Organization Type Conflates All QA Organization Types Into One Concept

[jeannekitchens]

https://credreg.net/ctdl/terms/OrganizationType https://credreg.net/ctdl/vocabs/orgType/QualityAssurance

Accreditors don't endorse or approve, they accredit.

We need to look at adding sub types, including Accreditation Organization - An organization that evaluates institutions, organizations, or individuals against established standards and criteria to issue accreditation.

Accreditation provides a third-party validation that an organization or program meets certain standards of quality, competency, and integrity. It can also help organizations and programs improve their operations, identify areas for improvement, and demonstrate their commitment to excellence. Accreditation can be used as a marketing tool to attract customers or students and can be a requirement for funding, licensing, or certification in certain industries.

Accreditation is not a one-time event, but an ongoing process. Accredited organizations and programs are regularly evaluated to ensure that they continue to meet the standards and criteria set by the accreditation body. If an organization or program fails to meet the standards or criteria, its accreditation status may be revoked, and it may be required to make improvements or corrections to regain accreditation.

[siuc-nate]

What would the tangible benefit be in adding this complexity? Is it worth the additional complexity in UIs (ie checklists, filters, etc) and search queries (searchers would now have more concepts to have to know to look for) and publishing (publishers would now have to pick the correct value(s))? Would they pick both "QualityAssurance" and "AccreditationBody" or just one or the other?

Ultimately the only data point that matters is what is on the other end of the organization's ceterms:accredits property.

I would also argue that accreditation also implies endorsement, approval, and recognition - an organization wouldn't accredit (a special type of endorsement) something that it doesn't both recognize and approve of.

[philbarker]

I think the tangible benefit is in a more precise classification of what different organizations are, but I take your point about complexity & interfaces.

We could do something with a more formal ontology than we normally use which allows inferencing such as Nate suggests.

For example

ceterms:AccreditationBody a rdfs:Class ;
  rdfs:subClassOf ceterms:QAOrganization .

ceterms:accredits rdfs:domain ceterms:AccreditationBody .

Then it is a question of making the inference and (optionally) adding the data explicitly.

[siuc-nate]

It looks like Jeanne was proposing an addition to the Organization Type concept scheme rather than another organization subclass. I would be more open to the former than to the latter, but I still don't think the benefit would outweigh the costs.