Governance Domain

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A Governance Domain is a governed organizational boundary within which an identified authority establishes and administers applicable policies, roles, resources, and operations.

A Governance Domain establishes the governance context needed to determine:

• The governing authority
• The applicable Governance Policies
• The applicable roles
• The principals assigned to those roles
• The resources governed by the domain
• The operations permitted within the domain
• The authorization required for each operation
• The relationships with other Governance Domains
• The applicable legal and regulatory obligations
• The required records
• The required Evidence
• The applicable Provenance
• The required Traceability

A Governance Domain can form part of a governance hierarchy. A parent Governance Domain can establish policies and constraints inherited by its child Governance Domains.

A child Governance Domain can establish additional policies when the governance model permits them. The child Governance Domain cannot remove or override an inherited policy when the governance model requires additive inheritance.

A Governance Domain can govern:

• Organizations
• Communities of Interest
• Users
• Roles
• Test Environments
• Node Sets
• Nodes
• Deployment Targets
• Test Definitions
• Test Runs
• Test Results
• Baselines
• Evidence
• Catalogs
• Operational resources

A governed resource can identify the Governance Domain responsible for its authorization, policy, lifecycle, and accountability decisions.

organizational boundary within which an identified authority governs applicable policies, roles, resources, and operations

Adapted from:

• DIDO Reference Architecture, Communities of Interest
• DIDO Reference Architecture, DIDO Ecosphere Community
• DIDO Reference Architecture, DIDO Ecosystem Community
• DIDO Reference Architecture, DIDO Domain Community
• DIDO-TE draft Requirements Register, REQ-0001 through REQ-0010
• DIDO-TE draft Requirements Register, REQ-0086
• DIDO-TE governance and tenancy concepts

The definition generalizes the governance characteristics of the DIDO Ecosphere, Ecosystem, and Domain Communities without using the existing semantic Domain concept for two different purposes.

A Governance Domain is distinct from a Domain that identifies a business or semantic area within an Ecosystem.

A Governance Domain is also distinct from:

• A Domain Name System domain
• A Data Distribution Service domain
• A network domain
• A security classification
• A physical location
• A Deployment Target
• A Test Environment
• A software namespace

A Governance Domain can correspond to an organizational, program, project, product, operational, or community boundary.

The DIDO governance hierarchy can represent:

• A DIDO Ecosphere Community as a Governance Domain
• A DIDO Ecosystem Community as a child Governance Domain
• A DIDO Domain Community as a child Governance Domain

The governance model determines:

• The permitted hierarchy
• The governing authority at each level
• The roles available at each level
• The policy inheritance rules
• The authorization rules
• The resource-ownership rules
• The accountability rules
• The Evidence requirements

A resource does not become governed merely because it is technically located within a Governance Domain. The governance model must establish the relationship between the resource and the Governance Domain.

A DIDO Ecosphere Community establishes a Governance Domain for an organization.

The organization creates a child Governance Domain for a testing program. The testing program creates another child Governance Domain for a particular DIDO-TE project.

The project Governance Domain governs:

• The authorized users
• The applicable roles
• The Test Environments
• The Node Sets
• The Deployment Targets
• The Test Definitions
• The Test Runs
• The Test Results
• The Baselines
• The Evidence

DIDO-TE evaluates requested operations against the Governance Policies applicable to the project Governance Domain and its governing ancestors.