Niche Business Service Templates

Xalgorithms components can expand niche markets for competitive revenue generation. While Xalgorithms Foundation is positioned to create and describe such market opportunities, it is designed to leave fee-for-service work for Xalgorithms Alliance member firms and any other firm to pursue.

In order to promote market development associated with an Internet of Rules Xalgorithms Foundation designs and maintains a set of generic-service-model business templates. These can be freely adapted by any company.

To the extent such income-generating opportunities through an Internet of Rules succeeds, Xalgorithms Foundation accomplishes its mission; and considering the purely financial matter, Xalgorithms Foundation can expect to sell more memberships to further resource its development work.

RECIPROCAL DATA (Preliminary Description)

A RECIPROCAL-DATA BARTERING CONTRACT FOR CORPORATIONS

The Xalgorithms “reciprocal-data bartering contract” template is being developed to provide a mutually beneficial framework for the compilation of confidential and/or private information amongst diverse incorporated businesses, while allowing for limited distribution of the assembled information within agreed terms of disclosure control. The contract consists of two parts, the static agreement and one or more schedules containing the approved data assembly algorithms.

Within the parameters of the jurisdiction where the agreement is made, any incorporated business from within or outside the jurisdiction could become party to the contract, thus becoming able to purchase subscription access to a data stream from the data compilation on a selected field-by-field basis, that is, in exchange for a specified payment in-kind. Payment involves supplying their own data — in advance, and for a minimum period of time — to the data compilation for the same data fields that they are suscribed to. Complete and truthful data provision stands as the only fee required for access to the data service.

The not-for-profit Xalgorithms Foundation holds no rights in such data records generated by the transactions it facilitates; rather, such rights would remain vested with the original data providers. Xalgorithms Foundation only owns some supporting elements of the data compilations (except where any of these has been obtained from another source):

the data model and related technical documentation (i.e. diagrams)
the metadata schema
implemented database tables, indices, algorithms & functions
data entry forms, queries, output views

Taking account of technical validation and legal obligations relating to disclosure control for the data compilations agreed to by the parties:

Granular data within the disclosure-control requirements may be supplied to subscribers under a strict two-year, non-disclosure agreement that is enforceable under both contract law and copyright law. Each participating corporation would be allowed to use the compiled data directly, or in any analytics solution that meets the data security requirements specified in the reciprocal data-bartering contract. Nevertheless, after two years, the granular data is automatically published for global access by anyone under the Open Data Commons Attribution License (ODC-By) v1.0 (or a later version of said license);
Highly aggregated data to the extent allowed under the disclosure-control requirements is automatically published for global access under the Open Data Commons Attribution License (ODC-By) v1.0 (or a later version of said license);

To subscribe, each participating corporation would need to allow the Reciprocal Data Bartering algorithm access the corporation’s own Lichen-mediated transaction data, and any other data agreed to through a reliable Application Programming Interface (API).

To create a suitable incentive structure for companies of all sizes so that they may offer access to their data, the reciprocal-data contract describes a logarithmic-proportionality scale. This is not yet developed but, essentially, the quantitative values for each data-input stream — relative to the aggregate quantities from all data-input sources — would be linked to the timeliness of the resulting data-output stream as revealed to each subscriber. The intention is that, through this arrangement, large, medium and small organizations will have an equivalent incentive to share their own commercially sensitive trade data fields, in order to obtain early access to the highly valuable granular-data streams that all subscribers have contributed in those fields. There should remain no inherent incentive for a large organization to represent itself as small, or vice versa.

Any set of parties to the reciprocal-data bartering contract can add a special-purpose clause with the objective of relaxing certain disclosure-control constraints. For example, parties wishing to participate in mutual data-disclosure agreements with other corporations in their supply chain may choose to be party to an optional clause under which they provide and get increased access to certain confidential and/or private transaction data from participating upstream suppliers and downstream customers, until they reach a standard number of transaction nodes in each direction of the supply chain. This would be implemented via an algorithm maintained in a schedule added to the reciprocal data-bartering contract. Various parameters — such as the number of upstream and downstream transaction steps in any supply chain to be made available through the agreement — can be updated from time to time via the version-control method described in this optional clause.

BUY MY DATA (Preliminary Description)

A CONDITIONAL DATA SUPPLY CONTRACT FOR INDIVIDUALS AND CORPORATIONS

The Xalgorithms template for a “data-supply contract for individuals” is being developed to provide market synergy when it comes to capturing data about individuals that businesses would use to optimize their market performance.

Under the agreement, any consumer of goods and services could choose to position him/herself also as a vendor of that part of their retail-transactions data over which they hold legal prerogative, as established in the consumer’s and vendor’s jurisdictions. This is intended as a mutually beneficial framework for the compilation of confidential and/or private information supplied by individuals, and for granting its conditional use by vendors. The contract consists of two parts: the static agreement and one or more schedules containing algorithms.

Within the parameters of the jurisdiction where the agreement is made, any individual, and any incorporated business could become party to the contract, thus becoming able to sell data to or purchase data from the data compilation on a selected field-by-field basis, that is, in exchange for a specified monetary or non-monetary payment.

the data model and related technical documentation (i.e. diagrams);
the metadata schema;
implemented database tables, indices, algorithms & functions;
data entry forms, queries, output views.

