First version of Representation of Powers and Mandates Ontology is available

Information on legal entities and their powers and mandates is essential for businesses when establishing relationships with governments, customers or other businesses. However, the cross-border exchange of information is limited due to the lack of semantic standards. To tackle this issue, ISA² recently released the first version of the so-called Representation of Powers and Mandates ontology. 

The ontology is the results of the ISA² Action 2016.12 - Semantic interoperability for representation powers and mandates. Under this action, the European Commission aims to create a common shared European data model for representing eMandates across borders and domains.

First, a thorough analysis was carried out through various studies in order to understand the state of the art of the eMandates systems in the European Union. The identification of cross-border use cases was a cornerstone in the process of understanding the scope of this project. The main use case identified is the Use case 1 “Cross-border eAuthorization of a Mandatee with a Representation Power” which would, for instance, allow the following scenario:

A French Person wants to use a Danish eMandate Registry to create an eMandate and empower a Danish Person to access the online system of a Danish Service Provider. 

This scenario is a typical situation where a person residing in an EU country needs to interact with an eMandate Registry of another country. 

On the basis of the aforementioned studies, and taking into account the most advanced national eMandates systems, the development of Representation of Powers and Mandates ontology begun. In order to refine it and evolve it, Working Group meetings with the collaboration of EU Member States Representatives took place on a regular basis. These meetings allowed to share and discuss the ontology and gather the feedback necessary to ensure the compliance of the model with the national information requirements.

The released ontology is available for consultation on Joinup. The current phase of the project consists of a Proof of Concept including pilots with the collaboration of several EU countries with the final goal of testing the model and its components.