2015 IEEE Eighth International Workshop on Requirements Engineering and Law (RELAW) (RELAW)

Over the past several decades, we have experienced tremendous growth in new infrastructure, business practices, products and services that use information to achieve stakeholder goals. Laws and regulations from governments impose compliance challenges for the requirements engineers that build and maintain these information systems, including: balancing privacy and security, patient medical records, corporate governance, and ambiguity stemming from evolving regulations, technologies, and societies. Regulators, lawyers, engineers, and academics must address these challenges through a shared pursuit to understand the historical and social impact of laws and regulations on emerging technology. Importantly, these challenges are both expensive and continuing. Regulatory compliance must be maintained and monitored throughout the life of regulated information systems. The eighth RELAW workshop is a multi-disciplinary, one-day workshop that will bring together practitioners and researchers from two domains: Requirements Engineering and Law. Participants from government, industry, and academic sectors investigate challenges to ensure that information systems comply with policies and laws. The workshop will examine critical compliance concerns, including the processes for identifying relevant policies, laws, and jurisdictions, aligning system requirements with laws and regulations, managing changes in requirements or in the law, and demonstrating regulatory compliance through evidence-based mechanisms such as documentation, testing and certification, even in the presence of uncertainty. This year, we will also explicitly focus on mechanisms for improving communication between the requirements engineering and legal communities.