Find less confusing names for actors in Aggregated Claims model

[Nat Sakimura]

Tobias Looker: Language note that the usage of the term OP as the intermediary or the aggregator of claims can be confusing as technically the CP is also an OP. Suggest considering a new term such as “Holder” or “Aggregator”

Nat Sakimura: In the data sharing arrangement world, “holder” is used for the data source so that can be confusing as well.

“Aggregator” is not ideal as we want to write a parallel spec to this for the disutributed claims model.

What about “Wallet”? A wallet can be an App or it can be server based Wallet just like payment mechanisms. Also, since new The European Identity Framework calls for Wallet, it could be a good fit.

Jeremie Miller: Perhaps Intermediary Provider, since that’s how it’s being described already in multiple places?

Nat Sakimura: @{602db0779f84a90069f2eb09} ​I like the idea. Since that change is going to touch on too many places making it difficult for people to track the diff, I will create another PR to implement the changes after this PR is merged

[Kristina Yasuda]

+1 to Intermediary Provider.

Intermediary Provider and CP are both OP and can be the same or different entity, right?

[Nat Sakimura]

On June 22 call, people agreed to Intermediary Provider (IP)

[Tobias Looker]

+1 I like intermediary provider.

Another point I’d like to raise is that the term Claims Provider could be confusing, for example both the currently named CP and OP in the draft could be considered a claims provider, it is just that one party is an authority on the claims and the other is merely an intermediary facilitating their presentation to a relying party. I’d suggest renaming the party known as the CP to CA or Claims Authority.

[Kristina Yasuda]

Authoritative Claims Provider and Intermediary Provider?

[Nat Sakimura]

OK. Let us go with ACP and IP for now, as CA would be confusing with Certificate Authority. At least, it is going to be much less confusing than CP and OP. We can always change it later until the Final.

[Jeremie Miller]

When coming up to speed on mDL this week I noticed that the language they use is “Issuing Authority” for this role. As far as I can tell, it’s exactly the same role we’re describing with CP/CA/ACP, except that it’s not specific to “claims” and just describes the role like IP/RP does.

Would IA, IP, and RP be agreeable terms to use to describe the three actors?

[Kristina Yasuda]

Good catch, Jeremie! “Issuing Authority” indeed might be a simpler and easier to understand terminology. It may also help communicating with ISO mDL WG, given that mDL Specification uses OpenID Connect, too.

[Nat Sakimura]

I am fine with IA, though Mike Jones may push back that Claims Provider is an established term in OpenID Connect.

FYI, to confuse you a little more, the ISO/IEC 24760 terminology are:

• IIA: Identity Information Authority
• IIP: Identity Information Provider – Note: IIA is a subset of IIP

Also, thinking over this, we may stop using RP as the actor in this draft as IP assumes a role as an RP towards the IA. Perhaps “CC”, standing for Claims/Credentials Consumer?

For IP, I have come to think that we also should do a bit of “marketing” rather than distancing from it like AB/C WG has been doing. Using a term like “Identity Wallet (IW)” might be worth considering. I have just checked the number of occurrence of it in Google and the number of the hit is low enough while it has linkage to the new European Commission proposal. Note: A wallet can be a client-side wallet (like on a smartphone or smartcard) as well as a server-side wallet.

So,

IA – IW – CC

relationship.

If there is any chance that we may want to change again later, it might be a good practice to denote them with something that is quite distinct so that they can be searched and replaced easier at that time, by the way, e.g., something like IA, which is these abbreviations sandwiched with two asterisks.

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[Nat Sakimura]

fixes #1249 - Find less confusing names for actors in Aggregated Claims model

→ <<cset caab29ad164a>>

[Nat Sakimura]

Merged in issue_1249 (pull request #26)

fixes #1249 - Find less confusing names for actors in Aggregated Claims model

Approved-by: Nat Sakimura

→ <<cset b328dcf756dc>>

[Kristina Yasuda]

Can we please re-open this issue? I do not remember us agreeing on the term “Identity Wallet“, (probably I have missed a call - are there meeting notes?). It might be a good marketing, but as we discussed multiple times, “Wallet” can have multiple meanings and “Intermediary Provider“ was a better term IMHO.