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STANDARDS & INTEROPERABILITY · English

A knowledge and accountability profile. Not another stack.

The protocol builds on shared infrastructure for transport, identity, cataloguing and exchange. It adds a portable object for meaning, provenance, legal conditions, attribution and matters that fall between mandates.

ARCHITECTURAL POSITION

Define. Profile. Reuse.

A smaller claim makes the protocol more implementable: define only the missing knowledge contract, profile standards where the protocol needs specific semantics, and reuse the rest.

01The protocol defines

Knowledge Objects, context, projection, mandate, learning sovereignty and reflexivity.

02Protocol profiles

Established standards such as ODRL and PROV-O for protocol-specific use.

03The protocol uses

Transport, identity, catalogues and infrastructure that already exist.

PROFILE, NOT A STACK

Reuse the substrate. Add the answerable object.

Applications

Create, transform and use knowledge in a local domain or workflow.

Identity and catalogues

Establish participants and make permitted resources discoverable.

Connectors and exchange

Provide transport, trust, negotiation and delivery between contexts.

Protocol

Defines portable meaning, provenance, conditions, attribution and relational knowledge.

The protocol MUST NOT present itself as an alternative identity provider, transport protocol, catalogue, connector or negotiation engine. It can be profiled for any compatible infrastructure or jurisdiction.

DSSC BLUEPRINT 3.0

A component in a larger architecture.

The statuses describe the protocol's intended architectural position. They do not claim formal DSSC conformance.

Building blockProtocol positionRelationship
Data ModelsThe protocol defines

A cross-domain information model for Knowledge Objects and their relations.

Data ExchangeThe protocol uses

Established exchange protocols. The protocol is a payload and policy profile, not transport.

Provenance & Traceabilityprotocol profiles

PROV-O for origin, derivation, validation and traceable change.

Identity & AttestationThe protocol uses

Established identity infrastructure and Verifiable Credentials.

Access & Usage Policiesprotocol profiles

An ODRL profile for access, mandate and learning sovereignty.

Trust FrameworkOpen question

Requires common governance, a named steward and enforceable rules.

DescriptionsThe protocol uses

DCAT and DCAT-AP-SE for describing data, services and offerings.

Publication & DiscoveryThe protocol uses

Existing and federated catalogues for publication and discovery.

Value Creation ServicesOutside Core

Enabled by the protocol, but not defined by the core specification.

ODRL profile

Three rights dimensions remain separate.

Permission to read a Knowledge Object does not imply a mandate to act, permission to redistribute, or permission to use it for model improvement.

[ACCESS]Who may see or use?

Permission constrained by recipient, purpose, time, context and projection.

[MANDATE]Who may decide or act?

A separate Policy with a distinct Party role. Access never grants mandate implicitly.

[LEARNING]What may improve a model?

Training, fine-tuning, benchmarking and permanent adaptation require explicit Permission.

Knowledge ObjectAsset
Allowed usePermission
Forbidden useProhibition
Conditional projectionDuty + Constraint
Actor or organisationParty + role
MandateSeparate Policy
Model trainingintw:train Action
!FAIL_CLOSED
A conformant protocol evaluator must not allow a rights-critical action when it cannot interpret every policy term that affects that action.

ODRL makes permissions, prohibitions and duties machine-readable, but it does not enforce them by itself. Unknown, incomplete or invalid rights terms must result in rejection, not implicit permission.

SUPPORTED FRAMEWORKS, METHODS & APPROACHES

Keep the method. Connect its knowledge.

The protocol can support established ways of working without absorbing or redefining them. Support means that their outputs, transitions and learning can be represented through the protocol. It does not imply certification, endorsement or formal conformance.

Foresight methodMapped

TAIDA

Kairos Future framework for moving from environmental scanning through analysis and vision to decisions and action.

Open mapping →
PracticeSupported

Scenario planning

Scenarios can be governed as versioned Knowledge Objects and composed into situated Knowledgers.

See Foresight-to-Action →
ApproachSupported

Systems thinking

Typed relations, context, feedback and Intertweens make cross-system effects inspectable without imposing one central model.

See the Intertween →
PracticeSupported

Organisational learning

Tracked outcomes, corrections and reuse can return as reviewable learning instead of disappearing after delivery.

See Cultivator →
KNOWLEDGE ALIGNMENT ANALYSIS

Evidence before equivalence.

This crosswalk records where the protocol reuses, profiles, maps to or merely aligns with adjacent standards. It is an architectural assessment—not a declaration of certification, endorsement or completed conformance.

[REUSE]

The protocol relies on an existing standard without redefining it.

[PROFILE]

The protocol constrains or extends an existing standard for a declared use.

[MAP]

The protocol publishes an explicit correspondence between models.

[ALIGN]

The concepts support each other, but no machine-testable conformance is claimed.

