriate elaboration of architectural designs in this area.

Le couple conceptuel "public - privé" à l'intérieur de la littérature portant sur le problème des mains sales

Résumé: Le rapport entre la morale et la politique est un des plus vieux problèmes et des plus durables que s’est posé la philosophie morale, la philosophie politique, et plus récemment la philosophie du droit. Pour certains, la Morale, au sens large, doit guider les actions humaines dans toutes les sphères d’activité et les individus devraient ainsi, au mieux de leur capacité, chercher à se conformer à ses exigences. Dans ce cas, il ne peut y avoir de dilemme moral entre les exigences normatives issues de l’univers politique et les exigences, prétendument universelles, de la Morale. En contrepartie, d’autres suggèrent que l’on peut être justifié d’enfreindre, à certains moments, les exigences que l’on considère comme morales dans la vie « ordinaire » étant donné le caractère adversatif de la politique. Le dilemme se présente, ainsi, comme une tension entre deux normativités qui suggèrent une distinction entre ce qui relève du public et ce qui relève du privé. C’est en voulant répondre à ce dernier problème que s’est développé une littérature qui porte au cœur de sa conception le problème de la justification morale d’une action politique qui est moralement condamnable. Dans son ensemble, ce mémoire s’intéresse à analyser comment la littérature portant sur le problème des mains sales traite la question du couple conceptuel public – privé. Nous soutenons, qu’en retenant la possibilité d’une réelle distinction entre ces deux univers à normativités différentes, l’hypothèse qu’il y a effectivement une tension entre le domaine privé et le domaine public, qui ne peut totalement se soumettre aux exigences de la morale étant donné les particularités de l’action politique. Ceci étant dit, nous désirons nuancer une telle prise de position qui fait écho aux écrits de Machiavel. Ainsi, nous soutiendrons que cette distance entre le public et le privé est bien réelle, cependant, elle ne se présente pas aussi radicalement. Plutôt, elle se présente comme une distinction qui est liée à l’enjeu de l’évaluation, du jugement moral, faite par les individus qui sont hors de la politique et de ceux étant à l’intérieur de la politique.

A normative method to analyse workarounds in a healthcare environment: motivations, consequences, and constraints

Healthcare information systems have the potential to enhance productivity, lower costs, and reduce medication errors by automating business processes. However, various issues such as system complexity and system abilities in a relation to user requirements as well as rapid changes in business needs have an impact on the use of these systems. In many cases failure of a system to meet business process needs has pushed users to develop alternative work processes (workarounds) to fill this gap. Some research has been undertaken on why users are motivated to perform and create workarounds. However, very little research has assessed the consequences on patient safety. Moreover, the impact of performing these workarounds on the organisation and how to quantify risks and benefits is not well analysed. Generally, there is a lack of rigorous understanding and qualitative and quantitative studies on healthcare IS workarounds and their outcomes. This project applies A Normative Approach for Modelling Workarounds to develop A Model of Motivation, Constraints, and Consequences. It aims to understand the phenomenon in-depth and provide guidelines to organisations on how to deal with workarounds. Finally the method is demonstrated on a case study example and its relative merits discussed.

Environmental assessment for commercial buildings: Stakeholder requirements and tool characteristics

The Cooperative Research Centre for Construction Innovation (CRC CI) is a national research, development and implementation centre focused on the needs of the property, design, construction and facility management sectors. Established in 2001 and headquartered at Queensland University of Technology as an unincorporated joint venture under the Australian Government's Cooperative Research Program, the CRC CI is developing key technologies, tools and management systems to improve the effectiveness of the construction industry. The CRC CI is a seven year project funded by a Commonwealth grant and industry, research and other government support. More than 150 researchers and an alliance of 19 leading partner organisations are involved in and support the activities of the CRC CI