Harmonizing Delegation Data Formats

Abstract

Delegations are an integral part of daily transactions. A delegation is the process of authorizing one entity to act on behalf of another. For the delegation to work, the claim that an entity is authorized to act on behalf of another entity needs to be verified. Verifying an analog delegation can be done by checking if the name of a user is on a list of authorized persons. In contrast, in electronic transactions the implementation of a delegation and its verification can be a difficult task. A user logging into a system or signing documents with an electronic signature involving a delegation may be required to show this delegation within the signature. This delegation needs to be discovered and verified during the transaction. Many solutions using eXtensible Markup Language (XML) have been proposed to represent delegations; unfortunately, most of these schemes are designed to be used for one specific domain. In this paper, we propose a delegation scheme that fills this gap by providing a general representation for delegation that can be easily extended to different domains.