Multi-auditor cooperation: a model of distributed reasoning

Management and analysis of complex systems frequently involves groups of managers and experts, each working on different parts of the system, cooperating and coordinating among themselves to manage and analyze the system as a whole. The authors propose a distributed reasoning approach to render this process of multiagent cooperation more efficient and effective. They consider, as an example of such a group process, the auditing process in assessing the reliability of an internal control system in which each auditor makes default assumptions about parts of the system being analyzed by other team members. The coordination process is modeled using an assumption-based truth maintenance system, which explicitly represents such assumptions, their possible retractions on subsequent contrary evidence, and changes in the auditor´s terminal options. The ways in which the resolution of opinions among auditors can be achieved through a process of evidence sharing facilitated by the model are discussed