Abstract— Geographic Information System (GIS) contracts are specialized in nature. GIS diffusion within organizations from developing countries is much low, that is why, organizations do not have the capability to validate GIS contract which is prepared by service provider hence promoting boilerplate contract. Boilerplate contract is relied upon all in the development, operational, and maintenance phases of GIS in organizations for developing countries. A number of different problems are generated during the execution of GIS project, for instance: 1) No indicators are explicitly defined to measure the performance of client and service provider. 2) Due to the lack of these indicators, both parties remain unable to reach on an agreement for measuring the performance of each other. 3) No mechanism exists to track the progress in both sides. 4) Penalty cost due to negligent behavior is not accepted, supposing that penalties are rather imposed. Thus, this paper proposes an automatically intelligent mechanism to regulate technical parts of GIS contract. In order to create an electronic contract processing our approach proposes firstly to convert already existing signed contract by scanning it and extracting lexemes using optical character recognition methods. For all new contract creation, a Graphical User Interface (GUI) is provided to take into account preferences of users. This information is stored in a database and shared published across involved parties. A mechanism to track the contracts based on performance indicators is also incorporated. Back propagation artificial neural network (BNN) is initially trained by providing specific ranges of valid values and rectifying these values on the basis of user’s input. The framework is also able to track performance from both parties based on indicators compiled by liabilities and obligations against each other. Index Terms— Intelligent automation, Back propagation neural network, Service contracts, Geographic Information System I. INTRODUCTION erformance indicators of social ability of an intelligent agent cannot be made explicit. However agreements can be reached as a measure. Reactive and proactive behavior of intelligent agents is quantifiable. The agent becomes social by generating lists of options to mutually Manuscript received February 2010; revised March 2010. Muhammad Shaheen is research student (Ph.D – Computer Science) in Department of Computer Science, University of Engineering & Technology Lahore, Pakistan (Corresponding author phone: 331-452-5045; e-mail: shaheen@ uet.edu.pk). Dr. Muhammad Aslam is Assistant Professor in Department of Computer Science, University of Engineering & Technology Lahore. (e- mail: maslam@uet.edu.pk). Dr. Muhammad Shahbaz is Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department, University of University of Engineering & Technology Lahore, Pakistan. (e-mail: m.shahbaz@uet.edu.pk). agreeing terms and contract conditions. Moving away from traditional development to packaged approach, simple or shrink wrap licenses have evolved to complex agreements [Kaminski and Perry, 2007]. These agreements are meant to classify the liabilities and obligations of the stakeholders. Contracts are important in the context of loosely coupled structures [Abdel and Salle, 2002] like supply chains that involve independent entities. No central authority exists that coordinates activities of entities resulting from a supply chain in which each one is responsible to arrange a contract with their partner defining the collaboration in which they engage for instance a service under a term of contract. Nowadays, contracts define rights and obligations of parties as well as conditions under which they arise and become discharged. The rights and obligations concern either states of the affairs or actions that should be carried out. Contracts define both primary and secondary obligations. Secondary obligation is considered when primary obligation is not brought into the matter. The commitments are shaped in contracts in different ways. Some commitments are time bound and tracked with respect to its deadline while others are resource bound [Abdel and Salle, 2002]. GIS is emerging domain which is utilizing state of the art technology to enable visualization of networks on satellite imagery. GIS is diffusing rapidly in pipeline industries, railway track management, air travel management, urban units, etc. The development phases of GIS differ from that of conventional information systems [Longley et.al, 2002]. Obviously the performance indicators of the former become specialized. In addition, research on electronic contract management is becoming more dynamic with the advent of Internet and e-commerce [Kwok and Nguyen, 2005]. GIS contract can be divided into three terms: Service, Technical, and Resource. Service contract sets out terms and conditions required as part of services provided by a consultant to a client. Terms can define liabilities and obligations of the contractor as well as of the client. Technical terms contract is the backbone of information system contract, covering core concept of information system development. GIS has its own life cycle which differs from the conventional software development life cycle. GIS development is step wise procedure and the terms of contract should be reviewed at each step of the procedure. Technical term contract of GIS includes data processing services [Xiao and Fu, 2003], GPS data collection [Ibboston and Sachs, 1999], programming requirements [Landa, 2008], digitization [Barbieri et.al, 2004], implementation of planning services [IBM golbal services, 2007], map coding services, real time GPS data collection [Ibboston and Sachs, 1999], spatial data An Intelligent Mechanism for GIS Contract Automation Muhammad Shaheen 1 , Muhammad Aslam 2 , Muhammad Shahbaz 3 , Jamshaid Khan 4 and Nazish Shaheen 5 P Proceedings of the World Congress on Engineering and Computer Science 2011 Vol I WCECS 2011, October 19-21, 2011, San Francisco, USA ISBN: 978-988-18210-9-6 ISSN: 2078-0958 (Print); ISSN: 2078-0966 (Online) WCECS 2011