WG8 Looks to Publishing Industry for Entity Identification Options

Frankfurt - The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) working group 8 (WG8), which focuses on business entity identification, has begun to look at the publishing industry's digital object identifier (DOI) to review how a similar approach could be used in the securities industry, officials tell Inside Reference Data.

The DOI, which has been used in the publishing industry for more than 10 years, includes more than 30 million identifiers and facilitates identification, management of metadata, intellectual content, and linking customers and suppliers.

Frankfurt-based Uwe Meyer, manager, standardization at WM Datenservices and the convener of WG8, says: "We are looking into other initiatives that are out in the markets and will decide if we take them into consideration or not."

The WG8 discussed the DOI at its Frankfurt meeting in August and expects to look further into it in its November 12 meeting. "This will have to be discussed with ISO subcommittee 4 to see if we are working in the right direction," Meyer says.

Washington DC-based Bill Nichols, director of the financial information services division of the Software and Information Industry Association and member of the WG8, says: "I have had multiple discussions with people about this over the past year, but the Frankfurt meeting was the first time this was discussed within the WG8. If this is not something we need, it's about 90% of the way there."

The DOI has two main components, a technical architecture and an infrastructure design that deal with assigning and maintaining identifiers and a governance structure addressing the business processes related to allocating identifiers, says Nichols.

What is particularly intriguing about DOI is its digital rights management framework, a known, demonstrated and valid way to build hierarchies of relationships, he says. "Using DOI to create and manage identifiers doesn't require using this method, but they have 10 years and 30 million identifiers worth of experience with a very similar set of problems."

The current plan is to have the November meeting attended by Norman Paskin, director of the International DOI Foundation, who will give an overview of the DOI to WG8 members.

Meanwhile, WG8 is discussing the possibility of changing the IBEI (International Business Entity Identifier) acronym to IFIII (International Financial Instrument Issuer Identifier).

WG8 has broadened its mandate to include payments as well as securities and has begun talks with other subcommittees in ISO TC68, in particular subcommittee SC7, dealing with payments. "It appears the WG8 consensus is to divide this into an identifier for issuers in financial services then work with SC7 and others to talk about having a bigger picture identifier that would deal with more than just the issuer community," he says.