The document outlines Step 1 of the Credential Transparency Initiative (CTI), which is to define functional requirements and use cases for a credential registry. It discusses following guidelines for Dublin Core Application Profiles and describes developing a domain model, metadata vocabulary, and syntax guidelines. Examples of use cases for the credential registry include searching for credentials, determining equivalence between credentials, and exploring education and career pathways.

1. Credential Transparency Initiative (CTI)
Step 1 – Functional Requirements
October 7, 2015

2. Slide 2
Work Plan & Steps
DCMI Guidelines
Credential Registry Technical Committee (CRTC)
1. Define functional
requirements and
use cases.
Review, refine and expand the functional requirements and use cases
for the four major applications, and work with subcommittees to
develop more detailed and tailored requirements and use cases for
specific descriptors including the competency descriptors.
2. Develop Domain
Model.
Develop domain information model(s).
3. Identify and
Develop Metadata
Vocabulary.
Finalize the definitions and vocabularies for each property and produce
a summary of the vocabularies and value structures for each descriptor
and their Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) references for accessing
Linked Data resources over the web following Dublin Core Metadata
Initiative (DCMI) guidelines. Existing metadata and vocabularies will be
re-used and refined wherever possible.
4. Design Metadata
Record.
Develop a Description Set Profile for all descriptors for credentials in
cooperation with subcommittees.
5. Develop Usage
Guidelines.
Explain each descriptor and provide guidance on major decisions that
must be made in creating a metadata record.
6. Develop Syntax
Guidelines.
Develop various encoding guidelines for CTI metadata in RDFa and
Microdata for HTML/XHTML tagging of web pages, RDF/XML, JSON-LD,
and Turtle, with others added in the future from the growing array of
graph bindings.

3. A DCAP is a document (or set of documents) that specifies and describes the
metadata used in a particular application. To accomplish this, a profile:
• describes what a community wants to accomplish with its application
(Functional Requirements);
• characterizes the types of things described by the metadata and their
relationships (Domain Model);
• enumerates the metadata terms to be used and the rules for their use
(Description Set Profile and Usage Guidelines); and
• defines the machine syntax that will be used to encode the data (Syntax
Guidelines and Data Formats).
http://dublincore.org/documents/profile-guidelines/#sect-2
Slide 3
Step 1: Functional Requirements and Use Cases
CTI is following the Guidelines for Dublin Core Application Profiles (DCAP):

4. Slide 4
Step 1: Functional Requirements and Use Cases
How these standards fit together is illustrated in the Singapore
Framework for Dublin Core Application Profiles [DCMI-SF]. Taking the
upper tier of the Singapore Framework as a roadmap, the sections that
follow walk through the process of creating a DCAP.
The bottom tier, RDF, provides the
foundation standards on which domain
standards are built.
The middle tier defines domain standards
that provide structural and semantic
stability for Application Profiles.
The upper tier holds the design and
documentation components of specific
metadata applications.

5. Functional requirements answer questions such as:
• What do you want to accomplish with your application?
• What are the limits of your application? What will it not attempt to do?
• How do you want the application you create to serve your users?
• Will your application need to perform specific actions, such as sorting, or downloading data
in particular formats?
• What are the key characteristics of your resources, and how does this affect your selection
of data elements? For example, do you need to handle a variety of character sets?
• What are the key characteristics of your users? Are they associated with a particular
institution or are you serving a general public? Do they all speak the same language? How
expert are they in relation to the data your application will manage? How expert are they
about the type of resources described?
• Are there existing community standards that need to be considered?
Slide 5
Step 1: Functional Requirements for Use Cases
Functional requirements guide the development of the application profile by
providing goals and boundaries and are an essential component of a successful
application profile development process. This development is often a broad
community task and may involve managers of services, experts in the materials
being used, application developers, and potential end-users of the services.

6. Step 1: Examples of Some CTI Use Cases
Search and
Discover
Search for and find credentials with similar or related competencies and within similar or
related scope of application (e.g. similar degree level or occupational cluster).
Equivalence Determine the level or degree equivalence between competency requirements among
credentials or other comparison sources (e.g. job profile, learning resource, competency
framework, quality assurance requirement, military training record, work history portfolio.
Gap Analysis Determine the gap between two different competency requirements such as an employer
competency requirement and the credential requirement or the credential holder portfolio of
one or more credentials.
Translation Translate equivalent or similar competency requirements written in one language (e.g. format,
types of information, grammar, vocabulary) into another language.
Connection Identify education and career paths or progressions (e.g. career pathway maps) between
credentials and the degree of transfer value and potential to stack and build on other
credentials as well as how to progress in learning sequences (e.g. learning maps).
Transparency Improve the capacity of all stakeholders to fully understand the meaning of the competency
requirement.
Assessability Improve the writing of competency requirements so they can be assessed through assessment
approaches that are widely accepted by major stakeholders in the credentialing marketplace.
Data Analytics Analyze and measure the degree of transparency, portability, and value in the credentialing
marketplace and provide usage information on the access and use of the credential data and
the original and derived claims of credential registry and app users.

7. Step 1: Examples of Some CTI Use Cases
Slide 7
Simple to Complex Use Case Examples
• Search and Discovery
• Employers search for and identify credentials that address one or more
of their competency requirements for hiring.
• Students and job-seekers search for credentials that have competency
requirements similar to competencies they have developed through
previous work and training, and search for related learning resources to
fill gaps.
• Equivalence
• Employers evaluate the degree of similarity between their hiring
competency requirements, those of selected credentials, and those
identified with job-seeker resumes/transcripts/profiles/portfolios.
• Credentialing organizations compare competency requirements of other
domains to evaluate and determine transfer value.
• Connections
• Students and job seekers explore education and career pathways and
learning maps based on the connections between competency
requirements for different credentials.

8. Step 1: Provide
Your Use Cases
Slide 8
Enter one ore more use
cases and scenarios.

9. Slide 9
Informational Website:
http://www.credentialtransparencyinitiative.org
Technical Planning Microsite:
http://www.credreg.org