Contract performance assessment for secure and dynamic virtual collaborations

In this paper we sketch a framework supporting contract enactment within the context of virtual organisation units that are dynamically created in order to achieve a common objective by securely sharing resources, services and information. The framework is built on top of a joint extension of the policy deployment architecture for peer-to-peer communities (Dimitrakos et al., 2002) and the contract enactment capability (Milosevic et al., 2002) that enables monitoring, mediation, arbitration and enforcement of electronic contracts in multiple, simultaneous closed collaborations. A longer-term goal is to deliver a scalable method of setting up contract enforcement and contract performance management infrastructures for interorganisational information systems that allow the on-demand creation and dynamic evolution of secure virtual organizations based on the ad-hoc integration of systems across enterprise boundaries.