May 22, 2019
By Drummond Reed, Chair of the Sovrin Governance Framework Working Group
Welcome to the new monthly blog of the Sovrin Governance Framework Working Group (SGFWG). We are launching this blog to celebrate the launch of the Sovrin Governance Framework (SGF) Version 2, which was formally approved by the Sovrin Board of Trustees on 27 March 2019.
After receiving approval, we were ready for the Sovrin Founding Stewards (all the Stewards who formally agreed to operate a node of the Sovrin Ledger under the V1 Sovrin Governance Framework) to execute the new Sovrin Steward Agreement. This process is underway, and as soon as it is complete, the full legal force of the SGF V2 will be in effect.
In this post, we will briefly explain who is behind the SGF, the structure of the document, and how you can get involved.
The SGF V2 represents an 18-month effort by an all-volunteer Working Group of over 30 members—experts in digital identity, security, privacy, and policy from all over the world. Some of the organizations who have sponsored employees or contractors to contribute their time and expertise to the SGFWG include:
All members participate as individuals, including over a half-dozen experts who are not affiliated with any particular organization but who choose to contribute to the creation of the world’s first global governance framework for self-sovereign identity (SSI). Besides weekly webmeetings, this included many of them flying themselves to face-to-face meetings of the SGFWG in Helsinki last August (immediately before the MyData 2018 conference) and in Milan in December (immediately before the Hyperledger Global Forum in Basel).
The SGF V2 consists of the Master Document plus 13 additional documents—all of which are listed in Appendix A of the Master Document. The Sovrin Governance Framework home page (which you can bookmark as the permanent home of the SGF) has links to all 14 documents in two forms:
The SGF V2 follows this modular architecture so future revisions of each document can now be managed individually by the most relevant Sovrin Governing Body. This legal architecture and other major features of the SGF V2 will be covered in more depth in future posts here, starting next month with the launch of a white paper the SGFWG is currently completing.
In the meantime, if you have any questions or comments, please contact the SGFWG directly via the Sovrin Foundation contact page. And keep in mind that the SGFWG is always open to new members—there is no membership requirement, just a genuine interest in decentralized governance for a global public utility for self-sovereign identity.
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