§ Glossary
Responsibility Infrastructure Glossary.
Canonical definitions for the language used to represent, evidence, verify, recognise, resolve and rely upon operational responsibility across organisational and system boundaries.
These definitions provide a common semantic reference for Responsibility Infrastructure. They explain terms used across the Standard, Protocol, publications, evidence, interpretation notes and implementation material. Where a normative instrument defines a term more precisely for a stated version or scope, that instrument governs that use.
- Responsibility Infrastructure
- The common foundation for representing, evidencing, exchanging and relying upon operational responsibility across organisational and system boundaries.
- Operational Responsibility
- The defined responsibility state held within an operational context, including the relevant scope, authority, acceptance, evidence and outcome conditions. Operational responsibility is distinct from legal liability.
- Legal Liability
- A legal conclusion determined under the applicable law, contract, duty, causation, jurisdiction and facts. Responsibility Infrastructure does not itself determine, assign or automatically transfer legal liability.
- Operational Responsibility Gap
- A condition in which systems may record activity, workflow or communication while it remains difficult to reconstruct who held a defined responsibility, under what authority, whether it was accepted, what evidence existed and what outcome was established.
- Assignment
- A recorded act that directs or proposes a defined responsibility to an identifiable party. Assignment is distinct from acknowledgement and acceptance.
- Acknowledgement
- A recorded indication that a proposed or transferred responsibility has been received or seen. Acknowledgement does not by itself establish acceptance.
- Acceptance
- The explicit act by which a receiving party agrees to hold a defined responsibility within its recorded scope.
- Responsibility Record
- A reconstructable record preserving the identity, state, proof and outcome information needed to understand a defined responsibility over time.
- Escalation
- A recorded event that raises an unresolved or time-sensitive responsibility to another defined response path, authority level or attention state. Escalation does not by itself establish transfer or legal liability.
- Reassignment
- A new assignment of a responsibility or defined part of it. Reassignment does not by itself prove acceptance by the new recipient.
- Responsibility Transfer
- A change in responsibility state between parties that must preserve the meaning required to establish what was proposed, received, accepted or left unresolved.
- Responsibility Evidence
- Evidence supporting a claim about what was assigned, accepted, done, verified or concluded in relation to a responsibility.
- Outcome
- The result established from the responsibility, distinct from merely sending, completing or closing a task.
- Verification
- The evaluation of whether available evidence supports a defined responsibility claim or completion condition.
- Recognition
- A determination about the institutional effect of a verified responsibility record under an applicable recognition arrangement.
- Standing
- The current institutional condition of a recognised record, entity or determination, such as current, suspended, revoked or expired.
- Registry
- The governed function that preserves and publishes recognised standing and its history.
- Resolution
- The process of determining which current standing corresponds to a reliance request.
- Reliance
- The external use of resolved responsibility information by an independent party within a separate decision context.
- Responsibility Interoperability
- The preservation of responsibility meaning when responsibility information crosses independent systems or organisational boundaries.
- Conformance
- A bounded claim that an implementation satisfies the applicable published Responsibility Infrastructure requirements for a stated role, scope and version.
- Responsibility Infrastructure Practitioner
- An individual pathway for applying and interpreting Responsibility Infrastructure within a defined licensed scope. Practitioner status is distinct from software conformance.
- LRIP
- Licensed Responsibility Infrastructure Practitioner. The licensing pathway is in development and does not itself certify an employer, supplier or software implementation.