Patent ID: 8307001

Claim:
A method for tracking curation history of changes made to sensitive government information stored within a database having base tables and corresponding backlog tables, comprising: placing changes made to the sensitive government information within the base tables; recording the changes made to the sensitive government information within the base tables to the corresponding backlog tables, wherein the backlog tables are organized to reconstruct a given state of the tables at any time by recording all versions of a tuple along with user identifications and names of parties generating new versions of each tuple and actual queries that caused the new versions of each tuple; storing a statement log that contains statements submitted to the base tables that have information on changes made to the sensitive government information, the statement log including text of all queries made to the database along with names and user identifications of parties submitting the queries, a purpose associated with each of the submitted queries, time stamps denoting the beginning and end of the queries that were submitted and the changes that were made to the sensitive government information, wherein the statements form a basis for all changes made to the base tables; receiving a curation audit expression that specifies sensitive government information to perform a curation audit that examines changes made to the specified sensitive government information, wherein the curation audit expression contains syntax clauses that specify a time period for the curation audit, stipulate a specific base table in the database containing sensitive government information to examine for the curation audit and examine whom is responsible for making changes to the specified sensitive government information; formulating a curation audit query from the curation audit expression that facilitates the curation audit of examining changes made to the specified sensitive government information; running the curation audit query against the database to ascertain the curation history of changes made to the specified sensitive government information, wherein the running of the curation audit query comprises querying the backlog tables in accordance with the curation audit query; using the curation history to identify a person responsible for making changes to the specified sensitive government information; returning logged statements associated with the identified person responsible for making the changes to the specified sensitive government information; examining the returned logged statements for suspicious statements that exhibit patterns of potential misuse of the sensitive government information and that are associated with any policy changes made for the sensitive government information; and determining whether any returned logged statements that have been deemed to contain suspicious statements are indicative of misuse of the specified sensitive government information and any policy change made for the sensitive government information.