To reiterate what we said earlier, a Mandate is an official order or commission to do something. Think of a Mandate as “turn off the faucet”, or “feed the dog”. A Mandate is broken down into a combination of a primary verb “turn off” or “feed” and a primary noun “faucet” or “dog”. To reiterate,
every Mandate is defined by its paired verb (action) and noun (object).
Every Citation can contain one or more Mandates, but as in the case of stub citations, they don't have to.
Identifying Mandates
How do you identify Mandates in a sentence, or multiple sentences in a Citation? You begin by finding the paired primary verbs and nouns.
Primary and Secondary Nouns
The primary nouns and verbs in each sentence are the focus of the sentence. In terms of mandates the primary verb is the do and the primary noun is the thing being acted on. Let's examine the sentence “Protect the privacy of children”.
The primary verbs are always in blue in the UCF Mapper.
Protect
The primary nouns are always in green in the UCF Mapper.
Privacy
Protect is the primary verb and privacy is the primary noun.
Secondary nouns and verbs are used as additional information. Secondary nouns provide additional information to augment the primary noun, but are not the main focus of the action. In the UCF Mapper software secondary nouns are always in red.
Protect the Privacy of children.
The addition of the noun children is to augment the type of privacy being protected. The focus is still protecting privacy. We are now augmenting that with the type of privacy, children's privacy.
Let's try another one.
Prohibit the shared authentication methods such as passwords or tokens.
Of course prohibit is the primary verb as there are no other verbs in the sentence. Of the three nouns and noun phrases, which is the primary? Yep, shared authentication methods.
One last one before we reveal our secret.
Authenticate access to system components.
And yes, authenticate is the primary verb. Which is the primary noun? Access, absolutely, because you can't authenticate system components, can you?
Here's the secret way to figuring it out quickly - look for terms such as “of”, “such as”, and “to” between nouns. These point to the secondary nouns in the sentence.
Primary and Secondary Verbs
Primary verbs are pretty darned easy to spot. They direct the main action of the sentence.
We are going to use two sentences and we'll start by highlighting the primary noun. So the primary verb directs the action to the primary noun.
Destroy media when it is not needed.
Create a response plan to be implemented as necessary.
If the direct action is to destroy the media, then what is the secondary verb here? Yep, need is a verb. So not needed is the secondary verb. Secondary verbs are tagged in orange in the UCF Mapper.
Response plan is the primary noun in this sentence. So what is the main direction here? Yes, of course it is to create the response plan. So then what's the secondary verb? Implemented.
Again, there's a pretty simple cheat to get you there. Look for key terms such as “when” and “to” that point to the secondary action.
Primary and Secondary Verbs and Nouns
Now we are going to tie the primary and secondary verbs and nouns together in a couple of examples.
Include the supplier's services provided in the Third Party Service Provider list.
Which do you think is the primary verb? Yes, include is the primary verb. And what are we including? The services provided. Is there a secondary verb? Nope. Are there a secondary nouns? Yes - suppliers and Third Party Service Provider list.
Now let's take on one a bit more tricky. I'll give you a hint - there's both primary verbs and primary nouns in this one. There are two verbs - engaging and perform. Which is which?
When engaging a Third Party always perform a risk assessment.
Therefore, the primary noun is risk assessment and the secondary noun is Third Party.
Identifying multiple Mandates
About 20% to 30% of the time you'll get Citations that have multiple mandates in them. A Citation has a multiple mandate when there are two explicit primary verb and noun combinations (do this and do that), or the and is implicit in the sentence, added via a secondary phrase using a literary technique called parataxis (the placing of clauses or phrases one after another, without words to indicate coordination or subordination).
In each example for clarity we are going to re-write the sentence once for each Mandate we've encountered so that you can see the tagging for each Mandate. In the UCF Mapper, once you tell the tagging engine there are multiple mandates, it will duplicate the Citation for you.
Multiple Mandates connected by “and”
This first example is the easiest to spot. It has a deliberate and that separates each of the Mandates. One Mandate is for the plan to be created. The second Mandate is for it to be implemented. Two distinct actions. Notice that in the tagging, we've tagged the noun, response plan, twice. That's because it is the focus of the action in both Mandates.
Create a response plan and implement it as necessary.
Create a response plan and implement it as necessary.
Multiple Mandates separated through parataxis
In this next example we have a sentence with two mandates formed by two clauses, one after the other. Even though there is no “and” to connect them, the connection is implicit.
Is a list of service providers maintained, including a description of the service(s) provided?
Let's look at the first mandate. The primary verb here is a form of maintain. What are we maintaining? The list of service providers. Now let's look at this again as a second mandate.
Is a list of service providers maintained, including a description of the service(s) provided?
Using the same sentence for the second mandate, what is the primary verb? A form of include. We have to include something, so we are including a description of the service(s) provided. But there has to be more to it, because we have to include that in something. What are we including that description in? Yes, the primary noun from the last sentence now becomes the secondary noun for this sentence.
Multiple Mandates separated through lists
More often than not, multiple mandates will come in the form of a Citation written as a list. The list we are going to use here has three mandates in it, so we'll triplicate this list for tagging purposes.
Assign a unique ID as well as any of the following:
- Something you know, such as a password
- Something you have, such as a token
Let's go through the first mandate. The primary verb is easy to spot, Assign. Notice that it's the only primary verb in the list, so we are going to use it for each of our mandates. Now its easy to go through and tag each of the primary nouns in each of the three mandates. Unique ID is the first one.
Assign a unique ID as well as any of the following:
- Something you know, such as a password
- Something you have, such as a token
Password is the second one.
Assign a unique ID as well as any of the following:
- Something you know, such as a password
- Something you have, such as a token
Token is the third one.
Assign a unique ID as well as any of the following:
- Something you know, such as a password
- Something you have, such as a token