In order to realize the full potential of the World Wide Web as an open, dynamic, and distributed ``universe of network-accessible information'', it is important for web entities to behave appropriately. Policy management provides the openness, flexibility, and autonomy required to regulate this environment as entities can reason over their own policies and the policies of other entities to decide how to behave. Using policies also allows entities to specify expected behavior of entities they interact with. Entities can also adapt to increasingly complex requirements without the need for substantial changes to the structure or implementation through the use of policies.

Policy management includes policy specification, deployment, reasoning over policies, updating and maintaining policies, and enforcement. We propose that policy management is required for the web for (i) constraining different kinds of behavior including security, privacy, conversation, and collaboration, (ii) configuration management, (iii) describing business processes, and (iv) establishing trust and reputation.

Topics of interest include the following:

Policy specification, implementation, and enforcement
Dynamic merging of policies
Static and dynamic conflict resolution
Dynamic policy modification
Formal models for policy verification
Relationship of trust and reputation to policies
Business contracts and rules
Case studies for policy management
Applicability of XML, RDF and OWL for policy specification
Obligation management
Policies for access control, privacy, and collaboration
Decidability and tractability issues
Digital Rights Management policies
Policy engineering
Enhancing P3P with policies
User-oriented policy authoring systems

Venue

The PM4W workshop will be held as part of WWW2005 in Chiba, Japan at Nippon Convention Center (or better known as Makuhari Messe). Makuhari Messe is conveniently located halfway between central Tokyo and the New Tokyo International Airport (Narita Airport). From the airport, it can be reached by bus or car in 30 minutes. Tokyo station is also only 30 minutes away by train (the JR Keiyo Line).

Types of papers

We seek two kinds of papers: research papers that report on the results of original research and short papers that articulate a position, describe an application or demonstrate a working language or system. Both research papers and short papers will be included in the workshop proceedings. Research papers should describe original research not published elsewhere and should not exceed eight pages in length. Short papers are expected to be four to six pages. Short position papers should provide insight into the requirements for, or challenges of, developing or applying policies for web-based information systems. Short application papers should describe an implemented novel use of policies in a web-based environment. Short demonstration papers should document a implemented system or language that uses policies. Each submission should indicate the type of paper being submitted: research, position, application or demonstration.

Submission details

Papers should be submitted electronically by the 1 14 February 2005. See the submission page for information on formatting and submitting your paper.

Deadlines

Papers must me submitted electronically by midnight (US eastern time zone, i.e., gmt-5) on 14 February 2005. Notification of the reviewing results will be made on 28 March. Final camera-ready versions of accepted documents must be provided electronically on 20 April, 2005.

Program

PM4W will be a one day workshop consisting of invited talk(s), presentations of submitted papers, and (probably) a panel as well as time for discussion.

For more information

For more information, send email to pm4w at cs.umbc.edu or contact one of the workshop chairs. A one page version of the call for papers suitable for printing can be found here.