EE--CCONTRACTING AND EELECTRONIC IINSTITUTIONSeol/TNE/APONT/EContractingEI.pdf · 2010-04-09 ·...

EE--CCONTRACTINGONTRACTING

ANDAND

EELECTRONICLECTRONIC IINSTITUTIONSNSTITUTIONS

NIAD&R NIAD&R –– Distributed Artificial Intelligence and Robotics GroupDistributed Artificial Intelligence and Robotics Group 1

EELECTRONICLECTRONIC IINSTITUTIONSNSTITUTIONS

Henrique Lopes Cardoso([email protected])

LIACC / FEUP

April 2010

Outline

• Electronic Contracting– Stages

– Projects

• Electronic Institution


– Concept

– Norms in Multi-Agent Systems

– Handling e-Contracts• Normative Environment & Normative Framework

• Contract model

• Automated Contract Monitoring

– Electronic Institution Platform• Implementation

Electronic Contracting


Electronic Contracting

• Running contractual relationships by electronic means

• Legal aspects:

– Directive 2000/31/EC on E-Commerce (EU)


– Directive 2000/31/EC on E-Commerce (EU)

Section 3: Contracts concluded by electronic means

Article 9 – Treatment of contracts

1. Member States shall ensure that their legal system allows contracts to be

concluded by electronic means. Member States shall in particular ensure that

the legal requirements applicable to the contractual process neither create

obstacles for the use of electronic contracts nor result in such contracts being

deprived of legal effectiveness and validity on account of their having been

made by electronic means.

Impact of e-Contracting on Orgs

• Shallow e-contracting [Angelov, 2006]

– Using ICT for carrying out the same business processes

– Maintaining the same involvement of people


– Maintaining the same involvement of people

• Deep e-contracting [Angelov, 2006]

– Higher level of automation

– Changes in existing business processes

– Research challenges on the supporting technologies

e-Contracting Stages

• Pre-contractual

– Information acquisition and identification of business opportunities

– Tools: electronic markets, matchmaking

– Output: invitation to treat

• Contractual


• Contractual

– Negotiation of business terms and exchanged value provisions

– Tools: auctions, negotiation protocols, contract templates

– Output: contract (legally binding agreement), e-contract

• Post-contractual

– Contract enactment

– Tools: monitoring, enforcement

Finding Business Partners

• Marketplaces for e-commerce (B2C, B2B)– Find potential business partners worldwide

– High degree of automation• Matchmaking facilities using registered profiles and RFQ’s


• Virtual Enterprise Breeding Environment (VBE)– Pool of enterprises (e.g. industry cluster) that establish a long-

term cooperation agreement• Trust (prior knowledge from business experiences)

• High degree of preparedness to address business opportunities

– Business opportunity ⇒ subset of enterprises form a VE• VBE provides infrastructure for boosting VE formation

Negotiating e-Contracts

• Exchanged values, provisions (contract drafting)

• Automated negotiation with software agents– Possible in relatively well-structured areas

– Contract templates


• Negotiation support systems

• Legally: contractual freedom

– Legislations regulating contracts are meant to facilitate, not constrain

– Parties are free to contract around “default rules”

Representing e-Contracts

• Contracts in an electronic form to facilitate searching and reading by humans– e.g. LegalXML eContracts specification (2007)

• E-Contracts automatically interpretable by machines– Representation of law, regulations and contracts as computer programs


– Representation of law, regulations and contracts as computer programs

– Deontic Logic: the logic of normative concepts• Central notions: obligation, permission, prohibition

• Often used in combination with Temporal Logic to formally specify the semantics of deontic operators

– Main representation formalisms: Rule-based languages, Event Calculus, State machines, …

Monitoring/Enforcing e-Contracts

• Automated monitoring/enforcement requires a machine-interpretable representation of e-contract

• Monitoring: check compliance of parties– Register contract-related events


– Register contract-related events

– Determine normative state (e.g. which obligations are active)

– Detect violations or alert potential ones

• Enforcement: coerce parties to comply– Sanctions (as defined in the contract or in its normative system

of reference)

– Reputation mechanisms

Electronic Contracting Projects


Elemental (DSTC – Univ. Queensland)

• Business Contract Architecture (BCA)

– E-contracting stages and activities

– Contract-related roles for B2B applications


SeCo (Univ. St. Gallen / Univ. Zurich)

• Secure Electronic Contracts

– E-contracting: legal, business and information security requirements

– Focus on security aspects of e-contracting


SeCo XML Container

Who, What, How, Legal

COSMOS (Univ. Hamburg)

• Common Open Service Market for SMEs


– Contract: who, what, how, legal

– Contract template: how, legal

CrossFlow (Univ. Twente / IBM)

• Cross-Organizational Workflow Support for Virtual Organizations

– Service provider/consumer relationships

– Vertical markets: standard services

– Contract templates for flexible service outsourcing


Foundations of B2B EC (Univ. Eindhoven)

