QuOD: An NLP Tool to Improve the Quality of Business Process Descriptions

In real-world organisations, business processes (BPs) are often described by means of natural language (NL) documents. Indeed, although semi-formal graphical notations exist to model BPs, most of the legacy process knowledge--when not tacit--is still conveyed through textual procedures or operational manuals, in which the BPs are specified. This is particularly true for public administrations (PAs), in which a large variety of BPs exist (e.g., definition of tenders, front-desk support) that have to be understood and put into practice by civil servants. [Question/problem] Incorrect understanding of the BP descriptions in PAs may cause delays in the delivery of services to citizens, or, in some cases, incorrect execution of the BPs. [Principal idea/results] In this paper, we present the development of an NLP-based tool named QuOD (Quality Analyser for Official Documents), oriented to detect linguistic defects in BP descriptions and to provide recommendations for improvements. [Contribution] QuOD is the first tool that addresses the problem of identifying NL defects in BP descriptions of PAs. The tool is available online at http://narwhal.it/quod/index.html.