A Hierarchical Adaptation Method for Administrative Workflows

Abstract

The use of workflows to manage business or administrative process has been increasing since the end of the past century. Administrative workflows proved useful in large companies and public institutions with strict hierarchical organizations. In order to use them adequately in different areas or departments of a hierarchical organization, they must be adapted to their particular conditions while complying with the general regulations of the process established at the top level. Any department of an organization can add activities, can remove them, and can choose concrete users to perform them and to set the data managed in the activities, as long as the adapted process does not fail to comply with the restrictions established at the generic level. This problem, called hierarchical adaptation problem, also implies establishing the appropriate measures to implement when the general regulation is changed. Such measures must maintain the consistency among the different levels by means of the propagation of the changes to all the adapted processes. To solve this problem, this paper presents the hierarchical adaptation method, which is an ontology-based method to define the rules to satisfy by a generic adaptable workflow. Additionally, it establishes the rules to satisfy the adaptations of the specification ontology. Moreover, it provides the operations facilitating both adaptations of administrative workflows and propagations of changes.