Re: [UCR] Managing Inter-Organizational Business Policies & Practices: Edited Version.

Chris Welty wrote:

> 
> 
> The new draft of this use case is much better, but there are still parts 
> in it that border on what I initially objected to.  Again, I think RIF 
> is clearly about machine-processable rules.  Of course if people want to 
> use it for other things, great, I won't stop them, but these other 
> things (like writing regulations or laws) shoudl not influence the 
> design of RIF.
> 
> Most of the current version is OK, I think, except:
> 
> "EU-Rent UK finds some problems in applying the rules. One is that 
> sometimes it has to give free upgrades to customers. It wants to have 
> one of the rules for insurance tax changed.
> 
> For an individual rental, the tax on aggregated insurance is 1.5% of the 
> simple cost of the rental actually paid by the customer (not the price 
> of rental of the upgrade provided)
> 
> It provides this to AutoLaw, which will negotiate it with the regulators 
> and disseminate the outcome to EU-Rent and its other customers. "
> 
> This is precisely what I would live to avoid.  RIF is not a format for 
> exchanging legal language between people so that they can negotiate.
> 
> Also:
> 
> "It also has some existing insurance policies in place. They provide 
> third-party insurance as an explicit item, and EU-Rent UK cannot get 
> refunds on early termination. It asks corporate HQ for rules:
> 
> Cost of third-party insurance will be built into the basic cost of each 
> rental, unless there is an alternative insurance already in place"
> 
> 
> I do not see how this rule could be implemented in RIF, in particular 
> "will be built in".  What is that supposed to mean?  This is not a 
> machine processable rule.
> 
> What do others think here?

+1

I can see there is good case for using RIF to encode an 
in-principle-executable form of regulatory rules. Section 1.3 of the 
current UCR editor's draft describes an example of that quite clearly. 
However, using RIF as a basis for legal negotiation between people is 
out of scope in my opinion.

I would think that trimming the sections you cite would leave the main 
content and spirit of the use case intact.

Dave