Technology Concepts

The 'core' concepts in the TECH extension consist of:

• Actor to represent the 'actors' or entities in specific roles such as developing, providing, or using technologies
• Capability to represent the technical capability, such as image recognition, possessed by the technology (this is useful to distinguish the 'end purpose' for which the technology is being used from the underlying 'technical purpose')
• ProvisionMethod to represent how the technology is provided - such as services or products
• CommunicationMechanism to represent how the technology uses or implements communication mechanisms such as networking, GPS, or Bluetooth
• InputOutput to represent the inputs and outputs associated with the technology, such as data and actions
• Documentation to represent documentation associated with technologies such as instructions and user manuals
• DeploymentLocation to represent the location(s) where the technology is or will be deployed and used
• Function to represent the functions or features that a technology possesses or is capable of, regardless of whether they are being actively used in an use-case (this is useful to express possible uses of technology towards purposes, processing operations, technical measures, etc. distinctly from the specifics of the use-case)
• IntendedUse to represent the intended use of the technology such as what its developer or provider envisioned the technology will be used for, or how the organisation intends to use the technology

To specify the specific actors and their roles in the context of technologies, the concept Actor is provided along with the relation hasActor to associate it with the technology. Further specific actors and their associations are defined by extending these concepts, for example:

• Developer and hasDeveloper specifies who develops or has developed the technology.
• Provider and hasProvider specifies who provides the technology. This could be the same entity as developer, or a different one - such as when the technology is repackaged or modified before provision.
• User and hasUser specifies who uses or is the user for the technology.
Note: Technology User does not refer to end-user
• Subject and hasSubject is the subject of the technology i.e. whom the technology is used on or subjected to. When humans are subjects, we recommend explicitly stating this using dpv:HumanSubject and dpv:hasHumanSubject. Subjects can be involved directly (e.g. person within a CCTV camera's vision) or indirectly (e.g. person whose details were used as training data). What is considered a subject may be contextually dependant on the nature and scope of the technology as well as its application. The [DPV] provides concepts to represent whether an entity (including humans) are involved in an 'active' or 'passive' capacity as well as other forms of involvement - which is useful in the description of individuals subjected to technologies.

Function is a generic abstract term that refers to what 'functions' a technology has or is capable of through the relation hasFunction. It can be used as a 'catch-all' concept to express that a technology is capable of e.g. identity verification (purpose), data collection (processing operation), access control or encryption (technical measure), and other concepts. A function in a technology is always present or possible with the use of that technology, and a specific use-case may or may not use the function. It thus provides a way to express information about the technology regarding what exists or can be done without invoking any potential interpretation that the technology is being used in a specific way. Function as a concept is not necessary to be used until the other existing DPV concepts, which are more concrete and specific, are not sufficient for reasons described above.

IntendedUse is useful to indicate the uses for which a technology is developed, or what it is planned to be used for, and which is associated with a technology through the relation hasIntendedUse. The 'intended use' could be the developer who envisions specific uses of the technology while developing it, or a user who plans to use the technology for specific activities when they acquire it. Such intended uses can be represented by using concepts within the DPV and its extensions - such as purposes, processing operations, technical and organisational measures, and so on. Where the intended use cannot be represented by a single concept, multiple concepts can be combined by using the relations in a manner similar to the use of dpv:Process.

Intended Use is an intent or ex-ante indication or plan for the use of technology. The actual use of the technology should be represented within the context of a process instance. Where there is a difference between the intended and actual use, whether such differences are classified as 'misuses' or 'violations' depends on the context. For example if the technology has the intended use to send emails for account communications, and the actual use involved using the technology for sending newsletters, then the difference between intended and actual use may be classified as 'misuse' or it may lead to realising that the earlier intended use did not sufficiently represent all required uses of the technology, and lead to updating the intended uses. Thus, in practice, a technology may have several intended uses that evolve over time.

The provision of technology can happen via the following methods:

• ProvidedAsSystem, ProvidedAsComponent, and ProvidedAsAlgorithmic - that indicate whether the technology is provided as a system (e.g. stand alone), is intended to be used as a component in another system, or is algorithmic (e.g. implementation of a particular method).
• ProvidedAsService, ProvidedAsGoods, ProvidedAsProduct, and ProvidedAsSubscription - that provide an indication of whether the technology is service (e.g. implemented to function as a service), or is a product or a subscription (e.g. provided by a vendor). In this, ProvidedAsService is extended to represent various kinds of ProvidedAsCloudService such as Platform-as-a-Service (ProvidedAsPaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (ProvidedAsSaaS)
• ProvidedAsFixedUse indicates whether the technology has limitations of use e.g. specific number of application or single application, or those related to scale or scope. For example, a single use identifier or a one time scan for vulnerabilities.

Communication mediums or mechanism used by technology include:

• GPS or the location providing Global Positioning System or its equivalent technologies.
• Networking where any form of network based communication takes place.
• Specific networks as: WiFi for wireless, Bluetooth, LocalNetwork, CellularNetwork.
• Internet for indication of whether internet connectivity and communications are involved.
• tech:GPS: Technology utilising GPS go to full definition
• tech:Networking: Technology utilising networking go to full definition
  • tech:Bluetooth: Technology utilising bluetooth go to full definition
  • tech:CellularNetwork: Technology utilising cellular networking go to full definition
  • tech:Internet: Technology utilising internet go to full definition
  • tech:LocalNetwork: Technology utilising local networking go to full definition
  • tech:WiFi: Technology utilising wifi wireless networking go to full definition

The following concepts represent the inputs and outputs associated with technology, which extend the core concept InputOutput, and can be associated through the relations hasInput and hasOutput. Of these, Input and Output refer to how they interact with the technology, and the other concepts such as Action, Content, Decision, Prediction, and Recommendation refer to the roles of inputs and outputs. Some concepts, such as Content are defined as dpv:Data to reflect that they are always available as data, whereas others such as Action or Decision may be in data or other forms, such as the physical movements present in robotic systems.

Documentation represents information provided with technologies which 'document' or provide explanations or instructions associated with technologies. Documentation is associated with technology by using hasDocumentation, and conversely technology is associated with documentation by using dct:subject. To represent information about who provided the documentation, when, etc. - we recommend using DCMI Metadata Terms (DCT).

Status of technology, represented by the concept TechnologyStatus, indicates its state of development, deployment, use, and any other relevant stages within the lifecycle. The relation dpv:hasStatus is used to indicate the status of a technology.

Tools are technologies which are commonly used or required, and for which providing a concept within the [TECH] extension would be helpful for representing practical use-cases.