The Cycle of Trust in Mixed Service-Oriented Systems

Many collaboration platforms are realized as service-oriented systems enabling flexible compositions of services and support of interactions. Interactions between entities in such systems do not only span software services, but also human actors. A mixed service-oriented system is therefore composed of human and software services. In open environments, interactions between people and services are highly dynamic and often influenced by the role and reputation of collaboration partners. In this paper we present an architecture for the management of trust in such mixed systems environments. In contrast to traditional solutions that typically focus on the matching of actors´ skills and competencies with collaboration requirements only, we propose a trust-based ´feedback loop´ enabling the inference and consideration of trust relationships based on observed interactions. This cycle, spanning interaction monitoring, trust analysis, trust-enabled collaboration planning, and trust-supported execution of activities and tasks, permits dynamic and trust-aware collaborations in service-oriented environments.