As a result of the proliferation of Web 2.0 style web
sites, the practice of mashup services has become
increasingly popular in the web development
community. While mashup services bring flexibility
and speed in delivering new valuable services to
consumers, the issue of accountability associated with
the mashup practice remains largely ignored by the
industry. Furthermore, realizing the great benefits of
mashup services, industry leaders are eagerly pushing
these services into the enterprise arena. Although
enterprise mashup services hold great promise in
delivering a flexible SOA solution in a business
context, the lack of accountability in current mashup
solutions may render this ineffective in the enterprise
environment. This paper defines accountability for
mashup services, analyses the underlying issues in
practice, and finally proposes a framework and
ontology to model accountability. This model may then
be used to develop effective accountability solutions for
mashup environments.