By Luc Moreau, Paul Groth, Simon Miles, Javier Vazquez-Salceda, John Ibbotson, Sheng Jiang, Steve Munroe, Omer Rana, Andreas Schreiber, Victor Tan, and Laszlo Varga

THE PROVENANCE OF
ELECTRONIC DATA
It would include details of the processes that
produced electronic data as far back as the beginning
Pof time or at least the epoch of provenance
awareness.

rovenance is well understood in the study of fine art where it refers to the documented history of some art object. Given that documented history, the object attains an authority that allows scholars to understand and appreciate its importance and context relative to other works. Art objects that lack a proven history may be viewed with skepticism by those who study them. If the provenance of data produced by computer systems could be determined, then users would be able to understand how documents had been assembled, how simulation results were determined, and how financial analyses were carried out. Computer applications should thus