From laws to business process: Reducing the skill gap between legal professional and business process analyst

The communication between specialists who use different terminologies based on their expertise is a notable problem in all sectors. When legal professional and business process analyst have to exchange know-how, it is very difficult to find a common vocabulary because the cultural background of the actors is completely different. Moreover, some experts take for granted basic concepts that are not known by other experts or are known with a different semantic meaning, thus creating significant information gaps that affect all analysis tasks. The problem described above is presented in the HSEPGEST project. The project aims to create a coherent information system able to harmonize the many European, national, and local laws and regulations on health, safety, and the environmental protection. The resulting information system implements the concepts present in these laws and regulations and could be easily adapted to the frequent changes of the concepts. This paper proposes some helpful guidelines that will be used by legal professionals. The guidelines can be used as a tool to schematically describe existing laws and regulations in order to make them simpler to understand for business process analysts who will take care of the design of the information system. The guidelines seek, in short, to bridge the skill gap between legal professionals and business process analysts.