StandardAssessmentCoverage and protocol contributionOpen gap
Matrix specification ↗Federation precedent
Architectural precedentStrong separation-of-concerns fit

Covers: Open protocol governance, independent clients and homeservers, capability discovery, signed events and provider choice.
The protocol adds: The protocol applies the separation of protocol, local authority and hosting to knowledge, but exchanges purpose-bound projections instead of replicating room history.

Matrix is not a protocol transport profile and does not supply protocol rights, epistemic or knowledge-object semantics.

DSSC Blueprint 3.0 ↗Architecture context
ComplementaryStrong architectural fit

Covers: Data-space business, governance, legal and technical building blocks.
The protocol adds: The protocol supplies a portable knowledge and policy object inside that wider architecture.

No formal DSSC conformity assessment has been completed.

Simpl-Open ↗Federated data-space infrastructure
Potential implementation substrateStrong infrastructure fit

Covers: Participant trust, catalogues, policies, contracts and resource exchange.
The protocol adds: The protocol adds contextual Knowledge Objects, local mappings, governed relationships, reflexivity and learning events.

No implemented protocol to Simpl compatibility profile or adapter has been tested.

W3C ODRL 2.2 ↗Policy semantics
Profile candidateStrong semantic fit

Covers: Machine-readable permissions, prohibitions, duties, parties, actions and constraints.
The protocol adds: The protocol separates access, mandate and learning, then defines protocol-specific actions and projections.

The protocol ODRL profile, test cases and evaluator behaviour remain work.

W3C PROV-O ↗Provenance mapping
Mapping candidateStrong conceptual fit

Covers: Entities, activities, agents, derivation, attribution and generation.
The protocol adds: The protocol adds source observations, mapping versions, validation events and conservative lifecycle states.

A normative term-by-term mapping and SHACL validation artefacts are not yet published.

W3C DPV 2.0 ↗Privacy and legal context
Profile candidateStrong semantic fit

Covers: Purpose, processing, legal basis, data roles, jurisdiction, measures and risk.
The protocol adds: The protocol keeps legal basis and purpose distinct from ODRL usage permissions and carries their assessment state with the object.

DPV is a Community Group specification. A Swedish protocol profile and legal review remain to be completed.

Partial mappingStrong discovery fit

Covers: Catalogues, datasets, data services, distributions, publishers and access metadata.
The protocol adds: The protocol can expose a safe catalogue projection while the full Knowledge Object remains governed elsewhere.

A Knowledge Object is not always a Dataset; the class mapping must remain profile-dependent.

ComplementaryClear separation of concerns

Covers: Connector-based data exchange, participant interaction, policy and contract negotiation.
The protocol adds: The protocol adds the portable knowledge object, context mapping, provenance, attribution and Intertween ownership lifecycle.

The protocol does not duplicate transport, connector runtime or contract negotiation. No connector adapter has been implemented.

ISO 30401:2018 ↗Management-system context
Governance complementConceptual alignment

Covers: Organisational context, leadership, knowledge processes, learning and continual improvement.
The protocol adds: The protocol offers technical objects, provenance and federation mechanisms that may support those organisational practices.

ISO 30401 is not an information model. The protocol does not claim certification or technical conformance to it.

[EVIDENCE_STATE]Analytical · · not independently validated
[LAST_REVIEWED]29 August 2026

Every claim links to its primary specification. The analysis must be revised when either the protocol or a referenced standard changes.

WHAT THIS DOES NOT PROVE

Trust also requires visible limits.

  • No external standards body has certified the protocol.
  • Conceptual similarity is not syntactic or behavioural conformance.
  • Mappings become credible only when versioned, testable and accompanied by examples.
  • Governance, stewardship and compatibility guarantees remain adoption-critical.
EUROPEAN CONTEXT

Open infrastructure. Reusable knowledge.

These initiatives do not certify or endorse the protocol. They describe the policy and infrastructure environment in which an open, federated knowledge the protocol could become useful.

Open source makes components shareable. Apply AI creates demand. Simpl can enable trusted exchange. The protocol makes knowledge transferable and capable of learning.
VERSIONED PROFILES

A small core with explicit contracts.

01Knowledge Object Core
02Representation & Source Binding
03Assertion & Event / Ledger
04Knowledger & Projection
05Foresight to Action
06Rights / ODRL
07Agent Micro-Contract
08Node Identity & Capabilities
09Federation Protocol
10Returned Learning
11PROV-O & DCAT mappings
12Conformance & validation rules

The core remains infrastructure-independent. Compatibility profiles connect it to particular standards and federation environments without making them prerequisites.

Trace integrity and standards

The proposed Federated Integrity profile uses Merkle inclusion and consistency concepts described in RFC 9162. That reference describes Certificate Transparency, not an Intertween protocol implementation. Our experimental serialization and signature format are not frozen standards. Witness trust, key rotation, authenticated index completeness and privacy-preserving proofs still need specification.

Read the profile and schemas ↗