Authorization Data Model

The Authorization Data Model provides a high-level overview of the core building blocks of the CIVITAS/CORE's authorization system.

Table of Contents

• Authorization Data Model
  • Core Concepts
    • A Tenant (Isolated Environment)
    • The User and Groups (Who?)
    • Permission and Role (With What?)
    • The Data (DataSet and DataSpace) (For What?)
    • Role-Assignment (The Link Between Them)
  • Concepts in Detail
    • Permissions
    • Roles
    • Users
    • Groups of Users
    • Binary Assignment: Permissions to Roles
      • Overview
      • Standard Role Definitions
    • Binary Assignment: System Roles and Groups
    • Ternary Assignment: Data/Governance Roles and Groups Across Levels
      • Dataset level
      • DataSpace level
      • (Data) Platform level

Core Concepts

Concept	German	Description	Example
Tenant	Mandant	Isolated organizational unit	City of Berlin
User	Benutzer	Individual within a tenant	Alice Smith
Group	Gruppe	Groups of Users within a tenant	Data Analytics Unit
Permission	Berechtigung	Smallest atomic authorization	Read Data
Role	Rolle	Group of permissions	Data Analyst
DataSet	Datensatz	Protected data product	Traffic Statistics 2024
DataSource	Datenquelle	Source of Data related to a specific connector.	Traffic Statistics 2024 (CSV)
DataSpace	Datenraum	Logical container for datasets	Traffic Data Domain
DataCatalogue	Datenkatalog	organizational container for dataset for their (semi-)public documentation	Open Data of the City of Münster
Tag	Tag	Descriptive feature of a dataset/datasource/datastructure	KRITIS-relevant
Assignment	Zuordnung	Mapping defining who gets what where	Alice has Role "Data Analyst" in DataSpace "Traffic Data Domain"

A Tenant (Isolated Environment)

A Tenant represents a fully isolated environment for a specific organization. All users, roles, and access rules exist securely within their tenant. What happens in one tenant does not affect any other.

Each tenant owns its elements — users, roles, datasets, etc. — as integral components (technically modeled as composition). In the diagram, this relationship is reflected by the tenant being defined as a property within related entities.

The User and Groups (Who?)

A User represents an individual who accesses the system. Each user strictly belongs to one tenant. In order to assign a permission/role to a user, he/she must be assigned to a Group.

Permission and Role (With What?)

• A Permission is the smallest atomic unit of authorization — like a single key, e.g., "read data" or "delete entry."
• A Role is a collection of permissions — comparable to a keyring. It groups all permissions required for a particular job or task.

Managing roles rather than individual permissions makes administration much more efficient.

The Data (DataSet and DataSpace) (For What?)

• A DataSet represents a concrete data product that needs protection, such as "Traffic Statistics 2024."
• A DataSpace is a broader logical domain grouping multiple related datasets, such as "All Traffic Data."

Role-Assignment (The Link Between Them)

At the heart of the model lies the Assignment, which acts as a central mapping or rulebook defining access control. Each assignment explicitly answers:

Who (Group) gets which Role (Role) for which Scope (Scope)?

The Scope defines the context in which the role applies — this could be:

• the entire tenant (system-level permissions),
• a DataSpace, or
• a specific DataSet.

This flexible scoping mechanism allows very fine-grained access control.

Concepts in Detail

Permissions

Permissions have an attribute category that is used to group them. This is especially useful for system-level permissions. There are two types of permissions:

1. System Permissions

   • Apply to system-administrative operations.
   • Cannot be modified by users.
   • Some are instance-level (e.g., creating a new tenant), others tenant-level.
   • Also apply on client level.

2. Data Permissions

   • Enable access to data sets, data structures, and data sources.
   • Access can be defined to the definition of these enitities (metadata level) or the content of these entities (payload level)
   • Cannot be modified by users.
   • Include standard data permissions.
   • Also available on client level.

Roles

Roles are grouped according to the type of permissions they contain:

• System Roles — contain system permissions
• Data Roles — contain data permissions
  • A role contains one or multiple permissions.
  • Can be created by users.
  • Are assigned at dataset, data space, or platform level.

Each role consists of one or more permissions and can also be created by users.

Default Roles

The system comes with default roles based on predefined permissions:

• Purpose: ensure the system is ready to start and reduce effort in role creation.
• Users can use them but are not required to.
• Default roles are not modifiable.
• Default roles have the attribute readonly set to true.

Users

• A user can have one or multiple system roles.
• Each new user automatically receives the default role "Standard User" after registration.

Groups of Users

• All users in a group implicitly inherit the group’s system roles.
• A group can have one or multiple system roles.
• Groups are the only mean to assign a role (and thus permission) to a user.

Binary Assignment: Permissions to Roles

Overview

Permissions are assigned to roles to enable platform access. The CIVITAS/CORE platform defines its own permission model that is mapped to the respective permissions of each application within the platform (e.g. Superset, Grafana). This will be transparent to the user.

The following figure shows the assignment of system permissions to roles as an example:

The following figure shows the assignment of data permissions to roles as an example. Usually, data permissions are predefined in the respective applications, e.g. FROST comes with a predefined set of data permissions: . The CIVITAS/CORE platform will transparently map its own permissions model to these predefined application permissions.