Taking account of technical validation and legal obligations relating to disclosure control for the data compilations agreed to by the parties:

Granular data meeting the disclosure-control requirements is supplied to subscribers under a strict, perpetual non-disclosure agreement that is enforceable under privacy law, contract law, and copyright law. Each participating corporation would be allowed to use the downloaded data directly, or in any analytics solution that meets the data-security requirements specified in the reciprocal data bartering contract.
Following a formal privacy-impact assessment, in accordance with the jurisdiction where the agreement is made, highly aggregated data within the disclosure control requirements are automatically published for global access under the Open Data Commons Attribution License (ODC-By) v1.0 (or a later version of said license)

To subscribe, each participating individual and corporation would need to allow the Reciprocal Data Bartering algorithm access their own Lichen-mediated transaction data, and any other data agreed to through a reliable Application Programming Interface (API).

No party to this reciprocal data-supply contract may relax the disclosure-control constraints. However, any set of parties to the data-supply contract could add special-purpose optional clause to the contract, with the goal of specifying the method and/or amount of payment to individuals for obtaining conditional access to their data. For example, individuals may wish to offer access to their data in exchange for a compensation that’s determined through an automated bidding system, either stand-alone or integrated through the API of any automated bid-management solution. In exchange for various levels of data-access authorization, merchants could offer discounts, points, or any other sorts of monetary or non-monetary benefit. In general, the more data a consumer makes available to the merchant, the greater compensation may be expected. But the actual types and amounts of compensation would be established through autonomous data offers and compensatory bids, so that the open market may determine data access prices.

Once a deal for data-access use is reached, the ongoing stream of individual customer data supplied into the compilation through the specified period would be made available in real time to the participating corporations.

The topic of what businesses may and may not do with data they obtain through customer transactions is controversial. In order to package the many complex and sensitive factors into easy-to-grasp options, individuals could be provided with various profiles expressed in generally understandable language, so long as they may also readily step through levels of incrementally greater explanatory detail. Some people will want to understand exactly how the various options affect their privacy and confidentiality interests. (For example, individuals could initially be asked to choose a privacy profile such as: “I’m secretive like a jaguar”; “I’m tolerant like a hamster”; “I’m sociable like a labrador”, and so on.)

XALGO-Verify

DUE DILIGENCE REGARDING THIRD-PARTY ALGORITHMS

XalgoVerify is a generic-service-model business template for an algorithm integrity validation service which can be offered either commercially or on a not-for-profit basis. When such a service is operational, it would provide rule orginators and their user communities a means to manage risk through due diligence regarding the integrity of the algorithms deployed.

XalgoVerify would provide users of any given rule — in this case buyers and sellers — a way to validate integrity when algorithms are sourced from third parties. The service can be offered with certification to a management standard — or, alternatively, with audited conformance to the principles and guidelines of such a standard, but without certification.

This service would evaluate whether the internal documentation of an algorithm says what the algorithm does; and that the algorithm indeed does precisely what it says. XalgoVerify services may also include automated testing for compliance with external requirements, such as regulations or standards. The XalgoVerify service package would include automated technical testing of algorithms similar in operation to the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN).

XALGO-Indemnify

COMPREHENSIVE RISK MANAGEMENT AND RISK TOLERANCE

XalgoIndemnify is a generic-service-model business template for providing optional financial risk management to organizations that implement Lichen or that publish rules on the Internet.

Operational Risk. Xalgorithms attends to all aspects of operational risk: degree of assurance, integrity (freedom from tampering), privacy, confidentiality, auditability, reliability (freedom from ‘bugs’ in code, design and architecture), trustworthiness, authorization controls and availability, data/metadata ownership/access/holding/ persistence, and issue-response methodology/performance.
Systemic Risk. The maintenance of professional documentation, and auditable conformance with open standards, serve to strengthen risk management by reducing uncertainty by facilitating audits from the logical architecture down to line-by-line tests. Implementing Xalgorithms components for very diverse contexts and solutions attracts peer review from many contexts while it also ensures that we’re managing for ‘whole system’ composability. Use of the very narrowly-expressive Xalgo language strongly constrains its potential as an attack vector.
Residual Risk. Residual risk mitigation is being developed through the creation, in communication with insurance firms, of a set of group packages that bundle defined benefits for scheduled preventative maintenance on deployed software plus 24X7 issue-management, emergency response and business continuity support, along with warranty and indemnity insurance at various scales of financial risk. This service model has two parts: Group insurance would be structured essentially as no-fault car insurance operates. Preventative maintenance benefits would be structured in a manner resembling dental care benefits (i.e. regular check-ups and routine maintenance). This indemnification package would include:
- Warranty and indemnity insurance packages for defined classes of errors & omissions
- Event-response and service continuity during adverse events
- Specialists on standing offers for emergency response
- A preventative maintenance package with defined benefits
- Efficient audited-claims processing
- Continuity of support during financial crises or austerity