Metrics for Accountability in the Cloud

Accountability in the Cloud is a key concept that is determined by the accountability attributes. For assessing how accountable an organisation is we should be able to assess or provide techniques for measuring the attributes that influence on accountability. How much or to what extent they should be measured is a key issue. One of the goals of the A4Cloud project is, therefore, to develop a collection of metrics for performing meaningful measures on the attributes that influence accountability. This paper sets up the foundations towards the elicitation of metrics for accountability attributes. We describe here a metamodel for metrics for accountability attributes, which constitutes the basis for the process of elicitation of metrics for accountability. This metamodel is intended to serve as a language for describing accountability attributes and sub-attributes and for identifying the elements involved in their evaluation. One of the key components of the metamodel is the type of evidence the attribute use.