# An ASP Framework for the Refinement of Authorization and Obligation Policies

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2305.13190 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2305.13190/

## Key facts

- Cited by 3 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- Builds on 5 of its 29 references that are in the map.
- First posted on arXiv 22 May 2023.

## Builds on (most cited first, 5 of 5)

- [Answering the "why" in Answer Set Programming - A Survey of Explanation Approaches](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1809.08034/) (2018)
- [A System for Explainable Answer Set Programming](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2009.10242/) (2020)
- [APIA: An Architecture for Policy-Aware Intentional Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2109.08287/) (2021)
- [RestKB: A Library of Commonsense Knowledge about Dining at a Restaurant](https://mlsanity.com/paper/1909.08239/) (2019)
- [The Queen's Guard: A Secure Enforcement of Fine-grained Access Control In Distributed Data Analytics Platforms](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2106.13123/) (2021)

## Built on by (most cited first, 3 of 3)

- [Autonomous Agents and Policy Compliance: A Framework for Reasoning About Penalties](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2512.03931/) (2025)
- [Architecture for Simulating Behavior Mode Changes in Norm-Aware Autonomous Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2502.09215/) (2025)
- [Explainability Framework for Policy-Aware Autonomous Agents](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2607.21209/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

This paper introduces a framework for assisting policy authors in refining and improving their policies. In particular, we focus on authorization and obligation policies that can be encoded in Gelfond and Lobo's AOPL language for policy specification. We propose a framework that detects the statements that make a policy inconsistent, underspecified, or ambiguous with respect to an action being executed in a given state. We also give attention to issues that arise at the intersection of authorization and obligation policies, for instance when the policy requires an unauthorized action to be executed. The framework is encoded in Answer Set Programming. Under consideration for acceptance in TPLP.