How modeling helps in developing self-sovereign identity governance framework: An experience report

Digital Identity has become a topic that attracts the attention of researchers due to the enormous number of services that have been provided online recently. Researchers face many obstacles regarding the security, privacy, and utility of digital identity. Self-Sovereign Identity (SSI) ecosystems provide a solution for digital identity, in addition to providing a decentralized human-centric paradigm that enables users to own and control their identity. Governance framework (GF) is a key challenge in building SSI ecosystems for two reasons. First, the GF needs to address various aspects such as user needs, standards, laws, and business requirements in an ecosystem. Second, the ecosystem consists of diverse, dynamic, and distributed groups of stakeholders. This research work adopts a new trend in developing GF by providing a visual view of the SSI ecosystem. In addition, it seeks to highlight the importance of domain-specific modeling in developing GF. It also addresses lessons learned from a real case study and a modeling journey that supported the creation of a GF. We will discuss the advantages and challenges of modeling and the used modeling tool based on the evaluation from the case feedback and conclude with future work.