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W3C Verifiable Credential schemas for contestability

Credential schemas and JSON-LD contexts that let contestability artifacts travel across credential ecosystems.

Interoperability goal

Credentialize contestability artifacts.

These schemas make governance evidence portable across identity and credential ecosystems.

Overview

Portable contestability evidence

Shared credential schemas make decision governance artifacts verifiable across systems.

The credential set defines how decision, appeal, and repair evidence can be issued and verified without reformatting, enabling third-party oversight and cross-domain portability.

Schema set

Core credential schemas

Each credential anchors a specific governance artifact.

Decision Record Credential

Credential schema for decision evidence, accountable owners, and appeal eligibility metadata.

Appeal Event Credential

Credential schema for appeal intake, review status, and timeline commitments.

Repair Outcome Credential

Credential schema for remediation actions, completion confirmations, and repair SLA adherence.

Burden Hours Credential

Credential schema for burden-hour telemetry and time-in-harm measurements.

JSON-LD contexts

Vocabulary alignment

Publish canonical contexts that map to contestability schema fields.

  • Publish versioned JSON-LD contexts for each credential type with canonical URLs.
  • Map credential properties back to the JSON schema identifiers to keep validation aligned.
  • Include governance-specific vocabularies for standing, remedy, and escalation tiers.

Issuance guidance

Credential release flow

Issue credentials at key state changes to preserve traceability.

  • Issue credentials at each lifecycle state change (decision, appeal intake, repair completion).
  • Require issuer metadata that names the accountable team and escalation owner.
  • Provide verifier guidance for checking remedy status and SLA compliance.

See also: Standards · Mechanisms

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Cite this page Formats: APA, MLA, Chicago, BibTeX, RIS

Version

Draft

Last updated

Jun 1, 2025

DOI

Pending Zenodo deposit

APA

Ethotechnics Standards Working Group. (2025). W3C Verifiable Credential schemas for contestability. Ethotechnics Institute. https://ethotechnics.org/standards/w3c-vc-schemas

MLA

Ethotechnics Standards Working Group. "W3C Verifiable Credential schemas for contestability." Ethotechnics Institute, 2025, https://ethotechnics.org/standards/w3c-vc-schemas.

Chicago

Ethotechnics Standards Working Group. "W3C Verifiable Credential schemas for contestability." Ethotechnics Institute. Jun 1, 2025. https://ethotechnics.org/standards/w3c-vc-schemas.

BibTeX

@misc{ethotechnics_standards_w3c_vc_schemas,
  title={W3C Verifiable Credential schemas for contestability},
  author={Ethotechnics Standards Working Group},
  year={2025},
  howpublished={Ethotechnics Institute},
  url={https://ethotechnics.org/standards/w3c-vc-schemas},
  version={Draft}
}

RIS

TY  - WEB
TI  - W3C Verifiable Credential schemas for contestability
AU  - Ethotechnics Standards Working Group
PY  - 2025
UR  - https://ethotechnics.org/standards/w3c-vc-schemas
ER  -