A model-based approach to support privacy compliance

Purpose Concerns over data-processing activities that may lead to privacy violations or harms have motivated the development of legal frameworks and standards. Further, software engineers are increasingly expected to develop and maintain privacy-aware systems that both comply with such frameworks and standards and meet reasonable expectations of privacy. This paper aims to facilitate reasoning about privacy compliance, from legal frameworks and standards, with a view to providing necessary technical assurances. Design/methodology/approach The authors show how the standard extension mechanisms of the UML meta-model might be used to specify and represent data-processing activities in a way that is amenable to privacy compliance checking and assurance. Findings The authors demonstrate the usefulness and applicability of the extension mechanisms in specifying key aspects of privacy principles as assumptions and requirements, as well as in providing criteria for the evaluation of these aspects to assess whether the model meets these requirements. Originality/value First, the authors show how key aspects of abstract privacy principles can be modelled using stereotypes and tagged values as privacy assumptions and requirements. Second, the authors show how compliance with these principles can be assured via constraints that establish rules for the evaluation of these requirements.