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FIDIS 

Future of Identity in the Information Society (No. 507512)

 

D2.3 

  

[Final], Version: 2.0 

File: fidis-wp2-del2.3.models.doc 

Page 40 

 

4.2  A Overview of Standards for the Representation of the Person 

 

The details of the different standards that are referenced in this section are provided in “6 

Annexes: An Overview of Standards for Representing Person’s Information”. 

 

The objective of this overview is not to make a complete inventory of these standards (such 

task would rather belong to a workpackage such as “WP4 Interoperability” or “WP3 

Technologies”), but to contribute to a better understand the Identity concept by analysing, 

thought different standards, contexts in which the identity is represented and used.  

Indeed standards of representation of the persons consist in a well defined specification of a 

set of attributes that can be used to represent the identity of a person in a particular application 

domain or in general purpose Identity Management Systems. 

 

Note: the standards for the exchange of identity information (.i.e. protocols) are considered to be 

outside the scope of this document since they are not considered to be central to the comprehension of 

the structure of the Identity. Processes and protocols will more specifically be addressed in “WP4 

Interoperability” and in “WP3 Technologies” (Identity Management systems). 

 

We can distinguish two main categories of standards for representing person’s identity: 

•

 

General Identity representation standards. 

•

 

Application specific standards. 

 

General Identity representation standards of representation of the person have been 

defined mostly independently from any application domain, in order to specify the 

representation of a particular identity aspect. Usually led by a technical standardisation group 

such as ISO, IETF, ANSI, Liberty Alliance or W3C, they represent some of the elements 

participating in the construction of general purpose identity management systems. Some of 

the most important elements of the identity that are represented in these standards are the 

identifiers that can be associated to the persons (such as named, Ids, signatures), and other 

directory information (addresses, title, etc.). Typical standards include directory schema 

(LDAP, Liberty Alliance), but we can observe an increasing importance in the scope of these 

standards (for instance Liberty Alliance ID-SIS-GL cover instant location, and general 

standards such as XCBF are being elaborated in order to represent biometric information). 

Application specific standards for the representation of the person have been defined 

specifically to address the needs of a particular application domain (such as Justice, Human 

Resource Management, Education, Commerce, etc.). The standards of the representation of 

the person usually represent a subpart of the more general standards that are used to model 

any categories of information in this domain. Application specific standards are usually 

defined by organisations that are important stakeholder in the domain (such as IMS Global in 

the domain of e-Learning or the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) for JXDM), and sometime 

coordinated by business oriented standardisation organisations (and more particularly 

OASIS). Typical standards include IMS Global / LIP (learner information package) for the 

domain of e-learning, HR-XML used to design human resource management systems (an 

important facet of this standard is dedicated to the modelling of the employee) or JXDM 

(Justice Markup language) that is used by the Us Department of Justice to describe in 

particular the person information related Justice. 

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FIDIS 

Future of Identity in the Information Society (No. 507512)

 

D2.3 

  

[Final], Version: 2.0 

File: fidis-wp2-del2.3.models.doc 

Page 41 

 

These two categories of standards can be considered as very complementary and connected, 

and the application specific standards are expected to increasingly rely on the general identity 

representation standards as those later ones are extending their scope of application. 

 

The following table list many of these different standards (See “6 Annexes: An Overview of 

Standards for Representing Person’s Information” for more detailed description of these 

standards). 

 

Standards 

Standard 

 

Chapter in 

Annex 6 

details 

CC/PP 

Composite 

Capability/Preference 

Profiles 

6.5.1 

Used in mobile applications 

CIQ 

Customer Information 

Quality 

6.6 

Customer information data model 

FOAF 

Friend Of a Friend 

6.7.1 

Social network 

FTML 

Family Tree Markup 

Language 

6.7.3 Genealogy 

Web 

Format 

HR-XML 

Human Resource XML 

6.3 

XML  for  human  resource  management 

systems. 

HumanML 

Human Markup language 

6.8 

 

IMS/LIP 

IMS Global / Learner 

Information Packaging 

6.2 

Student representation in e-learning systems 

JXDM 

Global Justice Extensible 

Markup 

6.4 Justice 

LDAP 

schemas 

Lightweight Directory 

Access Protocol 

6.1.1 directory 

Liberty 

Alliance 

ID-SIS-CB, 

ID-SIS -GL 

Liberty Alliance Identity 

Service Interface 

Specifications 

-CB (Contact book); -GL 

(Geo-Location) 

6.5.3 Identity 

management 

PKCS #9 

Public-Key Cryptography 

Standards  #9 

6.1.4 authentication 

UAProf 

User Agent PROFile 

6.5.2 

Used in mobile applications 

vCard 

Virtual Card ?

 

6.1.2 

vCard is the electronic business card 

XCBF 

XML Common 

Biometric Format 

6.5.4

 

biometric

 (OASIS)

 

XFN 

XHTML Friends 

Network

 

6.7.2 

XFN is a simple way to represent human 

relationships using hyperlinks. 

XRI 

and I-Name 

Extensible Resource 

Identifier 

6.1.3 identifiers 

xNAL 

Extended Name and 

Address Standard 

6.6.1.1 

Names and addresses. 

(part of CIQ) 

 

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