Resources
- Identity Use Cases & Scenarios.
- FIDIS Deliverables.
- IDIS Journal.
- FIDIS Interactive.
- Press & Events.
- In-House Journal.
- Booklets
- Identity in a Networked World.
- Identity R/Evolution.
D2.3: Models
Assets & transactions
Description
Assets & transactions relates to the information concerning owning a belonging and acquisition of “goods”. These goods include a vast variety of “things” such as real-estates (a house), a digital item (such as a sound), a sum of money, or even a piece of information. The acquisition refers to the different processes used to transfer this information to a person, for instance via some purchasing action, or indeed any other means (for instance using a peer-to-peer network tool).
The management of the “assets & transactions” information is related to the association of items to a person (typically the items that belong to this person) as well as the historical data concerning this association. The role of the transaction attributes is to encapsulate this historical information.
Examples of attributes
Income
Salaries
Other revenues
Financial
Bank accounts
Loans
Stocks
Physical properties
Real estates properties
Car
Digital properties (digital items)
Sounds
Movies
Socio-economical category
Application domains
Many application domains deal with asset & transaction information. The first obvious sets of applications are e-commerce, since they have a direct interest in making a commercial transaction with a person. For this purpose, companies sometime use data-mining techniques to profile their existing or potential clients to improve the effectiveness of their commercial campaigns. These companies are also interested in a better knowledge of their clients (what they own, what their financial capabilities are, what their socio-economical categories are) in order to adapt the interaction, and guide them (or orient them) to products that they are likely to buy. Of course, the access of this personal information (or set of attributes) may not be acceptable to the person.
The “market” of digital goods (for instance sound tracks) is slightly more complex since, with the advent of peer-to-peer networks, the exchanges of digital items may occur outside of a commercial context. In this case, a participant of a peer-to-peer network will display to other participants a profile describing the digital items that he “owns”. This information may be used by peer-to-peer nodes to identify the item to be exchanged, but can also be used by the major media companies to track violation of digital rights.
In the case of reputation based e-commerce systems (such as eBay) the transaction history information of the sellers and the buyers are made visible to all, providing transparency mechanisms in order to enforce trust.
E-banking represents another application domain that is likely to manage person’s information, and in particular the “assets & transactions” attributes. The first motivation is, as in the previous case, to sell customers some financial products. The second motivation is to construct the risk profile of the person, and their capacity to reimburse a loan.
The government, and more particularly its tax department, is interested in accessing all this information, in order to calculate the financial contribution of the person to the society.
Relevant standards
Assets & transactions information, or attributes that represent information about people assets and transactions, are not often the subject of open specifications. For instance, government systems or e-commerce systems, may manage this information internally using proprietary standards. However, HR-XML, which is used to manage human resource information, does represent some employee financial information with attributes such as “Pay” (a brief description of the salary, rate of pay or bonus provided by the job/position) or the “employee StockPlan”. Needless to say, the sensitivity of this information (and therefore the desire for confidentiality), in some of the European countries in particular, is considered high.
In the domain of electronic commerce, CIQ (OASIS Customer Information Quality) aims to deliver global, application-independent, open XML specifications for party/customer information and profile management.
Finally, it is interesting to note that RFID may in the future provide the possibility (under the condition that it will be authorised) to instantly determine the belongings on a person (for instance when this person enters a shop).
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