Towards a Framework for Business Process Compliance

Compliance with laws and regulations of business processes and software systems is becoming a crucial issue for organizations and calls for suitable methods to deal with it. In contrast to business processes and organizational requirements, regulations are very abstract and hence it is important to refine them until they are at a level of abstraction similar to that of business processes. In this position paper, we investigate the steps needed to provide a framework that integrates law modeling notations with business process modeling notations. Based on the normative statements found in a legal document, we identify a law-compliant strategic goal model and describe possible templates for business processes. This framework aims to help organizations and software engineers assess the compliance of business processes, improve their processes, and manage evolution. With the help of a middle-layer goal modeling notation, it is possible to analyze the full or partial compliance in a systematic way and identify the rationale for the presence of particular activities.