• Shallow vs. Deep e-contracting

• Highly automated e-contracting systems

– Benefits

– Business, legal and technological requirements


• 4W Framework for B2B Contracting

MeMo (Univ. Tilburg / Univ. Aachen / ABN Amro / …)

• Mediating and Monitoring Electronic Commerce

– supporting electronic negotiations among human negotiators


• Model, build, verify and monitor distributed electronic business systems

– Specify B2B contracts

– Formal verification techniques

– Monitoring tools

CONTRACT (Univ. Polit. Catalunya / Imperial College / …)


Agreement Technologies (URJC / UPV / COST)


Electronic Institution Platform for

B2B Contracting


B2B Contracting

An institutional normative

Agent-based automatic negotiation includes:• negotiation protocols for

partner selection• ontology-mapping tools• negotiation-mediation

service with information privacy

• reputation-aware contract negotiation


An institutional normative environment includes:• a flexible and expansible

normative framework that facilitates contract establishment

• a contract monitoring service

• enforcement mechanisms

A Computational Trust and Reputation (CTR) system that takes into account:• the dynamics of trust

building• the contextual fitness of

business partners to a specific business opportunity

..

.

Handling e-Contracts in the EI

• Normative framework– Hierarchical norm structure with predefined contract

clauses• Background regulations to facilitate contract establishment

– Flexible and expansible in order to accommodate new contractual settings

Overview


• Contract model to use in an Electronic Institution– XML Schema

– E-contracts obtained as an outcome of the negotiation process

– E-contracts may include further norms

• Contract monitoring and enforcement– Rule-based monitoring engine

– Monitoring model that allows cooperation in contract enactment

– Enforcement through sanctions and reputation

Norms in Multi-Agent Systems

“rules of the game”, interaction conventions

restriction on behavior, regimentation

norm violation, reactive enforcement

imposed, compile-time, rigid


normative support, default norms

contract negotiation

norm adoption

norm negotiation

social norm emergence, patterns of behavior

emergent, run-time, loose

Norms

• Definition 1

– Informal guideline about what is considered normal (what is correct or incorrect) social behavior in a particular group or social unit. Norms form the basis of collective expectations that members of a community have from each other, and play a key part in social control and social order by exerting a pressure on the individual to conform.


and social order by exerting a pressure on the individual to conform. In short, "The way we do things around here."

• Definition 2

– Formal rule or standard laid down by legal, religious, or social authority against which appropriateness (what is right or wrong) of an individual's behavior is judged.

Source: http://www.businessdictionary.com/

Institutional Normative Environment

• Normative environment

– Middleware where agent interactions are guided by norms

– Support for contract establishment


• Institutional

– Environment with active role in checking compliance with

commitments

– Monitoring and enforcement

• give contracts a binding force

Normative Framework• Normative background that assists contract establishment

• “Default rules” (contract law)

Top Context

N1N6

N7


N1N2 N3

N4N5

N6N7

Context G1

N1N2 N8

Context B1

N4’N3 N5

Context B2

N3 N5N4

Normative Environment

• Normative Environment NE = ⟨NS, IR, N⟩

– Normative State NS

• facts, obligations, fulfillments, violations, time


– Institutional Rules IR

• maintain the normative state by defining interrelations among its

elements

– Norms N

• define the normative positions of each agent in the system

Contexts• Context C = ⟨PC, CA, CI, CN⟩

– C is an organizational structure• set CA of agents commits to joint activity

• partially regulated by CN ⊆ N

• set CI of founding contextual info

• parent context PC within which C is formed


� Each Contract generates a Context

• Sub-context C’ � C– C’ = ⟨PC’, CA’, CI’, CN’⟩ is a sub-context of C if PC’ = C or PC’ � C

• C’ � C when C’ � C or C’ = C

� Motivation: a B2B contractual agreement C forms a business-context for a more specific contract C’

Contexts (2)

• Contextual info InfoC ∈ CI– fully-ground atomic formula in FOL

� Motivation: a contract contains intrinsic information defining it (roles, exchanged values, provisions)


• Normative State NS = {IRE1C1, IRE2

C2, …, IREnCm}

– institutional-reality-element IREiCj: fully-ground atomic formula in FOL

ifactC(f, t) institutional fact

timeC(t) time

oblC(a, f, t) deadline obligation

fulfC(a, f, t) fulfillment

violC(a, f, t) violation

… …

Institutional Rules and Norms• Rules

• Semantics of rules: substitution in

• Norms

• Norm NC is

R ::= Antecedent → Consequent

IREC

¬< ≤ = ≥ >

IRE-C

oblC(…)

∧∧

NC ::= SituationC’ → PrescriptionC’

IRE-C’

< ≤ = ≥ >oblC’(…)

∧∧

InfoC’

