7. Summary and Outlook

The concept of a metapolicy has existed for quite a while, but in the literature, its detailed significance has not been thoroughly explored, especially in relation to the management of information technology systems. I have investigated the processes related to the application of management policies. The understanding gained as a result of this investigation led to an enhanced policy life cycle. Using this knowledge, significant insights into the metapolicy concept were derived.

The introduction of the supporting processes and their relation to the states in the policy life cycle has an impact on the understanding of policy-based management as well. Most importantly, in addition to the common understanding that metapolicies are ``policies about policies'', I introduced the concept that metapolicies are also ``policies governing the policy life cycle''.

Although the classification of metapolicies has been proposed previously, I take a different approach by looking at management needs. In my classification, I am able to identify the mapping of the type of metapolicies to the supporting process associated with a state in the enhanced policy life cycle. In this way, this classification can become a basis on which a self-contained management system can be developed.

The requirements for metapolicies in policy-based management systems were examined:

• The management system must contain appropriate management information.

• It must be possible to address the components in the management system and the components, in turn, must provide methods that allow them to be managed. These methods should be accessible by a policy mechanism.

• In order for the metapolicies to control a metapolicy-compliant operation of the system, the metapolicies must be strictly followed by the system itself when it is running.

Considering these requirements a proposal for the integration of metapolicies in an existing policy-based management system was made. This proposal was transformed into a detailed model allowing the implementation within the existing system.

A starting point has been created for future work, which will include the design of an appropriate representation to describe metapolicies more completely, to implement the enhanced policy life cycle with its related processes, and to test metapolicies on those processes. Once this has been achieved, a useful extension of the presented metapolicy concept could be the inclusion of a mechanism to control the exchange of policies between different management systems.