W3C

Policy Languages Interest Group Charter

The Policy Languages Interest Group, part of the Privacy Activity, is a forum for W3C Members and non-Members to discuss interoperability questions that arise when different policy languages are used in integrated use cases, along with related requirements and needs.

Information about joining the Interest Group by subscribing to the mailing list is available on the group's home page.

End date 28 February 2011
Extensions On 9 June 2009 extended until 2009-12-31, On 2 December 2009 extended until 28 February 2011
Confidentiality Proceedings are public
Initial Chairs Marco Casassa-Mont (HP Labs) and Renato Iannella (NICTA)
Initial Team Contacts
Thomas Roessler, Rigo Wenning
Usual Meeting Schedule on demand, see wiki

Mission

The Policy Languages Interest Group is a forum for W3C Members and the public to discuss interoperability issues - along with related requirements and needs - that arise when using a variety of policy languages where there is a need to compute results across these multiple languages.

The Interest Group follows up on the October 2006 W3C Privacy Workshop, and addresses areas of work identified as a key common interest of participants.

An important function of the Interest Group is information sharing within and between application communities. Conference announcements and post-conference reviews to the Interest Group mailing list help advise W3C Staff and W3C Members, as well as the Policy Language Community at large, where the W3C might most effectively allocate resources.

Scope

The Policy Languages Interest Group is designed as a forum to support researchers, developers, solution providers, and users of policy languages such as XACML (eXtensible Access Control Markup Language), the IETF's Common Policy framework and related work, and P3P (W3C's Platform for Privacy Preferences Project). It provides a forum to enable broader collaboration, through use of email discussion, scheduled IRC topic chats, Wikis, and Weblog tools.

The group will primarily focus on policy languages that are already specified and broadly address the privacy, access control, and obligation management areas; it is not expected to engage in the design of new policy or rule languages. The Interest Group will work towards identifying obstacles to a joint deployment of such languages, and suggest requirements and technological enablers that may help overcome such obstacles.

The Interest Group hosts discussions both of architectural and application interest; it will, in particular, consider use cases in the compliance, privacy, access control, identity management and obligation management areas, with specific attention to diverse user-led and entreprise-led policy requirements. The group may explore the use of relevant technologies toward delivering interoperability frameworks for policy languages. Relevant technologies include Semantic Web technologies, the work of the W3C Rule Interchange Working Group, and advanced policy negotiation and evaluation frameworks.

Deliverables

As an Interest Group, the Policy Languages Interest Group does not develop specifications, and, as a body, it does not have a specific set of deliverables. The Interest Group may be asked to review Last Call Working Drafts and Proposed Recommendations. The Interest Group may also make proposals to other W3C Groups with the help of the W3C Team contact when there is evidence of sufficient Member interest in a work item.

The Interest Group may work on (non Recommendation-track) W3C technical reports, for publication as 'Interest Group Notes'.

The Interest Group may also propose holding a public workshop to explore new and emerging approaches, or propose future W3C work.

Participation

Participation to the Policy Languages Interest Group is open to the public. Any person or organization interested in the design and application of policy languages is eligible to participate in this Interest Group; W3C Membership is not a prerequisite. There are no minimum requirements for participation in this group. Participants are strongly encouraged to take advantage of frequent opportunities to review and comment on deliverables from other groups.

Communication

This group primarily conducts its work on the public mailing list public-pling@w3.org (archive). The Interest Group exists primarily as an online forum; it does not typically conduct weekly phone conferences. The Interest Group may also conduct virtual meetings using email, IRC, wiki and teleconference facilities, although the large scale, International nature of the group motivates a focus on low cost, asynchronous mechanisms such as email, its web site, and possibly a weblog. The Interest Group may on occasion meet or sponsor "Birds-Of-a-Feather" sessions at conferences, W3C Technical Plenaries or alongside other W3C meetings, at the discretion of the Chair and W3C staff contact.

Information about the group (deliverables, participants, face-to-face meetings, teleconferences, etc.) is available from the Policy Languages Interest Group home page.

Patent Disclosures

The Policy Languages Interest Group provides an opportunity to share perspectives on Policy Languages. W3C reminds Interest Group participants of their obligation to comply with patent disclosure obligations as set out in Section 6 of the W3C Patent Policy. While the Interest Group does not produce Recommendation-track documents, when Interest Group participants review Recommendation-track specifications from Working Groups, the patent disclosure obligations do apply.

Please note that the proceedings of this Interest Group (mailing list archives, minutes, etc.) are publicly visible.

Resource Statement

0.2 FTE of Team resources will be allocated to the Privacy Activity at this point, consisting of the Team Contact for this Interest Group, and a Privacy Activity Lead.

About this Charter

This charter has been created according to section 6.2 of the Process Document. In the event of a conflict between this document or the provisions of any charter and the W3C Process, the W3C Process shall take precedence.
This charter was extended by the Director through 30 June 2007, see the annoucement to the AC [member-only]


Thomas Roessler (W3C), Rigo Wenning (W3C)

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