C’ �� C


• Semantics of rules: substitution in FOL

– substitution Θ matches Antecedentwith NS

– apply Θ to Consequent and add fully-ground atomic formulae to NS

• Norm NC is– defined in context C

– applicable to C or to a sub-context C’

• Two kinds of elements in SituationC’:– background (Sb)

• exist at context creation: InfoC’

– contingent (Sc)• added later to NS: IRE-C’

Norm Semantics• Norm activation

NC = Sb ∧ Sc ∧ … → PC’ applicable to C’ = ⟨PC’, CA’, CI’, CN’⟩

∀c∈Sc c⋅Θ ∈ NS∀b∈Sb b⋅Θ ∈ CI’

subst Θ


• Norm activation conflict

– Act1 ⊗⊗⊗⊗ Act2 if NS1 = NS2 and either C1 �� C2 or C2 �� C1

• Norm activation defeasance

– Act1 defeats Act2 if Act1 ⊗⊗⊗⊗ Act2 and C1 �� C2

norm substitution activation contingent facts

N1C1 = Sb1 ∧ Sc1 ∧ … → P1

C1’ Θ1 Act1 NS1 = {c⋅Θ1 | c∈Sc1}

N2C2 = Sb2 ∧ Sc2 ∧ … → P2

C2’ Θ2 Act2 NS2 = {c⋅Θ2 | c∈Sc2}

Norm Contextual Target

• Norms may pre-exist to the contexts to which they apply

• Norms may apply to more than one context

• Relax norm applicability– from a sub-context to a range of sub-contexts


– from a sub-context to a range of sub-contexts

– typify contexts: C’ = id:type

NC = SC’ → PC’

• patterns of InfoC’ and IREC’ within SC’: InfoX:t, IREX:t

– unbound var X: match Info’s and IRE’s of any sub-context of type t

• substitution Θ binds X to a specific sub-context

Example• Supply-agreement: sa context type

– top context norm


– sub-context: sa3:sa � top

IREX:sa

InfoX:sa

Infosa3:sa

Example (2)


ifactsa3:sa(order(tom, r1, 5, jim), 1) none, N1top applies

NS Conflict

ifactsa3:sa(order(tom, r1, 100, jim), 1) N1sa3:sa defeats N1

top

ifactsa3:sa(order(sam, r3, 5, tom), 1) N2sa3:sa defeats N1

top

ifactsa3:sa(order(sam, r3, 5, tom), 1)

oblsa3:sa(tom, delivery(tom, r3, 5, sam), 3)

fulfsa3:sa(tom, delivery(tom, r3, 5, sam), 2)

none, N3sa3:sa applies

Contract Model

• Requirements

– include data for context definition and context-dependent information

• valid contracts for institutionally defined norms


– add contract-specific norms

• override default institutional norms

– expand predicted contract scenarios

• new institutional facts

• new context types

Contract Header

context definition


context-dependent

information

Contract-Specific Norms• Norm definition

– un-typed contexts

• define the whole normative relationship

– typed context

• override default institutional norms


Contract-Specific Rules• Iterating through Institutional Facts

– not restricting applicability to predicted contracting situations

– context-dependent

• contract fulfillment may be adjusted by matters of trust or business specificities

• ontology expansion

– define new institutional facts through rules

– define norms employing these new institutional facts


Contract Handling in the EI

• Contract establishment

– after negotiation and before execution


Rule-based Automated Monitoring


Contractual Obligations

Directed Obligation with Time WindowDirected Obligation with Time Window

OOb,cb,c(f, l, d)(f, l, d)

Agent b is obliged towardstowards agent c to bring about fact f betweenbetween liveline l and deadline d


• f should occur within the time window [l; d]

• having f before reaching l causes a livelineliveline violationviolation

• reaching d without having f causes a deadline violationdeadline violation

• counterparty c is authorized to reactauthorized to react if a liveline or deadline violation occurs

Contractual Obligations (2)


• inactive: not prescribed yet

• active – Ob,c(f, l, d)t

• pending – may be fulfilled

• fulfilled – Fulfb,c(f, l, d)t

• liveline violation – LViolb,c(f, l, d)t

• deadline violation – DViolb,c(f, l, d)t

• violated – Violb,c(f, l, d)t

Monitoring Rules

Liveline violation

Liveline violation without denounce → Fulfillment

Liveline violation with denounce → Violation


Fulfillment within due time

Deadline violation

Deadline violation without denounce → Fulfillment

Deadline violation with denounce → violation

Electronic Institution Platform for

B2B Contracting


B2B Contracting

Implementation

Class Diagram


Interaction Protocols

Negotiation Process


Interaction Protocols (2)

Contracting Process


Interaction Protocols (3)

Monitoring Process


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EE--CCONTRACTING AND EELECTRONIC IINSTITUTIONSeol/TNE/APONT/EContractingEI.pdf · 2010-04-09 ·...

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