Federation of Associations

Summary

This building block encompasses key points for effective interoperability and federation amongst associations.

Purpose of the building block

This block is vital in trust implementation within the Association and widening this scope to other associations. This helps create a network effect and federate the BDI Framework.

Concepts :

Role

Description

Association

Legal entity that serves as operational anchor for both federated trust/authentication and local onboarding.

Association Admin

Functionary responsible for operating the services of a BDI Association

Association Register

Implementation Considerations

The Discovery mechanism supports an open and loose model without a centralized register that could be searched for all existing BDI Associations. In theory a large number of independent BDI Associations could co-exist without further governance.

In practive it is expected that BDI Associations will form federations and voluntarily agree upon common standards, roles and semantics over a group of Associations.

Interlinkages with other building blocks

This building block complements the Zero Trust Check, Verifiable Credentials and Business Partner Reputation Model.

This building block is also related to Association Register and Onboarding T&C's Association articles.

Elements and their key functions

Federation of Associations creates:

Trust Assurance outside the association
A Perimeter-less network

The Association Admin is a key role in the Federation of Associations

Association Admin

responsible for developing and maintaining as well as operating the established Association
entails various functions, such as setting internal rules and policies, ensuring compliance with internal and external rules, and resolving conflicts that may arise.
creates mechanisms for continuous improvement of the association, identity management, access controls and risk mitigation to build trust and quality within the association.
Standardise credentials that are acceptable in the association and can also be agreed upon to be acceptable with other associations

Core design decisions

Federation is key to expanding the scope and functional significance of local associations.
Associations don’t function in silos and zero trust approach requires federation of key trust elements or credentials.
As most organizations will be active in multiple sectors, the question of supporting interoperability between different sectors is a key challenge. Federation is finding common ground for trust among associations.