Page History

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• Drummond Reed
• Daniel Hardman
• Scott Perry
• Shashishekhar S
• Philippe Page
• Paul Knowles
• Taylor Kendal
• Scott Whitmire
• Arjun Govind

Description

Context

ToIP is the first and only member of the Linux Foundation that, next to a focus Unlike most Linux Foundation projects, the primary focus of the ToIP Foundation is not just on technology (e.g. cryptography, DIDs and other identifiers, communication protocols, verifiable credentials, etc.) also and specifically focuses . Instead, our focus is just as much on governance, including the business, legal and social aspects. Its It is a complex and daunting mission is to "constructingconstruct, maintaining maintain and improving improve a globally workingglobal, pervasively usedpervasive, scalable and interoperable infrastructure for the (international) exchange of verified and certified data". This is an engineering task that must not only provide the technology, but also actual business value and capabilities for complying with different legal contexts and societies. The main difficulty ToIP seeks to overcome is the integration between technology, business, legal, etcall of these domains. 

C&T WG Mission

A well-known impediment for this integration is '"language confusion', evidence of which is that many ". Many stories about this exist in various cultures. A more contemporary acknowledgement of this is the arechitecture architecture of the EU parliament building in Strasbourg, which resembles the Tower of Babel (according to Pieter Brueghel's famous painting).

The (ambitious) mission of the proposed C&T WG is to identify and address the issues that relate to ways of thinking (mental/conceptual models) and terminology that may be an impediment for the ToIP overall mission of constructing, maintaining and improving a globally working, pervasively used, scalable and interoperable infrastructure  for the (international) exchange of verified and certified datathe ToIP Foundation.

C&T WG Purpose

In a similar way that the results of ToIP, in order to be used, the ToIP stack must be fit for purpose, the results deliverables of this WG must also be ' fit for purpose'. This implies that means the WG needs to keep tabs on understand what the various stakeholders will actually want need to do with the mental/conceptual models and terminology that this WG will govern.

Specifically, the WG  shall create and maintain a list of stakeholders, their objectives, the issues they face regarding concepts/conceptual models and terminology, and the products or services that they might use for resolving such issues. Knowing the kinds of Understanding these end products or services that will actually be used by others will provide the requirements that the concepts and terminology deliverables of this WG must satisfy. It helps will help us decide what tasks to undertake, guide us with tool selection, etc.

This is especially important because we envisage stakeholders to will come from very different domains - technicaldomains—technical, business, legal, etc. - each policy, marketing—each of which has different needs. Minimizing the effort being spent in this WG will require us spending some time to identify these needs, and finding ways to reconcile them We will need to reconcile the needs of these different groups into a minimum number of artifacts to be produced and maintained.

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The most basic purpose for having conceptual models (i.e. sets of carefully defined concepts, relations between concepts and constraints that should be satisfied) and terminology (formal labels for such concepts) is to help someone that interprets a term (interpreter) that is uttered by someone else (speaker), to accurately apprehend its intended meaning. This is particularly important in settings where groups of such individuals work together for a specific set of purposes, or to realize common objectives (we will use the term 'scope' to refer to such groups). The ability to test and/or ensure that the For these groups to work efficiently and effectively, the ideas they work on together with are must be aligned, is a key element for working efficiently and effectively. This is particularly . This is particularly valuable in (software) engineering, where 'interpretation errors' (mis-apprehensions) that go undetected may lead to buggy software and costly repairs.

It is common knowledge that every scope can have its own terminology (jargon). ToIP is about about interoperability between people from different domains (hence also different scopes) - e.g. legal, business, technical, social and other domains. Therefore, it is crucial to find a way in which each scope can retain use its own terminology, yet be able to determine whether or not the concept a term refers to is known in the other scope, and if so, what term is used in the other scope to refer to it. a concept referred to by one term in one scope is the same as a a concept referred to by another term in another scope.

For example, this This situation is quite common in e.g. court cases. Regularly, arguments Arguments are regularly made about whether or not someone or something qualifies as (an instance of) some concept. The outcome of this discussion is relevant, because laws assign consequences (duties, rights, ...) to those that do , or do not qualify. In order to be able to refer to such concepts, it is usually the first article in a law that documents section of many legal documents defines the mapping between terms and the criteria that are used to determine whether or not someone or something qualifies as an instance of a concept. It occurs that This way, even if different laws have different terms for the same concept, but that's it is not an issue as if legal documents make these mappings are made explicit. In all cases, the criteria The definitions are written in such a way that judges and other lawyers should all apply them in the same way (and in case of disputes, judges settle the intended interpretation). The processes for defining and using such legal terms serve to us as an inspiration for our work.

