Bridging the Social & Technical Waters of an Identifier Community - IGSN as a Case Study

Like many groups building infrastructures, there are both technical and social issues that need to be resolved in building identifier systems. One team does not have the skills to develop everything and hence since the founding of the IGSN implementation organization we have run IGSN as two teams - a technical team and a social/business team. The technical team focuses on developing the best and most appropriate architecture, whilst the social/business team focuses on keeping the IGSN specific and relevant to samples, on outreach, governance, and ensuring buy-in and sustainability. Keeping both teams in balance and ensuring that the IGSN system is useable and relevant to all stakeholders can be a challenge. Sometimes the technical solutions are too ‘rich’ to implement, impacting the social team’s ability to grow community adoption while at other times the social team does not fully appreciate technical constraints.