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Capability (of a Party)

Editor's note

This page is a first draft, and needs to be properly reviewed.

Short Description​

A capability (of a party) is the (named) combination of

  1. the means of a specific party to get something done - in other words the means to ensure that certain results are realized (typically associated with an objective of that party);
  2. the party's governance process that ensures that its (business) policies for getting that something done are being created and maintained, and
  3. the party's management process that creates and maintains the (operational) policies, such that every employee that has a task in getting this something done can find and interpret a policy and use it as it executes actions in such tasks..

The name of a capability typically refers to a (set of) function(s) that stakeholders (e.g. architects, domain experts, business people, developers) can easily relate to. In SSI contexts, names such as 'issuer capability', 'revocation capability' might appear.

The description of a capability (of a party) should specify

  1. its name;
  2. its scope, i.e.
  • the functions that define the 'getting something done';
  • the (other) capabilities that are expected to be in place, and that the party relies on to function as specified;
  1. the expectations that the party needs to govern regarding the capability, e.g. towards:
  • the parties (e.g. service providers) that (operationally) supply the capabilities that the party itself relies on;
  • employees that are tasked with the creation and operational maintenance of the means that the party needs to dispose of (and that may rely on other capabilities) in order to have this capability.
  1. the expectations that this party has towards employees that are tasked with the operational execution of (some of) these functions1.

Examples​

Editor's note

We need a set of references towards good examples of capability-descriptions.

Footnotes​

  1. it is important that the party properly defines the scope of the capability, and limits its governance to itsexpectations within that scope. ↩