Aligning monitoring and compliance requirements in evolving business networks

Abstract

Dynamic business networks (BNs) are intrinsically characterized by change. Compliance requirements management, in this context, may become particularly challenging. Partners in the network may join and leave the collaboration dynamically and tasks over which compliance requirements are specified may be consequently delegated to new partners or back sourced by network participants. This paper considers the issue of aligning the compliance requirements in a BN with the monitoring requirements they induce on the BN participants when change (or evolution) occurs. We first provide a conceptual model of BNs and their compliance requirements, introducing the concept of monitoring capabilities induced by compliance requirements. Then, we present a set of mechanisms to ensure consistency between the monitoring and compliance requirements when BNs evolve, e.g. tasks are delegated or back sourced in-house. Eventually, we discuss a prototype implementation of our framework, which also implements a set of metrics to check the status of a BN in respect of compliance monitor ability.