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Contributors/users in ToIP come from many different backgrounds, have different expertise, and work in different domains. So we expect to see situations of "language confusion", i.e. in which people use words or phrases, the intension (not: intention) of which differs from the interpretation of some listeners/readers. In most cases, language confusion issues get resolved fairly easily with or without the help of a dictionary. But when it really matters, e.g. in specifications or contracts, we need more than a set of definitions. This WG aims to provide whatever support may be needed to facilitate people in the ToIP community to understand one another to the extent (level of precision) that they seek.

Conveners (add your name if you are interested to become one of the conveners)

• Rieks Joosten, TNO
• Drummond Reed, Evernym

Interested Members (add your name and organization if you may be interested in joining this proposed WG)

. Many, if not most, are not Americans. They come from a different, sometimes non-Western cultures. For most of them, American/English is not their native tongue. They also may not have been exposed extensively to Western (American?) culture and (American) language. Apart from this, ToIP community members are expected to contribute different expertise, and focus on different topic domains, e.g. technology, governance, legal, societal, etc., all of which comes with its own jargon. 

We should not only acknowledge these facts, but also deeply realize what this means, and the implications this should have. We must expect to see situations of "language confusion", i.e. in which people use words or phrases, the intension (not: intention) of which differs from the interpretation of some listeners/readers. Such language confusion issues can often get resolved fairly easily, sometimes only requiring a good dictionary or glossary. However, in other cases a deeper understanding of one another is required, e.g. in when drafting specifications or contracts, and there we need more than a set of definitions. 

This WG aims to provide whatever support may be needed to facilitate ToIP community participants to understand one another to the extent (level of precision) that they seek/need.

Conveners (add your name if you are interested to become one of the conveners)

• Rieks Joosten, TNO
• Drummond Reed, Evernym

Interested Members (add your name and organization if you may be interested in joining this proposed WG)

• Daniel Hardman
• Oskar van Deventer
• Scott Perry
• Daniel Hardman
• Oskar van Deventer
• Scott Perry
• Shashishekhar S
• Philippe Page
• Paul Knowles
• Taylor Kendal
• Scott Whitmire
• Arjun Govind
• Vinod Panicker
• sankarshan
• Steven Milstein
• Joaquin Salvachua

Description

Context

The primary focus of the ToIP Foundation is not just on technology (e.g. cryptography, DIDs, protocols, VCs, etc.), but also on governance and on business, legal and social aspects. It is a complex and daunting mission to "construct, maintain and improve a global, pervasive, scalable and interoperable infrastructure for the (international) exchange of verified and certified data". This not only requires technology to be provided, but also actual business value to be created, and capabilities for complying with rules and requirements from different legal contexts and societies. 

C&T WG Mission

A major difficulty that ToIP seeks to overcome is "language confusion", which is perhaps the most pervasive impediment for working together across all of these domains. Many stories about this exist in various cultures, and anyone that enters the EU parliament building in Strasbourg, is reminded of this difficulty (because that building resembles the Tower of Babel as painted by Pieter Brueghel).

The 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 overall mission of the ToIP Foundation.

C&T WG Fit-for-Purpose

In a similar way that the ToIP stack must be fit for purpose, the deliverables of this WG must also be fit for purpose. This means the WG needs to understand what stakeholders actually need in terms of concepts, terms and glossaries, and how such stakeholders will actually use it. Many such artifacts already exist, e.g. glossaries (of NIST, or Sovrin), terminology sections in standards (e.g. W3C VC, DID), yet this does not seem to be satisfactory: Aries RFCs can define their own terms, the CCG has recently initiated a new 'glossary effort'. 

While the currently existing artifacts are useful for people to learn about specific topics, they have no track record of resolving terminological discussions. We regularly see such discussions (e.g. in issues, e.g. did-core #4, #122) and they are lengthy, do not always get resolved, and arguments do often not refer to any glossary at all. If we want people from the different disciplines (tech, business, legal, ...) to work together, we may need a way to actually ascertain that such discussions can be resolved.

Pragmatically useful and Theoretically Sound

The fact that many glossaries exist, and initiatives keep popping up to create more, proves there is a need. At the same time, it shows that earlier efforts have not brought the benefits that people hoped for, or expected. The WG should support such initiatives in a pragmatic way, e.g. by supporting the creation of a Common Glossary that describes relevant words. Perhaps such an effort can be undertaken in concert with the aforementioned CCG effort. 

