On the Controlled Evolution of Access Rules in Cooperative Information Systems

For several reasons enterprises are frequently subject to organizational change. Respective adaptations may concern business processes, but also other components of an enterprise architecture. In particular, changes of organizational structures often become necessary. The information about organizational entities and their relationships is maintained in organizational models. Therefore the quick and correct adaptation of these models is fundamental to adequately cope with changes. However, model changes alone are not sufficient to guarantee consistency. Since organizational models also provide the basis for defining access rules (e.g., actor assignments in workflow management systems or access rules in document–centered applications) this information has to be adapted accordingly (e.g., to avoid non-resolvable actor assignments). Current approaches do not adequately address this problem, which often leads to security gaps and delayed change adaptations. In this paper we present a comprehensive approach for the controlled evolution of organizational models in cooperative information systems. First, we introduce a set of operators with well-defined semantics for defining and changing organizational models. Second, we present an advanced approach for the semi-automated adaptation of access rules when the underlying organizational model is changed. This includes a formal part concerning both the evolution of organizational models and the adaptation of related access rules.