Towards a computer-interpretable actionable formal model to encode data governance rules

TL;DR

This paper proposes a formal, computer-interpretable model for encoding data governance rules to assist data users in complying with regulations through reasoning and provenance recording.

Contribution

It introduces formal models for data and flow rules and a reasoning system, advancing the development of intelligent systems for data governance compliance.

Findings

Design of formal models for data rules

Development of a reasoning system for governance rules

Initial demonstration of compliance support capabilities

Abstract

With the needs of science and business, data sharing and re-use has become an intensive activity for various areas. In many cases, governance imposes rules concerning data use, but there is no existing computational technique to help data-users comply with such rules. We argue that intelligent systems can be used to improve the situation, by recording provenance records during processing, encoding the rules and performing reasoning. We present our initial work, designing formal models for data rules and flow rules and the reasoning system, as the first step towards helping data providers and data users sustain productive relationships.