A Hermeneutic Approach to Solving the Translation Problem in Designing Ontologies

Problems with traditional GRC information systems (IS) in the financial industry has led to a growing interest in solutions provided by regulatory and GRC ontology-based semantic technologies. However, the process by which ontologies are designed is, we argue, problematic. This is due, in the main, to the ‘translation problem’, which typically arises between business subject matter experts (SMEs) and software engineers during the ontology design process. The root cause of this problem is, as we illustrate in the first phase of our design research (DR) initiative, due to an over-reliance on formalism when developing ontologies and a failure to adhere to the ‘Ontologist’s Credo.’ Due to the problems that arose here, we modified the formalist method for ontology design to incorporate an approach informed by phenomenological hermeneutics, which is sensitive to the particular design challenges in representing the social world. We apply this approach in the second phase of our study which, like the first, focuses on the development of a regulatory ontology. This novel method we developed, which is based on an industry standard for creating a structured natural language, helps solve the ‘translation problem’ and enables the creation of ontologies that better represent problem domains of human activity systems.