Introduction

Scope

This document, created in the context of the workpackage 2 of the FIDIS Network of Excellence, proposes to give an overview of the different models (schemas) that are used to represent people’s information in different application domains.

This document also points out some peripheral aspects to this representation, such as the management of identity, or the acquisition of this identity. However these aspects –which are more thoroughly covered in WP3 (Technologies) and WP7 (Profiling) of FIDIS- are only present as a means for facilitating the comprehension of this document. 

Besides, this document aims at making a (partial) inventory of different standards and schema that are used for the representation of the person in Information Systems. This inventory which is presented in the Annex includes a variety of standards of representation of the person (and includes “schemas” that are used in many application domains such as mobility, justice or human resources). It does not however cover the different protocols standards that are used for the manipulation of this “Identity” (for instance SIP, SAML or PKIX are not covered and only PKCS#9 of PKCS is presented). 

 

The audience of this document comprises both non-experts (citizens, employees, civil servants, …), who need to have an understanding of the way that identity is managed in different application domains (and in particular what the categories of people’s attributes that are dealt with or manipulated are); and experts who want to get a more global (multidisciplinary) understanding of the different models that are used to manage identity (in particular in the application domains that they are less familiar with). 

This document tries to be comprehensible (but not simplistic) even to the non-specialist, and favours easy comparison of the different approaches for dealing with identity. The emphasis has been put on comprehensibility of the different models, rather than completeness (more detailed descriptions are to be found in the more specialised workpackages). 

This document is part of a series of deliverables aiming at facilitating the comprehension of the identity concept including “D2.1 Inventory of identity terms” aiming at identifying the terminology used for dealing with identity and “D2.2 Set of Use Cases and Scenarios”, which provides examples, cases, stories and scenarios which deal with identity issues. 

 

 

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