Formal Modelling

Formal modelling means representing a system by a formal model. Formal modelling is well defined and described as the application of a fairly broad variety of theoretical computer science fundamentals, in particular logic calculi, formal languages, automata theory, and program semantics, but also type systems and algebraic data types to problems in software and hardware specification and verification (Monin, 2003).

A wide variety of formal models have been created for supporting policy-making approach. The work of Boer et al. (2011) discusses how the interests and field theory promoted by public administration as a stakeholder in policy argumentation directly arise from its problem solving activities. They propose a framework for public administration, based on a model for diagnosis problem solving.

Policy-makers are usually facing the problem of finding the relevant parts of the regulations with their impacts in order to change the legal texts consistently and coherently. As a solution to these demands, Szoke et al. (2011) presented a semantic enrichment formal approach for policy makers which allows to reason on ambiguousness of legal texts and infer new knowledge. Wyner et al. (2011) proposed a semantic based model: they discussed the role of semantic models and ontologies in modelling policy-making, by describing policy making such as a cyclical, multi-stage process, with several stages: evaluation, agenda setting, policy formulation, decision, implementation.

Related term: Formal Model, Formal Method

References:

Monin, J.F. (2003), Understanding Formal Methods, Springer, 2003, XVI, 276.

Boer, A., Van Engers T., and Sileno G.(2011), A Problem Solving Model for Regulatory Policy Making. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Modelling Policy-making (MPM 2011), in conjunction with The 24th International Conference on Legal Knowledge and Information Systems (JURIX 2011). Vienna (Austria), 2011.

Szoke, A., Forhecz, A., Mascar, K., Strausz, G. (2011), Linking Semantic Enrichment to Legal Documents. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Modelling Policy-making (MPM 2011), Vienna (Austria), 2011.

Wyner, A. Atkinson, K and Bench-Capon ,T. (2011), Semantic Models and Ontologies in Modelling Policy-making. In Proceedings of the Workshop on Modelling Policy-making (MPM 2011), Vienna (Austria), 2011.


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