The Preliminary Specification Part XXX (S&AC Part III)
When we talk about the various people within the producer firms affiliated with a Joint Operating Committee. And the number of Joint Operating Committees that a firm may have an interest in. And the number of people a firm may have employed. Access control becomes a big issue. It becomes a big issue when you consider that your people certainly should have the access that you require, but the level of trust that you may have with respect to the other partner organizations is probably not as strong. This is the point of this blog post and how People, Ideas & Objects deal with the access and trust issue in the Security & Access Control module.
When we concern ourselves with the data and information of the firm, and the information that is cleared from the various Joint Operating Committees that the oil and gas producer has an interest in. We can all agree that this information is proprietary and is subject to the internal policies of the producer firm. (Information such as reserves data, accounting information, internal reports and correspondence, strategy documents.) What we are also concerned about is the information and data that is held in the Accounting Voucher and the associated data that is common to the joint account. (well licenses, agreements, production data.) Recall also, in our last post, that relational theory deals with predicate calculus and set theory.
Closer analysis of these two types of data and information that are held within the firm and the Joint Operating Committee fall within the proprietary and public domains. In Canada at least, most of the data and information in a Joint Operating Committee can be freely obtained through various regulatory agencies. Nonetheless, the majority of the data is shared through the partnership, vendors, contract purchasers and a variety of other groups who have an interest in the data and information. Not so for the producer firms data. Most of the information is kept close at hand and is only reported through filtered reserve report summaries and annual reports. Therefore keeping a handle on proprietary data, while operating the Joint Operating Committee as the key organizational construct of the innovative oil and gas producer, as proposed in People, Ideas & Objects, does not therefore present any immediate proprietary data leakage.
Access control can be limited by precluding any company personnel from viewing any other companies files. While in People, Ideas & Objects access control is limited to the Joint Operating Committees of the firm and the firms files only. (Set theory.) To extend this further we would have access control limited to the appropriate roles within the firm, then it is a matter for the user community to define a standard set of generic roles in which access is required to certain data types. This would also apply to the types of operations that can be handled by that role, for example, read, insert, update, delete. These generic roles could then be assigned to each individual within the organization based on their needs. Assigning multiple roles for more complex access.
The assignment of roles for access control can then be looked at from the producer point of view. What areas are deficient in terms of access control, are needed to be covered, and are not. An interface could be provided that would show these deficiencies and then additional roles could be assigned to cover off the areas that were previously deficient. A similar interface would be needed for the Joint Operating Committee so that the data and information needs were being met by the people that were assigned to work there.
Lastly these access control roles are assigned to the various positions within the chain of command that is developed through the Military Command & Control Metaphor of the People, Ideas & Objects application. This would be done to ensure that the people assigned were working in a natural way where the data and information they used was available for them to do their jobs.
By using the Joint Operating Committee as the perspective of how we view our systems brings into alignment all of the frameworks of the business. As we focus on the business of the business there will be areas where the producers will want to limit the exposure of certain data and information from some employees and partners. As we can see with this post, albeit with a little effort, it is certainly possible to maintain the acceptable limits to this information that have become the cultural norm in the oil and gas industry.
For the industry to successfully provide for the consumers energy demands, it’s necessary to build the systems that identify and support the Joint Operating Committee. Building the Preliminary Specification is the focus of People, Ideas & Objects. Producers are encouraged to contact me in order to support our Revenue Model and begin their participation in these communities. Those individuals that are interested in joining People, Ideas & Objects can join me here and begin building the software necessary for the successful and innovative oil and gas industry.
Please note what Google+ provides us is the opportunity to prove that People, Ideas & Objects are committed to developing this community. That this is user developed software, not change that is driven from the top down. Join me on the People, Ideas & Objects Google+ Circle and begin building the community for the development of the Preliminary Specification. Email me here if you need an invite.