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Extracting ODRL Policies from Business Process Models: A Graph Traversal Approach to Compliance-by-Extraction

Source
arXiv — Computers and Society
Published
Last verified
7 Aug 2026
Confidence
High
Evidence
Original document retained
Reading time
1 min
Country
International

Executive summary

What happened, and why should leadership care?

A new pipeline has been developed to automatically extract Open Digital Rights Language (ODRL) policies from Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) XML. This innovation addresses the challenge of making the normative content within process models accessible to policy infrastructure and aims to mitigate the resource-intensive and error-prone nature of manual ODRL authoring or generation by large language models. The method leverages the inherent encoding of deontic modalities within BPMN control flow.

Why this matters

Why is this strategically important?

This development is strategically important for enhancing organizational compliance and operational efficiency by automating the translation of business process rules into machine-readable policies. It allows for the systematic enforcement of normative content, reducing manual errors and the burden of policy creation, thereby strengthening digital governance frameworks.

Key insights

What should be noted from the evidence?

  • Organisations extensively use BPMN for process modeling, but the normative content (obligations, permissions, prohibitions) within these models is often inaccessible to policy systems.
  • ODRL is emerging as a standard for machine-readable policy, yet its manual authoring is resource-intensive and requires specialized expertise.
  • Large language models (LLMs) present risks of structural invalidity when used for ODRL generation.
  • A novel pipeline can automatically extract ODRL policies directly from BPMN XML.
  • The extraction process is grounded in the observation that BPMN control flow implicitly encodes deontic modalities.

Evidence and confidence

How far can this assessment be trusted?

High confidence. Named institution, original document retained and analysis corroborated.

Analysis is prepared editorially by Aziz Shuaib Ausi. The original publication remains the authoritative record, and executive judgement remains entirely human.

Source

Where does this originate?

Reported by arXiv — Computers and Society · International. This briefing summarises the publication for executive use; the document itself is not reproduced here.

Read the original publication