Standard Role Definitions

Name	Scope	Main Objectives	Rights	Typical Role in Administration
Platform Admin	System	Configuration of tenants. System monitoring with the aim to identify logical, stability-related or resource-related problems on the platform. Working closely with the operations staff of the K8 cluster to ensure that the platform is stable and has enough resources.	Management rights for the configuration of tenants and basic system parameters. Monitoring permissions of all platform system information.	IT personnel
Tenant Admin	System	User, role and permissions management. Configuration of tenant-wide system parameters.	Tenant-wide permissions to manage users, roles and permissions as well as tenant parameters.	IT personnel or technical specialist in cross-domain department (e.g. geoinformation or smart city department)
Data Architect	Data	Definition of guidance on the structuring and administration of data on the tenant. Definition of commonly used data models and metadata. Administration of data spaces. Administration of data sources, data structures, transformation pipelines, metadata and APIs. Works closely with all other roles on the tenant.	Management rights for all aspects of data ingestion, data processing, data storage and data output.	Technical or data specialist in cross-domain department (e.g. geoinformation or smart city department)
Data Consumer	Data	Consumption of data. Use of metadata catalog.	Authenticated or non-authenticated user on the platform. If authenticated, user can access all data he/she has permissions to in his/her roles. If not authenticated, user can access open data and public functions.	Everybody
Data Steward	Data	Management of domain specific data concepts within a data space. Application of data and metadata standards models created by the data architect. Creation, update and deletion of data sets.	Responsibility for the life-cycle of domain specific data in a data space.	Department employee, data / domain specialist
Data Owner	Data + Governance	Definition of data guidelines and cooperation in data governance definition. Release authorization of new data sets.	Business responsibility for one or several domains.	Chief Officer or Department Head
Data Gatekeeper	Data + Governance	Definition of data governance models and processes on the tenant. Administration of data governance models. Release authorization of data sets that are affected by privacy concerns.	Responsibility for data protection and data governance	Chief Data Officer (CDO), Data protection officer

Standard Role Permissions (Data Scope)

• 🟢 Data Architect
• 🟣 Data Consumer
• 🟠 Data Steward
• 🔵 Data Owner
• 🟤 Data Gatekeeper

Permissions / Objects	EXISTS	READ	CREATE	UPDATE	DELETE	RELEASE	USE
DataSet	🔵🟠🟢🟣🟤	🔵🟠🟢🟣🟤	🔵🟠🟢	🔵🟠🟢	🔵🟠🟢	🔵🟤	🔵🟠🟢
↳ Payload	-	🔵🟠🟣🟤	🔵🟠	🔵🟠	🔵🟠	-	-
DataSource	🔵🟠🟢🟤	🔵🟠🟢🟤	🔵🟠🟢	🔵🟠🟢	🔵🟠🟢	🔵🟤	🔵🟠🟢
DataStructure	🔵🟠🟢🟤	🔵🟠🟢🟤	🔵🟠🟢	🔵🟠🟢	🔵🟠🟢	🔵🟤	🔵🟠🟢
DataSpace	🔵🟠🟢🟣🟤	🔵🟠🟢🟣🟤	🟢	🔵🟠🟢	🟢	-	-
DataCatalogue	🔵🟠🟢🟣🟤	🔵🟠🟢🟣🟤	🟢	🔵🟠🟢	🟢	-	-
Tag	🔵🟠🟢🟣🟤	🔵🟠🟢🟣🟤	🟢🟤	🟢🟤	🟢🟤	-	-

Available Scopes for Objects

Permissions / Objects	EXISTS	READ	CREATE	UPDATE	DELETE	RELEASE	USE
DataSet	tenant, dataSpace, dataSet	tenant, dataSpace, dataSet	tenant, dataSpace	tenant, dataSpace, dataSet	tenant, dataSpace, dataSet	tenant, dataSpace, dataSet	tenant, dataSpace, dataSet
DataSource	tenant, dataSource	tenant, dataSource	tenant	tenant, dataSource	tenant, dataSource	tenant, dataSource	tenant, dataSource
DataStructure	tenant, dataStructure	tenant, dataStructure	tenant	tenant, dataStructure	tenant, dataStructure	tenant, dataStructure	tenant, dataStructure
DataSpace	tenant, dataSpace	tenant, dataSpace	tenant	tenant, dataSpace	tenant, dataSpace	tenant, dataSpace	tenant, dataSpace
DataCatalogue	tenant, dataCatalogue	tenant, dataCatalogue	tenant	tenant, dataCatalogue	tenant, dataCatalogue	tenant, dataCatalogue	tenant, dataCatalogue
Tag	tenant	tenant	tenant	tenant	tenant	tenant	tenant

Binary Assignment: System Roles and Groups

System roles are assigned to groups to enable platform access. This is a binary assignment, i.e. a group is directly assigned a system role.

• A system role consists of multiple permissions.
• It can be created by users.
• Some are provided by the system by default.
• Control administrative and platform-level functions.

Ternary Assignment: Data Roles and Groups Across Levels

Data and governance roles can be assigned to groups on multiple levels. Important: This is a ternary assignment, i.e. a group is assigned a data or governance role in respect to a specific dataset, data space, or platform level.

Dataset level

• Each newly created dataset receives a default role (e.g., "Dataset Owner").
• Role sets or templates can be loaded at the dataset level and assigned to groups.
• Role sets from a data space can also be applied to datasets for efficiency and finer-grained control.

DataSpace level

• Each newly created data space has a default role.
• Role sets or templates can be loaded and assigned at the data space level.
• Role assignments at the data space level are inherited by all datasets within the space.
• Data spaces can overlap but do not have to.

(Data) Platform level

• Roles or templates can be loaded and assigned at the platform level.
• Enables efficient and global management of roles across the entire platform.
• Assignments at this level inherit all data and governance roles to all datasets across all data spaces.

This allows differentiated role assignment depending on topics, departments, and data responsibilities.