Crosswalking and Harmonization

There are two approaches to mapping citations to Common Controls: Crosswalking and Harmonization. Crosswalking is a one-to-one match, meaning that each citation must be matched individually to one another.
Matching Citations: Crosswalking
In the example above, citation 1 must be matched with citations 2, 3, and 4. Then, crosswalks must be checked between citations 2 and 3, 2 and 4, then 3 and 4. This method is the easiest to implements, but is the most effective when matching a short list of documents with few citations, and becomes unmanageable as the number and complexity of Authority Documents grows. Because of the sheer number of documents that The UCF works with, the more practical approach is harmonization.
Harmonization is the process of collecting data from multiple Authority Documents in order to make comparisons across a composite data set.
Matching Citations: Harmonization
In the above example, even though citations 1 through 4 are worded differently, conceptually they are the same. Thus, through the process of harmonization they can be mapped to a central harmonized concept. This not only reduces the amount of mapping work between citations 1 through 4, but also can be said to match any other citation in any other Authority Document that matches the harmonized data set.

Walking the Dictionary

Each term in the UCF's Compliance Dictionary is linked to other related terms and concepts through their semantic relationships. Semantic relationships provide evidence of why a mandate matches a Common Control. Each connection between terms is measured as a "hop" from one term to the next.
Matching Citations: Walking the Dictionary
The example above illustrates the way that the term subject connects to the term risk assessment result. In the Compliance Dictionary, subject is a category of audit subject matter, which is a synonym of audit assertion. Audit Assertion includes risk assessment process, which includes risk assessment result. Measured by the Compliance Dictionary, subject is four hops away from risk assessment result. These "hops" will determine the Accuracy Rating, or Match Percentage. Accuracy ratings will be covered in greater detail in the coming sections.