Theorists/philosophers have noted that "far too much stock has been placed in the supposed efficacy and utility of defining our terms", and provide a theory for dictionaries, definitions, and meaning. Applying such theories and adopting the results of that work has proven helpful where people, especially from different backgrounds, try to work efficiently and effectively together. The WG should therefore support the creation and maintenance of relevant, and theoretically sound conceptual models and associated terminologies.

At a later stage, when the pragmatic and theoretical work have started and progressed to some extent, the WG should propose ways in which to bring these two together.

Contributions and Example Outputs

For our purposes, we leverage a prior collaboration between Daniel Hardman of Evernym and  Rieks Joosten of TNO as well as large parts of the ToIP Glossary WG proposal from Dan Gisolfi 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 would resemble the Legal Dictionary. This site not only provides a definition of various terms, but also a brief description of 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 by the Legal Dictionary, that can include content helpful to understanding specific concepts and terminology.
• 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.

Governance

The C&T WG will have a governing committee (GC) that shall:

1. 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 (see 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. connect/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 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.
2. choose labels for these models that are appropriate within the scope of the MC's own work. 
3. associated each mental model with stories (visions, use-cases, ...) that explain it, identify pitfalls, etc.  in terms of what is understandable in other domains (e.g. legal, business, 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.

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The primary focus of the ToIP Foundation is not just on technology (e.g. cryptography, DIDs, protocols, VCs, etc.), but also on governance and on business, legal and social aspects. Its mission to construct, maintain and improve a global, pervasive, scalable and interoperable infrastructure for the (international) exchange of verified and certified data is quite complex, and daunting". This not only requires technology to be provided (which is, or should be the same for everyone, i.e. an infrastructure). It also requires that different businesses with their different business models can use it for their specific, subjective purposes. And that each individual business and user is provided with capabilities that facilitate its compliance with the rules, regulations and (internal and external) policies that apply to that entity - the set of such rules, regulations and policies being different for every such entity, and dependent on the society, the legal jurisdictions and individual preferences. All this is to be realized by people and organizations from different backgrounds - different cultures, languages, expertise, jurisdictions etc., all of whom have their own mindset, objectives and interests that they would like to see served.

The aim of this WG is to enable people in the ToIP community to actually understand what someone else means, to the extent and (in-depth) precision that they need, and facilitating this by producing deliverables/results/products that are fit for  the purposes that they pursue.

We expect such results to include a common glossary, that lists the basic words we use in the ToIP community and briefly explain/define them, using existing sources such as  NIST, Sovrin, W3C's VC, DID standards, and others. We may be able to leverage the new 'glossary effort' that the W3C CCG has recently initiated. We also expect such results to include additional glossaries, that subgroups of the ToIP community (e.g. TIPs) create to serve their needs as they focus on specific objectives (thus facilitating domain/objective-specific jargon). We currently envisage 'technology stack' and 'governance stack' glossaries that serve the specific needs of the associated WGs. We leverage the ToIP Glossary WG proposal from Dan Gisolfi (IBM).

Also, we expect such results to include more precise (theoretical?) specifications of underlying concepts, e.g. in terms of conceptual/mental models. Such models help to obtain a more in-depth understanding of ideas that are worth and necessary to be shared within one or more community sub-groups. They may also facilitate the learning process that (new) community members go through as they try to understand what it is we're actually doing. And they may help to 'spread the word' in specifically targeted (e.g. business and legal) audiences. A specific focus of this WG is to establish relations between the concepts of the mental models and the terms defined in the various glossaries.

A model for some of the deliverables of this WG is one or more websites that would resemble the Legal Dictionary. This site not only provides a definition of various terms, but also a brief description of their backgrounds, various use-cases that exemplify the relevance of (and distinctions made by) the terms, and other useful information.

Finally, we expect to see results that we haven't thought of yet, the construction of which will be initiated as the need arises, by (representatives of) those that need such results for a specific purpose. Perhaps we might produce a method for resolving terminological discussions that can be lengthy and do not always get properly resolved (e.g. as in id-core issues #4, #122). Here, we leverage a prior collaboration between Daniel Hardman (Evernym) and  Rieks Joosten (TNO).

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 e.g. 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 e.g. '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 across ToIP WGs , and other relevant audiences.

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