Service A provides a data retrieval capability that can be used by a range of service consumers, including Service Consumer A, In order to retrieve the necessary data. Service Consumer A first sends a request message to Service A (1). Service A then exchanges request and response messages with Service B (2, 3). Service C (4, 5), and Service D (6. 7). After receiving all three response messages from Services B .C .and D, Service A assembles the collected data into a response message that it returns to Service Consumer A (8). The Service A data retrieval capability has been suffering from poor performance, which has reduced its usefulness to Service Consumer A .Upon studying the service composition architecture, it is determined that the performance problem can be partially attributed to redundant validation by service contracts for compliance to security policies. Services B and C have service contracts that contain the same two security policies. And, Service D has a service contract that contains a security policy that is also part of Service A's service contract. What changes can be made to the service contracts in order to improve the performance of the service composition while preserving the security policy compliance requirements?