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Contributions and Example Outputs

For our purposes, we leverage a prior collaboration between Evernym ( Daniel Hardman ) and TNO (Rieks Joosten), and copy of Evernym and  Rieks Joosten of TNO as well as large parts of the ToIP Glossary WG proposal by  from Dan Gisolfi . The details of this are further down this document. An appealing result of the work of this WG would be at IBM (see the details in further sections below). A model for some of the deliverables of this WG is one or more websites that sort of look like that of 'Legal Dictionary', which not only would resemble the Legal Dictionary. This site not only provides a definition of various terms, but also a brief description (for TL;DR readers), backgrounds, various use-cases that exemplify the relevance of (the distinctions made by) the terms, and more. This may well serve as a prototype of (one of) the result(s) this WG would be working towards, that would be capable to reconcile the different needs that different stakeholder-audiences could have in a single C&T WG product, and that could evolve as ToIP evolvesof their backgrounds, various use-cases that exemplify the relevance of (and distinctions made by) the terms, and other useful information.

C&T WG Tasks

The envisaged tasks of this WG consist of

• creating and maintaining a list of stakeholders, their objectives, the issues they face regarding concepts and terminology, and the products or services that they might use for resolving such issues.
• specifying, creating and maintaining a product framework, inspired on by the 'Legal Dictionary', that can be filled with contents concerning include content helpful to understanding specific concepts and terminology (and other relevant stuff).
• specifying and operating a process for maintaining and improving the contents of that framework , (a proposal for which is under construction).
• specify other products/services that the WG will provide, or organize to be provided, so as to help stakeholders to address their issues.
• specifying and operating processes for maintaining (the contents of) such products/services.
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Governance

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The C&T WG will have a (small) 'governing committee' (GC) that shall:

1. oversees oversee the work that is being done to further/fulfill its mission as described above, which consists at least of the following:,
   1. function, at least initially, as a modeling committee (MCsee below) for the mental model on 'Mental Models', and how to CRUD (create, read, update, delete) them. 
   2. define the artefacts that constitute the 'body of knowledge' (BoK) of the C&T WG, which document all mental models and terminology that the WG governs.
   3. define artefacts that may be considered for CRUDding the BoK of the C&T WG mental models, as well as criteria that must be satisfied in order for such artefacts to be considered.
   4. define the process that considers  such artefacts (that satisfy the criteria), and produces a decision saying whether or not to update the BoK, and if so, how the BoK will be updated.
   5. define concrete artefacts (e.g. web pages, ...) that are to be generated from the BoK. Such artefacts are part of the results/products that the C&T WG aims to produce.
   6. ensure that technology is available that automatically generates and updates such artefacts from the BoK (particularly as it is changed).
2. connectsconnect/liaises liaise to the other WGs within ToIP as well as groups/organizations outside ToIP, e.g. relevant W3C groups, DIF, ..etc. for the purpose of furthering the work of both the ToIP C&T WG and that of the other groups, insofar that is considered useful....

The C&T WG will have at least one 'modeling committee' (MC) that oversees shall:

1. oversee the construction and maintenance of mental models that are relevant within ToIP, consisting of carefully defined concepts, relations between them and the constraints involved.

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2. choose labels for these models that are appropriate

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1. within the scope of

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1. the MC's own work. 

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2. associated each mental model

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1. with stories (visions, use-cases, ...) that explain it,

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1. identify pitfalls, etc.

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1.   in terms of what is understandable in other domains (e.g. legal, business,

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1. social, and so on), using labels that exist in that context if they nicely map onto concepts or relations, or otherwise introducing/suggesting other labels.

Working Group Charter

1. Develop and maintain a high-quality corpus of terminology (CoT) that covers the needs of the ToIP community.
2. Develop a process whereby this corpus can be:
1. Curated, based on evidence and using expert opinion, such that concepts, relations between concepts and constraints can be
   1. carefully defined,
   2. assigned an identifier (name/number/label) to distinguish it from any other concept in the corpus,
   3. mapped onto terms that are defined and/or commonly accepted in various relevant domains/contexts,
   4. their usage and relevance documented from organic sources,
   5. their status adjudicated into working, preferred, accepted, superseded and deprecated
2. Enhanced in a collaborative, open, and fair manner by interested community members.
3. Versioned.
4. Published in different ways (e.g. as a glossary, concept map, use-case stories ...), for specific purposes (e.g. education, reference, , ...) by different means (e.g. a PDF, a website, presentations/webinars, ...) and as needed by different audiences/stakeholders or domains (e.g. business domains, architectural domains, ...)
5. Promoted as a valuable public resource and an influence for convergence and excellence.
3. Train and organize volunteers so the initiative develops sustainable long-term momentum.
4. Disseminate/promote the work accross ToIP WGs, and other relevant audiences.

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