Both policies and processes are defined on the basis of the organisation’s Information Model. To this end, the goodFlows Information Model Editor, a user-friendly software application devised for the specification and management of the underlying semantic model, provides all necessary functionality for the management of all different information classes and their relations, and the corresponding Information Model Ontology (IMO). The use of the editor hides the technical details of the model, requiring no particular technical expertise by its users; it translates the input provided through the graphical interface to machine code.

A consumer’s domain-specific information model is specified through the respective editor, modelling data types, purposes, operations, roles, etc., met in the operation of the organisation. In that respect, the Information Model ontology includes all associated classes, e.g., \texttt{DataTypes}, \texttt{Purposes}, \texttt{Roles}, \texttt{Operations }and \texttt{ContextTypes}, while individuals of each class comprise AND- and OR- hierarchies. Figure~\ref{fig:info-model-hierarchies} illustrates the \texttt{DataTypes}’ graph of a model. As shown, entities in the graph are interconnected with two types of relations; blue lines denote \texttt{isA} specialisation relation, whereas red lines reflect the \texttt{isPartOf} inclusion relation.

The formed hierarchies allow the definition of rules upon high-level entities which will be propagated across the hierarchies, alleviating the need to explicitly define exhaustive rulesets. In that respect, both positive and negative authorisations will be propagated to more specific entities, while negative authorisations will also be propagated across \texttt{isPartOf} relations.


\begin{figure}[!htb]
	\centering
	\includegraphics[width=\linewidth]{figs/info-model-hierarchies}
	\caption{Hierarchies within the \texttt{DataTypes}’ graph}
	\label{fig:info-model-hierarchies}
\end{figure}
