Certification is a formal process led by an independent body providing a certificate that a product, service or system meets specific requirements, in particular is conform to a recognised standard. 

The body needs to be accredited to carry out the certification process, in particular provide evidence of impartiality and competence. 

As regards the certification that a data standard is certified as being conformed to Transmodel, some formalism needs to be introduced: 

1. Existence of a certification body; 
2. Accreditation of the certification body, i.e. organisation of an impartial, competent team to carry out the conformity assessment. 
3. Description of the conformity assessment process (es). 

The process starts with the comparison of a candidate data model to Transmodel as in COMPARISON.

The confomity assessment methods to Transmodel have been described in CONFORMITY.